Nothing in nature ever wrought such havoc in
the Border. Seventeen shepherds perished in the endeavour to rescue
their flocks; no less than thirty others, overwhelmed by the intense
cold, the fury of the gale, and the blinding, choking whirlwind of snow,
dropped and lay unconscious, to all intents dead, sleeping the dreamless
sleep of those whom King Frost slays with his icy darts. And dead would
those thirty assuredly have been, but for the timely aid of brave men,
themselves toil-worn to the verge of collapse, who, through the deep
drifts and the swirling snow, bore home the heavy, unconscious bodies,
to revive them with difficulty.
The storm began on the 24th of January, and though the snow lay but a
week, whole flocks were overwhelmed, in some instances buried fifty feet
deep. Countless numbers of sheep, driven into burns and lochs by the
pitiless strength of the wind, were never again seen, swept away into
the sea by the tremendous floods that followed the melting of the snow.
There is on Solway Sands a place called the Beds of Esk, where with
terrible persistency the tides cast up whatever may have been carried to
sea by the rivers which in this neighbourhood empty themselves into the
Firth. Ghastly was the burden here strewn when the floods now went down.
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