neighbonrmg fire. Fortunately the hot winds are rare, occurring only in the sammer, ami then only for one, two, or at inoHt three days; hilling at night, and raging again in the forenoon. In the interior, if a iire occurs simultaneously with a hot T;ind, and the growth of gi'ass has been abundant in the spring, the devastation is as vast as it is rapid. The raging wind sweeps up the kindled grass, whirls it forward to set the lire-demon at work in countless fresh places, and amid the roar of the wind, the crackling of boughs and grass, the dense and lurid smoke, the settler sometimes vainly strives to save his homestead from the advancing flames. One hot wind day is notable in the annals of Victoria as Black Thursday. The air was darkened with gloom which terrified ; the captain of a ship in Bass's Straits lowered his top-gallant masts in expectation of some terrible con- vulsion, when at two o'clock in the day it was dark as midnight. It was not till Friday raorning that the darkness waned* In a prolonged drought the '* heaven is as iron and the earth as brass. What the colonists call '* the break-up of a drought" is welcome as spring in cloudy Europe. During the drought a tantalizing but commuii phenomenon is the massing of dark, rain -promising clouds. The settler eyes them with hope, and just as he expects their blessings a wdnd'Storm rives them into thinness, and they gradually disappear, leaving no wirack behind. The end of a drought, after numerous disappointments, is generally sudden. The evening may have been fine; in the morning the raui la descending in torrents. One severe drought, in which thousands of sheep and cattle had perislied, and many more had been driven to fresh pastures to save their lives, was thus broken up. For nearly seven days and nights, almost without intermission the flood-gates were opened. The rivers rose to unexampled height. Many lives were lost. The Naniraoy river carried away to the far south the w^recks of buildings and the carcases of sheep. There were instances in which all animals left alive by the drought were torn from their owner by the flood. When the affiuent8 of the Darling escape from the cordillera, they I f ^
