IX 
RABBITS 
257 
deer-stalking in Scotland was child’s-play compared to 
what they had gone through here. Their poor valet 
succumbed, and had to be patched up on Liebig and 
brandy. 
Next morning was glorious. Not a leaf was 
stirring, and the colouring was beyond description. 
The tall poplars everywhere turning to gold were 
backed up by the intensely blue sky ; and each 
mountain, near and distant, turned from russet to brown, 
purple, gray, and every shade of tender blue. The 
air was so clear every sound was heard across the 
lake, and so bracing you felt you could walk on for 
ever. 
I was not alone on those hill-tops — rabbits every- 
where, from the grim skeletons hung on the wire fences 
as a warning to others, to the nimble-footed ones which 
bobbed round rocks, in and out of burrows, and even 
on the pebbly shore. There was no other sign of life, 
for on the shores there is a death-like silence, and I 
started even at the swish of a big fly as it darted by in 
the sunlight. A little boat was moored to the rocks, 
and a long line of cork heads on the top of the water 
suggested trout for dinner, which is the standing dish 
here, the fish often weighing from 20 lbs. to 30 lbs. 
Away on the hill-tops a deer disappeared, and two 
eagle hawks went skimming by. 
In strange contrast to this scene of solitude are 
the stories one hears of the times when hundreds 
of pounds of gold a day were scraped out of the 
crevices of the rocks on the Clutha River by the 
early settlers, and fabulous prices paid for tucker and 
whisky. Some of the “ shanties ” still remain, where 
many a poor unfortunate was drugged and robbed of 
his nuggets. What tales could be told, adventurous or 
pathetic, of those early gold-digging days ! 
s 
