Groining

“ Unless the weather is quite dry for a week or more, the rough ground and deer grass, both of which it is most desirable to burn in the interest of grouse and sheep, will not burn, and when your staff of men are collected and got together, a sudden storm of rain or snow comes on, and you are delayed for a week, and perhaps put off altogether for that season. ”

“ Fence-rails, and scattered drift-wood, and huge beams
From broken dams above us, mill-wheel ties,
Smooth lumber, and the torn-up trunks of trees,
Swept downward, strewing all the land about.
Sometimes the flood surrounded, unawares,
Stray cattle, or a flock of timorous sheep,
And bore them with it, straggling, till the ice
Beat shape and being from them. You know how
These freshets scour our valleys. So it raged
A night and day ”

“ Mountain ranges throw their boulders and tear their gaping chasms in the way, the streams, too few and far between for thirsty man, are torrents to be crossed on fallen logs, on slimy boulders where one sees the sudden agony flash in the eyes of a laden mule that slips, and with a struggle of frantic hoofs is tossed to death. ”

“ Coming down in flood from the moors the Exe will not wait to run round its curves, but rushes across the intervening corner, and leaves behind, as it subsides, a mass of stones, fiat as slates or scales, destroying the grass. ”

“ Sometimes, the rain which falls upon the high land is collected together by fissures in the rocks, or by seams or ruptures in the impervious strata below the surface, and finds vent in a gushing spring on the hill-side. ”

“ The erosive power of waste-laden currents of air is suggested as the sharp grains of flying sand sting one’s face or clatter against the window. In the country one sometimes sees the dust whirled in clouds from dry, plowed fields in spring and left in the lee of fences in small drifts resembling in form those of snow in winter. ”

“ With the faintest stir of the dying breeze showers of raindrops fell from shrubs and trees, and at every step my feet sank into the soft, soaked gravel, or sent the moisture bubbling up from the layers of rotten leaves and twigs which the morning’s gale had scattered along the road. ”

“ Far off, long before the eye can catch the cause, a sound is heard like the rush of a cataract over opposing rocks, the trunks of the trees flame out with a sudden crash, the branches crackle, and the roots beneath the soil all contribute to the extraordinary uproar. ”

“ During the wet season a single rain may fill the gorges, sheet the mountain slopes with water, tear great trees from their hold, break off mighty rock fragments and carry them onward, like wooden blocks, with hundreds of tons of finer gravel. ”

“ The water, pent up and impeded by fallen rocks, roars and swishes and churns itself into foam, as it dashes in impotent wrath against the great buttresses and barriers that seek to retard, its furious rush. There is not a blink of brightness here to relieve the pallid leaden look. Even the snowy heights are again hidden by the grey dark envious mist, which clings to the sodden soil like grave-cloths. ”

“ In the commencement, some unlucky log swings across the narrow chasm, striking some protruding portions of the ledge, and stops fast; others come on, and, meeting this obstruction, stick fast also, until thousands upon thousands form one dense breast-work, against and through which a boiling, leaping river rushes with terrible force. ”

“ Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother Nature accomplished her beneficent designs—now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of organic life, a milky way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the rugged mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees, as sea-waves break and bloom on a rock shore. ”

“ Filth and desolation all around. Shattered farmsteads half buried in the mud; shattered gardens trampled into mud. A weary land of foulness, breeding foulness; tangled wire the only harvest of the fields; mile after mile of gaping holes, filled with muddy water; stinking carcases of dead horses; birds of prey clinging to broken fences, flapping their great wings.
A land where man died, and vermin increased and multiplied. Vermin on your body, vermin in your head, vermin in your food, vermin waiting for you in your bed ”

“ Every rocky glen has its gurgling rill, every ravine its stream, which, at an hour's notice almost, may become a mountain torrent, should a storm break over the watershed. A plague of waters is no unfrequent occurrence, as the farmer in the valley knows to his cost. ”

“ Every gully had become a stream, and every gulch-rock a waterfall. Here and there had been a crashing of spent timber, and now the sun had burst through a rift in the west, and flooded a segment of the horizon with a strange, luminous field of lesson. About this zone of clarity were heaped masses of gold- rimmed and rose-edged clouds, still inky at their centers. ”

“ The tops of the little willows are tufted gayly with hay and rags, and other spoil of the flood; and in one place a disordered mattress was lodged high among the boughs of a water- maple, where it would form building material for countless generations of birds. The fat cornfields were often littered with a varied wreckage which the farmers must soon heap together and burn, to be rid of it, and everywhere were proofs of the river’s power to devastate as well as enrich its shores. ”

“ The surface of the dry earth cracks. There are huge fissures where the water lay in clayey hollows during the winter and spring. Along the stock routes and beside the empty water-holes, sheep and cattle lie rotting. ”

“ If the earth's surface were, like iron, impervious to water, the rain-water would come in torrents down the hill-sides, and along the gentle declivities, into the streams, creating freshets and inundations in a few hours. But instead of that, the soft showers fall, often on the open, thirsty soil, and so are gradually absorbed. ”

“ An instructive lesson in the erosive action of rain may be found in the pitted and channelled surface of ground lying under the drip of the eaves of a cottage. The fragments of stone and pebbles of gravel that form part of the soil can there be seen sticking out of the ground, because being hard they resist the impetus of the falling drops, protecting for a time the earth beneath them, while that which surrounded and covered them is washed away. ”

“ She rose and searched vainly through the bushes of the hillside where the rock ran out from the woods. She lifted her skirts and splashed her bare feet in the shallow creek water, wading persistently up and down. Her shyness was forgotten. The groan was a groan of a human creature in distress, and she must find and succor the person from whom it came.
Certain sounds are baffling as to direction. A voice from overhead or broken by echoing obstacles does not readily betray its source. ”

“ The stream of rubble seems in a living rage; it thrusts its way on, tearing down other masses with it—crowding, pouring, pouring, fills up a chasm in the valley—and stops. The last few boulders settle slowly into place, and then no more. ”

“ The mountain torrents, swelled by rain and melted snow that no longer find any earth to soak, will then periodically rush down with undiminished volume, inundating the valleys below, and in many cases covering them with gravel and loose rock swept down from the steep slopes, gradually rendering them unfit for agriculture and sometimes even for the habitation of men. ”

“ Raindrops, born a long way up in the hills, united to run through fissures in the earth, through soil-drains, through runnels in the moss of woods, through channels in the clay of sodden fields, each drop bearing infinitesimal grains of what, towards the sea at the end, becomes alluvial soil—each drop quarried, each drop carried, each drop endured for its moment, and then went hence and was no more seen. ”

“ Again, most people are familiar with the fact, that during periods of long continued rain, when the rivers are flooded and overflow their banks, they not unfrequently bear with them loads of sand and gravel, which they carry far and wide, and strew at intervals over the surface soil. ”

“ The rain erodes it into the oddest of forms, leaving projecting ridges almost as sharp as knife-edges, with irregular hollows pitting the surface, so that it forms a most insecure and unpleasant foot-hold for the animals. ”

“ The rain, which comes down in torrents, has washed all the soil away, leaving only the barren rocks standing in these huge piles; far in the clefts, a sort of wild fig has taken slender root, and, gradually shooting up, gives a pleasant shade, and takes off from the barren aspect which these hills would otherwise present. ”

“ The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and scatter damp paths. ”

“ With a quick, sudden heave the summer sea, calm and gleaming, runs a little way up the side of the groyne, and again retires. There is scarce a gurgle or a bubble, but the solid timbers are polished and smooth where the storms have worn them with pebbles. ”

“ Even living birds were coated with mud, while for some days after the eruption the poor bewildered cattle roamed about this dreary wilderness mad with hunger and thirst, gnawing boughs of trees or decayed wood, bellowing pitifully, and with eyes bloodshot and nostrils choked with greasy slate-coloured mud, which lay an inch thick all over their coats. ”

“ Winter storms shattered the deserted sheds; props gave way and allowed great masses of earth to fall on the discarded stone; earth and moss, living green cushions, filled in the unsightly tool wounds. ”

“ Gradually the grass itself, no longer protected by the cover of large trees and continually fed upon by hungry flocks, has disappeared, leaving behind it only the denuded flank of the mountain, an easy prey of which the torrents have not been slow to take possession. ”

“ My foot slid over the new planking of the platform as on ice, and on the way up to the new hotel the fences bristled with the glacial particles which bearded the limbs of the wayside trees, and the stubble of the wheat and fields, and the blades of the corn, and sparkled in the red of the early sun which was rising to complete the devastation. ”

“ Hence every considerable shower lays bare its roods of rock, and the torrents sent down by the thaws of spring, and by occasional heavy discharges of the summer and autumnal rains, are seas of mud and rolling stones that sometimes lay waste and bury beneath them acres, and even miles, of pasture and field and vineyard. ”

“ In the forenoon of a warm summer day one may watch them grow hourly in volume and in violence, until toward the middle of the day they become raging torrents of liquid mud in which heavy cobbles and even bowlders may be heard booming as they roll before the current. ”

“ The water having failed at Red Horse, the only place where it is usually found in the day's march, our horses went without, and we had resource to our canteens. The whole country is essentially arid, but snow falls in the winter-time, and its melting, with occasional showers in the summer, create what are called surface wells, made by drainage. ”

“ When the plow once breaks the sod which has covered them and preserved their form, the wind and rain each lend speedy assistance to the work of destruction, and but a few years will elapse before most of them will have disappeared altogether, and the places which have known them for untold centuries will know them no more forever. ”

“ So soon as the time for ploughing is proclaimed to men, then make haste, you and your slaves alike, in wet and in dry, to plough in the season for ploughing, and bestir yourself early in the morning so that your fields may be full. Plough in the spring; but fallow broken up in the summer will not belie your hopes. Sow fallow land when the soil is still getting light: fallow land is a defender from harm and a soother of children. ”

“ Where there is no forest the snow melts much more quickly, the water rushes down the hills in streams, carrying with it the top soil, which is of so much value to the farmer, cutting the hillsides into gullies, causing floods in the valleys, and filling up the rivers with silt or mud. ”

“ Works in River Valleys for diminishing Floods.—Rain falling on bare, impervious, hilly slopes rapidly flows into the nearest water-course, carrying with it any loose soil or disintegrated materials met with in its rush down the ravines, thereby intensifying the torrential character of the river, increasing the height of its floods and adding to the sediment obstructing its course to the sea. ”

“ The effect, in ancient years, has been that the sand is carried off, grain by grain, till a deep ravine or gorge is formed. The sides of this gorge being composed of mixed earth and some mould, and free from the aridity of the surface, bear a dense and vigorous growth of hard wood trees and shrubbery, and are often found to be encumbered with immense trunks of fallen pines and other forest rubbish, which renders it very difficult to penetrate them. It is into these dark gorges that the wolves retreat, after scouring the plains and neighbouring farms for prey ”

“ The low lands along the river, where the woods principally grow, are every spring subject to overflow, when the ice breaks up. The mud carried down with the current and left on the banks, makes their dens uncomfortable. ”

“ What can be more violent than the fling of boughs in a gale, the tree yielding itself all up the trunk, to the very tip of the branch, streaming and shuddering the way the wind blows, yet never flying in dishevelment away? ”