THE SQUATTER'S FOES 223 



steads, and even human beings in its dread flight. But 

 we need not go back for sixty years. Turn only to the 

 newspaper of this very day (December 23rd, 1910), and 

 we find an account of a huge bush-fire that sweeps 

 station-properties over an area of 30 miles long and up 

 to 12 miles wide. In its brief career it has many vicissi- 

 tudes. Driven by a strong northerly wind, and fed by 

 the long, dry grass, the flames travelled at a tremendous 

 pace. 



The flood is the counterpart of the drought, and 

 usually affects the same country. Elsewhere floods that 

 are often beneficial are created by the melting of the 

 upland or mountain snows ; in Australia they are be- 

 gotten of tropical or monsoonal rains, which are, when 

 normal, the standby of the pastoralist. So heavy are 

 these that not many days' rain is wanted to flood a 

 country. In temperate New Zealand and south-eastern 

 Australia three inches may at times fall in as few hours. 

 In tropical countries, like Queensland, eighteen inches 

 may fall in one day. A few days' rain , at even the lower 

 rate, will raise the starved rivers far over their low 

 banks. Then flocks and herds, horses and houses and 

 human beings are swept down by the all-engulfing 

 stream. Many a squatter has been ruined by floods. 



Or there may be only continued wet weather, when 

 many stations run out of rations. Drays may then be 

 fourteen months on the road. There is no food but 

 mutton or beef. Always the iron pot is on the fire. 

 There is no tea, and such flour as they could procure 

 is carried on pack-horses. 



In more temperate countries, such as New Zealand, 

 here repeating the experiences of the Motherland, especi- 

 ally Scotland, drought may be matched, in an adjoining 

 province, by a calamitous snowfall. Lady Barker gives 

 a harrowing account of the digging out of sheep that 

 had been buried in snow. Under its warm mantle they 

 would have been safe, had not a stream risen and 

 drowned them. One-half of the sheep were lost, she 

 writes, and ninety per cent, of the lambs, while on the 



