e exactly
where I was, as I passed the carcase of a mountain pony which I had
previously noticed. The poor thing had no doubt been famished to death,
and was fast wasting to a skeleton. Numbers of these hardy little
animals have perished during the severe weather from hunger, having been
previously reduced to the lowest condition through lack of pasturage
during the dry season of 1864. One man, who owned fourteen of them, has
lost every one.

Leaving this solitary waymark, the half buried skeleton, by which I had
rested for a few minutes and taken a little of my brandy, I started
again, having first made a careful observation of the direction in which
I should go. After a further struggle across the level summit of the
hill, I reached my second landmark, a pool in a little hollow between the
hills, which is well known to the inhabitants of the district, and
interesting to naturalists, as the resort of curlews and other rare
birds; here again I took a short rest, and then started upon what I
fondly dreamed would be the last difficult stage of my journey.

My way from the pool lay first up a steep ascent for rather less than
half a mile to the top of the hill, and then across a level flat for some
three or four hundred yards, when a fir plantation would be reached at
the edge of the enclosed ground. Once within the friendly shelter of
those firs, I knew that the remainder of my walk, though still tedious
and fatiguing, would be comparatively easy. It pleased God, however,
that I should never reach them that night. Doubtless I had been too
confident in my own powers, and at the very time when I thought the
difficulties and dangers of my task were well nigh accomplished, I was
taught a lesson which I shall remember to the latest hour of my life. I
ascended the hill to the flat already spoken of, though it was a very
slow process, for owing to the depth of the drifts, which were now
increasing rapidly, and the force of the wind, I was compelled to crawl a
great part of the way. The storm now came on, if possible, with
increased fury. It was quite impossible to look up or see for a yard
around, and the snow came down so thick and fast that my servant, who had
come some distance up the lane from Wolstaston in hopes of seeing
something of me, describing it to me afterwards, said, "Sir, it was just
as if they were throwing it on to us out of buckets." I fought on
through it, however, expecting soon to come to the fir