journey, we arrived wet and
fagged at the next station, Miller and Gooche's. Here a similar scene
was being enacted, and here, in common with many other diggers, we were
obliged to remain for several days owing to severe weather setting in.

Miller and Gooche's station was situated at the junction of a tributary
stream with the Waitaki, at the entrance of a rugged and mountainous
gorge. From this point our real difficulties were to begin, as we would
diverge from the main valley we had hitherto followed, and work our way
over a rough tract of hilly country, up ravines and spurs to the great
pass, then pretty certain to be covered with snow.

For the four days during which we were detained at this station it
rained, sleeted, and snowed alternately and unceasingly. There were
upwards of one hundred and fifty men there, and the station running
short of flour, a supply had to be procured from Davis's, where luckily
a large store had been collected.

Most diggers possessed nothing beyond the clothes they wore, with a
blanket and a kettle, and many had no money wherewith to pay for food,
so the squatters were obliged to make a virtue of necessity and give
free where there was no chance of payment, and this they did right
willingly. As for the diggers, I must say so much for them that, rough
fellows as they were, they paid freely and gratefully all they could,
and I did not hear of a single instance of robbery or outrage save one,
and we were the victims of that. It was merely the abstraction,
emptying, and replacing on our dray of a case of "Old Tom," all the
spirits we possessed, and we did not discover the loss until too late
for any chance of detecting the delinquents.

At Miller and Gooche's we passed four very miserable days. The two small
huts and the sheep shed were filled to overflowing, and we lay on the
floor of the latter at night, cold, stiff, dirty, and packed into our
places like sardines. The rain and sleet, slop, cold, and offensive
odour combined would need to be experienced to be appreciated; it was
indescribable and the greatest and most disagreeable of anything I
experienced before or since of such a mixture.

At length the weather cleared, and in company with another dray just
arrived from Dunedin, and got up in imitation of ours, we started for
the pass, not without grave misgivings of what might be before us.

The first day we made five miles. Our route lay along the course of a
large creek bounde