Draughts

“ The draught, in whatever form it comes, is drunk with avidity, and, circulating through the subterranean recesses of the globe, it does its work of re-creation, and eventually reappears a bubbling spring, again to run its round of wonder-working tasks. ”

“ Whenever there came a short drought the waterhole was sure to run dry; then it was take turns to carry water from the springs—about two miles. We had no draught horse, and if we had there was neither water-cask, trolly, nor dray; so we humped it—and talk about a drag! By the time you returned, if you had n't drained the bucket, in spite of the big drink you'd take before leaving the springs, more than half would certainly be spilt through the vessel bumping against your leg every time you stumbled in the long grass. ”

“ A dray going through a river is a pretty sight enough when you are utterly unconcerned in the contents thereof; the rushing water stemmed by the bullocks and the dray, the energetic appeals of the driver to Tommy or Nobbler to lift the dray over the large stones in the river, the creaking dray, the cracking whip, form a tout ensemble rather agreeable than otherwise. But when the bullocks, having pulled the dray into the middle of the river, refuse entirely to pull it out again; when the leaders turn sharp round and look at you, or stick their heads under the bellies of the polars ”

“ When the light brightened they could see below them the angry water, creeping every instant closer to their places of refuge, beaten into foam by the terrible downpour, and sometimes, moved by a mysterious impulse, rising in sweeping waves which threatened to carry everything before them.
Every few minutes one of the great structures would sway, crack, crumble, and go down into the seething flood, the cries of the lost souls being swallowed up in the thunder of the fall. ”

“ The roaring and wailing of the turbid flood now seemed to be repeating in cruel mockery the despairing cries of all the drowning people who were ever the prey of the water-fiends that draw downward in whirlpools to depths where twilight passes into darkness, and take the form of the long waving weeds that look so innocent, but whose grasp is deadly, or guide the current that utters never a sound as it seizes its victim and bears him into an unfathomed gulf under the pitiless rock. ”

“ A powerful stream across the adit, some fifty yards from the mouth, had given way before an unexpected landslide. In other words, at the top of the adit over thirty men had been cut off by that fall of earth, and the only way to reach them lay along a huge drain, which was now full of water. To dig down to those men meant the best part of a week's work, with every resource the engineers could employ. There was one forlorn hope, and that was to find someone strong enough and expert enough to dive along that black yawning drain and reach the prisoners the other end. ”

“ The intake itself is nothing but the flimsiest sort of a makeshift. One good flood, such as we have every few years, and there wouldn't be a damned stick of it left in twelve hours. You remember what the grade is from the river at the point of the intake this way into the Basin and you know how water cuts this soil. If that gate goes out the whole river will come through; and these settlers, who are tumbling over each other to put into this country every cent they have in the world, will lose everything."
"The Company takes its chances with the settlers, doesn't it?" ”

“ The river boundary in summer flood,
The swirling waters as they rush and roar,
Mock at the wearied limbs that reach their banks,
And can no more, although the foe is on them!
Numbers die here; numbers plunge in—and drown. ”

“ Tarpaulined drays ground along in a long line, monotonously jingling the pots and pannikins slung beneath.
“MEN ON HORSEBACK, WITH SADDLE-BAGS AND PISTOLS.”
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Here and there a dray had broken down, and the driver was fussing about as angry as a wasp, or smoking in sulky idleness, because he could not get any one to stop to help him right his cargo. Every public was crammed with rowdy-looking, bronzed, bearded fellows, shouting for nobblers, spiders, and stone-fences. ”

“ A dray, with eight, ten, or twelve bullocks in it, according, to load, will travel thirty miles a-day. When the folks travel, they take no shelter in a house or hut for the night. When night approaches, they alight, and tie their horses to a stump; they draw down some of the thick branches of the gum-tree, and peel off the bark of a large tree, kindle a fire with a match, or, for want of this, rubbing two sticks together, get up a blaze, and fall to sleep beside it. If the traveller be accompanied by a dray, the tarpauling, is drawn round, and he sleeps beneath it. ”

“ The black draymen standing erect on their two-wheeled craft, like Roman chariot racers, would whirl their mules down the levee at a perilous gallop, scattering the gravel every which way, and our leisure class—boys and darkies—and a good many of the business men, would come down to the foot of Main Street to see her land and watch the rousters swarm off ahead of the bellowing mates and eat up the freight piles. ”

“ The levee is crowded with casks and cotton bales, covering acres of ground. Up and down the steep way cut through the brow of the bluff, affording access to the landing from the town, a stream of drays is passing and repassing. Freights are going aboard, or coming ashore. Drays are loading and unloading. Bales of cotton and hay, casks, boxes, sacks of grain, lumber, household furniture, supplies for plantations, mules, ploughs, wagons, are tumbled, rolled, carried, tossed, driven, pushed, and dragged, by an army of laborers, from the levee along the broad wooden stages to the steamers’ decks. ”

“ Every brook was a torrent, every snow bank the repository for the continuous, melodious chorus of tinkling water drops as they dripped and dripped, and sang their little good-by songs. The dams were built, the gates swung up and down, the shovels tore into the pay dumps, and the sluice boxes roared as we men of Little Marook strove, and cleaned up our winter’s profit, be it large or small. ”

“ Its very power, indeed, gives fatal force to its aberrations; even as the waters of the calmest river, when dammed up or forced from their bed, flood and ruin the country: but the gentle flow and fertilizing influence of the stream are the fit emblems of the instinct, when suffered, undisturbed by force or passion, to follow its own quiet channel. ”

“ The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one’s mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and headlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness in which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. ”

“ It has been my endeavor to show what lands in America require drainage, and how to drain them best, at least expense; to explain how the theories and the practice of the Old World require modification for the cheaper lands, the dearer labor, and the various climate of the New; and, finally, to suggest how, through improved implements and processes, the inventive genius of our country may make the brain assist and relieve the labor of the hand. ”

“ Those who resided where the vast mass of eruptive matter broke forth, filled with consternation and dread, had to flee almost naked from their houses to find shelter and safety on higher ground from the desolating, foul, muddy flood, leaving furniture and cattle behind them — a prey to the black and nauseous stream. ”

“ We must underdrain all the land we cultivate, that Nature has not already underdrained, and we shall cease complaints of the seasons. The advice of Cromwell to his soldiers: "Trust God, and keep your powder dry," affords a good lesson of faith and works to the farmer. We shall seldom have a season, upon properly drained land, that is too wet, or too cold, or even too dry; for thorough draining is almost as sure a remedy for a drought, as for a flood. ”

“ I say particularly fine weather sailing; for a swell, which makes the dredge leap along the bottom, instead of scraping steadily, is as fatal to sport as it is to some people’s comfort. But dredging, if you use a pleasure boat and the small naturalist’s dredge, is an amusement in which ladies, if they will, may share, and which will increase, and not interfere with, the amusements of a water-party.
The naturalist’s dredge, of which Mr. Gosse’s “Aquarium” gives a detailed account, should differ from the common oyster dredge in being smaller; certainly not more than four feet across the mouth ”

“ The stream which, rightly directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation from field to field,—would have purified the air, given food to man and beast, and carried their burdens for them on its bosom—now overwhelms the plain, and poisons the wind, its breath pestilence, and its work famine. ”

“ Even a few dreadnoughts lay castled on the broadening waters. On both sides of the river, dull warehouses and factories stretched out rusty wharves, like myriad fingers, to receive the tonnage that converged on this center of the world's activities. ”

“ The shores were strewed with them in all stages; many struck down in youth, with their young foliage about them; others in the sere and yellow leaf, while others again stripped of leaf and bark, are piled in great ‘wreck heaps,’ where the current has hurled them, or floating down the stream, in time to become a snag and lie in wait to impale some unconscious vessel. ”

“ When a river which has overflown its banks pours onward, you may erect dykes to arrest its progress, but the flood continues to rise; you may work with eager energy and employ skilful labourers to make good all the fissures, but the flood will continue to rise until the torrent has surmounted the obstacle, or until, by making a circuit of the dyke, it comes back by some other way to inundate the land which you have attempted to protect from it. ”

“ Torrents grow turbulent, hurling themselves in foam from the hills around, and rivers that, in the long drought, have grown meagre, swell rapidly to great size, fed by rains amid the mountains and by the hundred little streamlets and torrents that cast themselves noisily down ravines. ”

“ All the dikes which, in different countries, from time to time, with the march of civilization, have been painfully set up against the inroads of this evil, must be removed, and every land opened anew to its destructive flood. ”

“ In one of these minor hells every one suffers from intolerable thirst. Through its gloomy confines flows a river whose waters are saturated with salt. The wretches, maddened by the thirst which none may relieve, fling themselves into the briny flood. ”

“ November 17.—At this date 307 feet 9 inches had been completed. [15]
December 8.—The evil [that of not having a proper drain] is going on with us, and without any remedy except the drain, or a cesspool by way of expedient. How much anxiety must one feel at being so circumstanced! Should any water break in, how should we proceed? This is another source of great solicitude. We have no command of the frames when they rest upon wooden legs, or when the screws are bent; and what is worse is that the men drive on without any consideration or any fear of consequences. ”

“ They are like streams that wind their way past solitary hermitages: there are places in their course where the stream plays hide and seek with itself, and indulges in short idylls with islets, trees, grottos, and cascades—and then it rushes ahead once more, passes by the rocks, and forces its way through the hardest stones. ”

“ For them misery stared out of the lightning and starvation rode upon the flood. The roar of water answering the thunder above it was to their ears Earth groaning against the rod, and right well they knew that the pale torrent was drowning those summer labors which represented money and food for the on-coming of the long winter months. ”

“ The very floods which swell the rivers to overflowing, are followed by the most beneficent effects; and, rude and violent as the means are by which she accomplishes her purpose, they form, no doubt, a part of that process by which she preserves the balance of good and evil. ”

“ It is built on the flattest plain in the world. The Spree stagnates beneath its bridges, and the drains, just covered by planks, stagnate in the streets, and are by no means agreeable during the present heat and drought. ”

“ But then, the farther I got away from poverty the greater the fear I had of it—and, besides, there was always before us all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren creeks. ”

“ They have now become broad, shallow stream beds, in which muddy water trickles in slender currents during the dry seasons, while when it rains there are freshets, and roaring muddy torrents come tearing down, bringing disaster and destruction everywhere. ”

“ Once, exactly seven years before, while the world writhed and baked in the throes of the last great drought she had been compelled to venture into the unknown land. 154The streams and lagoons had dried; those of the animals that did not perish outright migrated, and Suma had followed the living stream as a matter of self-preservation for, without food and water, life could not be sustained. ”

“ The natural consequence is a stream of the most broken and impetuous character, a stream whose rushing, roaring, and foaming drowns all sounds contiguous to it; rapid after rapid of seemingly tempest-tossed and crested billows, of whirlpools and eddies, of backwaters and heavings into surface currents, and never a still pool to be found anywhere. ”