THE CHEVIOT BREED. 105 



Shepherd, graphic descriptions are given of the scenes of 

 desolation which sometimes present themselves, and of which 

 the memory survives from generation to generation in the 

 traditionary annals of the shepherds. Of one of these, fami- 

 liarly termed the Thirteen Drifty Days, he thus speaks from 

 tradition : 



" It is said, that for thirteen days and nights the snow- 

 drift never once abated : the ground was covered with frozen 

 snow when it commenced, and during all the time of its con- 

 tinuance, the Sheep never broke their fast. The cold was in- 

 tense to a degree never before remembered ; and about the 

 fifth and sixth days of the storm, the young Sheep began to 

 fall into a sleepy and torpid state, and all that were so affected 

 in the evening died over-night. .The intensity of the frost- 

 wind often cut them off, when in that state, quite instanta- 

 neously. About the ninth and tenth days, the shepherds be- 

 gan to build up huge semicircular walls of their dead, in 

 order to afford some shelter for the living remainder ; but 

 such shelter availed little, for about the same time the want 

 of food began to be felt so severely, that they were frequently 

 seen tearing one another's wool with their teeth. When the 

 storm abated, on the fourteenth day from its commencement, 

 there was on many a high-lying farm not a living sheep to be 

 seen. Large misshapen walls of dead, surrounding a small 

 prostrate flock, likewise all dead, and frozen stiff in their lairs, 

 were all that remained to the forlorn shepherd and his mas- 

 ter ; and though on low-lying farms, where the snow was not 

 so hard before the tempest began, "numbers of sheep weathered 

 the storm, yet their constitutions received such a shock, that 

 the greater part of them perished afterwards ; and the final 

 consequence was, that about nine-tenths of all the sheep in 

 the south of Scotland were destroyed. In the extensive pas- 

 toral district of Eskdale-muir, which maintains upwards of 

 20,000 sheep, it is said none were left alive, but forty young 

 wethers on one farm, and five old ewes on another. The 

 farm of Phaup remained without a stock and without a ten- 



