Fortunately the hungry seekers after gold were not particular about their meat being a shade over or under cooked; they were glad to accept what they got, and indeed right wholesome food it was. The doughboys were simply large lumps of dough, made of flour and water, used as a substitute for bread, of which a sufficient quantity could not be prepared for the immense demand. We obtained our turn in due time, and after a hearty meal retired to the quarters we had pitched upon for the night--viz., a straw shed where we rolled our blanket around us and slept soundly. The following evening, after a severe day's 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.