128 
Excursion to the 
anti sheep daring the summer months. The distance 
from Connorville is not much more than 16 miles, hut 
from the great elevation the climate is in winter very in¬ 
clement. This, like most of the huts on the range that 
we went to, resembles the chalets of Switzerland, being 
very rudely constructed. Many of the colonists have 
cattle and sheep runs in the neighbourhood of the lakes 
on the range; but it is only in summer that these are 
used, the flocks and herds being kept at the homesteads 
the rest of the year. We walked round the lake without 
perceiving a living creature except a couple of black 
swans and their young, a few wild ducks, and one large 
hawk. I was surprised at finding no snipe, for this bird 
is generally very numerous about the lake, and indeed 
in many parts of the Colony, appearing always the last 
week in August, or the first in September. The green- 
shank is also a visitor, but would seem to be very rare, 
for I never saw nor heard of more than one couple. The 
swallow appears at the same time as the snipe. Close by 
the hut there is a still smaller lake, which in some seasons 
is nearly dried up. The country around has nothing in 
it that is in the slightest degree picturesque or attractive. 
From the hut we walked some miles over a succession 
of plains, seldom more than the third of a mile wide, but 
generally narrower; and invariably clear of trees and 
shrubs. They arc clothed with a coarse herbage; and 
from being very wet in winter are termed marshes, though 
not strictly so. Over all these are scattered stones, or 
rocks of trap, not uufrequently of no small magnitude, 
but always partly embedded. The forest on both sides 
of the plains, though occasionally forming rather thick 
“scrub,” is usually rather open than otherwise. For the 
information of those unacquainted with our colonial terms, 
I may observe that a scrub is a forest with a great deal of 
undergrowth, by which it is rendered in some parts quite 
