"Drought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blood-ties of the most tenacious of European peoples; upon a Nature that spread her wings over the rough children of the veld and menaced their enemies with the heat and glamour of her sun, with famine and drought and weariness, with all the hidden dangers that lurked in her glittering plains ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... greedy exploiter of others, who fills her granaries with every edible she can find. At no time does the Cigale plead starvation at the doors of the ant-hills, faithfully promising a return of principal and interest; the Ant on the contrary, harassed by drought, begs of the songstress. Begs, do I say! Borrowing and repayment are no part of the manners of this land-pirate. She exploits the Cigale; she impudently robs her. Let us consider this theft; a curious point of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Gammedes, as followeth: "Ye talk of what concerns neither Heaven nor Earth, when in the mean time no man regards what makes all victuals so scarce: I could not (so help me Hercules) get a mouthful of bread to day: and how? The drought continues: For my part, I have not fill'd my belly this twelve-month: A plague on these clerks of the market, the baker and they juggle together; take no notice of me, I'll take no notice of thee; which make the ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... and that these animals showed absolutely no fear. We may give a yet more curious instance. Captain Gordon Cumming, crossing the plains stretching away on the north of the Cape, saw troops of gazelles and antelopes, compelled by a long drought to migrate in search of the water indispensable to them, and be describes with enthusiasm one of these migrations, telling us that the plain was literally covered with animals, the hurrying herds defiling before him in an endless stream. On the evening of the same day, a yet more numerous herd ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... certain assurance in his manner just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbors would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought and frost in ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... men are base, I have found a happier place, Where no war, or want severe, Haunts the mind with thoughts of fear; Men are cruel—bloody—cold, Seeking like lynx the rabbit's wold, Not to guard from winds or drought, But to suck its life's blood out. Stay not here—oh, stay not here, 'Tis a world of want ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... entomologist of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, says that the insect is common around Geneva, and nearly every season an occasional tree succumbs to its work. He further says that he believes that hickory trees have some time in the past suffered from either a severe winter or drought, and that the shot-hole borer is attacking the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... reel. At such moments they no longer felt their individuality. The ranch became merely the part of an enormous whole, a unit in the vast agglomeration of wheat land the whole world round, feeling the effects of causes thousands of miles distant—a drought on the prairies of Dakota, a rain on the plains of India, a frost on the Russian steppes, a hot wind on the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... time, rendered us incapable of application to any other study, and the cause of our inattention not being known, we were kept closer than before. The fatal moment approached when water must fail, and we were already afflicted with the idea that our tree must perish with drought. At length necessity, the parent of industry, suggested an invention, by which we might save our tree from death, and ourselves from despair; it was to make a furrow underground, which would privately conduct a part of the water from the walnut tree to our ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and the camp chat that night was worth travelling several hundred miles to hear: tales dug out of the beginning of things; tales of drought, and flood, and privation; cattle-duffing yarns, and long tales of the droving days; two years' reminiscences of getting through with a mob—reminiscences that finally brought ourselves and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... passion, tearing its way through her long habit of repression, was almost terrifying. "He loves the image she has of him. If he knew that she could see him as I do, his love would shrivel up like a flower in a drought. Hugh can't love the truth. He can't love anything but his delusions. Pete, tell her the truth. For God's sake, tell her the truth. Give her back her eyesight. Let her know his name, his ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Caper that the seated effigy of the patron saint had had a hard time of it some years ago, for the country around Frosinone suffering from a long drought, the inhabitants had in vain prayed, begged, and supplicated the aforementioned saint to send them rain; but he remained obdurate, until at last, seeing him so stubborn, they seized him, in spite of the priests, carried him down to the bridge, neck and heels, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had showers everyday right along up to that time, with the exception of the 10th when there was a slight spit of snow. So on the 15th, Bradley foresaw that the rest of the month would be wet; and by an odd coincidence a drought set in and it only rained once during the two weeks, and that was the day on which Bradley informed the base-ball club that it could play a match, because ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... drives his owner out of his mind, but the merino ruins his man with greater celerity. Nothing on earth will kill cross-breds; nothing will keep merinos alive. If they are put on dry salt-bush country they die of drought. If they are put on damp, well-watered country they die of worms, fluke, and foot-rot. They die in the wet seasons and they ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... I had suffered from the intense heat and drought of the dry season, which had been very inimical to insect life. Here I had got into the other extreme of damp, wet, and cloudy weather, which was equally unfavourable. During the month which I spent ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... synonym for superexcellence. He had little or no innovating genius, no trade devices, no assumption, no faculty for advertisement, no progressiveness, and no "racket." He had the tolerant good-humor of the Southwestern pioneer, to whom cyclones, famine, drought, floods, pestilence, and savages were things to be accepted, and whom disaster, if it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall. He received the insults, complaints, and criticisms of hurried and hungry passengers, the comments and threats of the Stage Company as he had submitted ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... crossed at all. For it is a watercourse of the special kind called riachos, resembling the bayous of Louisiana, whose sluggish currents run in either direction, according to the season of the year, whether it be flood-time or during the intervals of drought. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... dry; the brush was sear and yellow and dust laden; the mescal stalks seemed withered by hot blasts. Only the manzanita looked fresh. That smooth red-branched and glistening green-leafed plant of the desert apparently flourished without rain. On all sides the evidences of extreme drought proved the year to be the dreaded ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... to cross several of these streams, but at that time of the year were able to ford them without difficulty, the drought of summer having greatly diminished ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... village of Tunisia, by a mother who had been left in poverty after the death of his father, a Russian who had come to Africa to make a fortune by vine-growing, and who had had his hopes blasted by three years of drought and by the visitation of the dreaded phylloxera? Had he not told her of his own hard work on the rich uplands among the Spanish workmen, of how he had toiled early and late in all kinds of weather, not for himself, but for a company that drew a fortune from the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... long drought, there fell a torrent of rain; and a country gentleman observed to Sir John Hamilton, "This is a most delightful rain; I hope it will bring up everything out of the ground."—"By Jove, sir," said Sir John, "I hope not; for I have sowed three ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... for the Water Board to cut off the Park supply so as to secure the citizens from suffering. This well has more than the necessary capacity to supply the Park abundantly with water, yielding most when most is needed. This is established by the discovery that the time of drought from which the well is, or may be, likely to suffer, occurs in the Fall. Besides these facts, it further appears that in order to furnish the supply of water to the Park the Water Board would have to go through the process of pumping their water twice to convey it to the required ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... which he had with Afra'nius and Petrei'us was rather unfavourable. It was fought near the city of Ilerda,[8] and both sides claimed the honour of the victory. But, by various stratagems, he reduced them at last to such extremity of hunger and drought, that they were obliged to yield at discretion. 27. Clemency was his favourite virtue; he dismissed them all with the kindest professions, and then sent them home to Rome loaded with shame, and with obligations to publish ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... to listen to your clatter. Although I tramped the woods for half a day, I've taken nothing, for the very rats, Badgers, and hedgehogs seem to have died of drought, And there was scarce a ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... have to spend; to grow a crop, you have to plant the seed. Here's where you plunge—it is a gamble, a bet on the seed versus the eternal cussedness of things. It's you against the chances of a crop. If the drought comes, or the flood, or the chinch-bug, or the brown-tailed moth, you may find yourself floundering in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... about 30 miles north-east of Melbourne, are supposed to be the highest in the world, and are above 440 feet in height. In several places are seen groups of tree ferns some 20 feet high, which form a pleasant oasis. Gipp's Land did not look its best at the time of my visit. There had been a drought, more or less, for three years, and everything was dried up. The cattle appeared parched, with hard dry skins. Since then, however, there has been a good deal of rain. Sale itself is an uninteresting town of 3,000 inhabitants, with streets at right angles, and the usual Public ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... or rather the reward of risk-bearing. Risk is inherent in all business, as it is inherent in all life. The vagaries of nature and the vagaries of man are alike responsible. The farmer may find his harvest ruined by a drought or by a deluge; the coal or the gold, for the extraction of which you have perhaps set up an extensive mining plant, may come to an end which is unexpectedly abrupt. You may put your money into roller-skating rinks and find that cinemas have become the rage ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... spurrey, knotwood, corn marigold, are a few of the numerous weeds in the arable fields. Gardens are easily dug, but it is best to put into them only those plants that, like the native vegetation, can withstand drought: vegetable gardens must be well manured and well limed. Fig. 50 shows some of this kind of country in Surrey, the barley field is surrounded by wood and very poor ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... bishop, who, knowing the doctor's weak point, his fondness for strong drinks, and his almost rabid antipathy to water, asked him if he would take a draught of Edinburgh ale, as he had just received a cask in a present from the old country. The doctor's thirst grew to a perfect drought, and he exclaimed that nothing at that moment could ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... whither thou goest," Gen. xxviii. 15; and yet the deceit which he had practised upon his father and brother was recompensed to him there by the deceit of Laban, and he was obliged to say, "In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from mine eyes," Gen. xxxi. 40. When he came from the land of the two rivers, God blessed him and gave him the honourable name of Israel, Gen. xxxii.; and yet [Pg 97] he had soon thereafter to experience grievous distress on account ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... sort. It is all quite dry; uncommonly dry; atmosphere dry; ground dry; and, gradually, throats dry. Probably, champagne also dry. But remembering what I have heard of someone else's experience of Dock-visiting, which I presume is similar to cave-visiting, I do not mention my sudden drought. I feel that, while down here, if I took one glass of champagne, my head first, and then my legs, might become unsteady, whereupon nothing would be more likely than for me to take the wrong turning and ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... the planet, they had used up most of the oil, they had swept away their forests, and they were running short of tin and copper. Their wheat areas were getting weary and populous, and many of the big towns had so lowered the water level of their available hills that they suffered a drought every summer. The whole system was rushing towards bankruptcy. And they were spending every year vaster and vaster amounts of power and energy upon military preparations, and continually expanding the debt of industry to capital. The system was already staggering ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the great matter to me—a simple laborer? I knew that the greatest were powerless to give my crops a drop of rain in season of drought, or a ray of sunshine during ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... breadth about eight thousand miles, so that it contained more square miles than the entire surface of the earth, land and water included. "It is clear," said Cortlandt, "that at some season of Jupiter's long year a change takes place that affects the colour of the leaves—some drought or prolonged norther; for it is obvious that that is the simplest explanation. In like manner we may expect that at some times more white spots will move across the ocean than at others." "On account of the size of these continents and oceans," said Bearwarden, "it ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... soon. Perhaps, if you have no objection, I should dispose of it in favour of an album for which my assistance has been asked for the last two months—the album published by the "Ladies' Society for the German Fleet." In vain I told them that I suffered from a drought of both manuscripts and ideas; they would not leave me alone; and I have just received another letter from a nice lady, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the wicked woman blasphemed that holy name because of the failure caused by drought, and threatened, on account of the failure, to enter other fields and with a burning torch to set fire to them all. Then as curse after curse upon other things rang from her lips, she continued beating the air with rolling-pin and pan until it was dangerous to be inside the room. Edwin ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... rear guard, and pitched his head quarters on the hill to the eastward of Tulifinny, two miles in advance towards Charleston. (1st May.) After reconnoitring the fords of Coosawhatchie, and Tulifinny above the bridges, the general found so little water in the swamps, from the excessive drought which then prevailed,* that he determined not to risk an action at this post. He was about to send one of his aids to bring off his rear guard, when Col. John Laurens offered himself as a volunteer for that service; he was readily accepted, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... there had been a terrible drought all that spring—it is often so in this valley. The eternal north wind sent the dry mould sweeping in clouds over the whole countryside, and we were threatened with one of our worst years of scarcity if the rain ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... his tent in many lands, but always had the same tent wherever he went. So we shall have the one abode, though its place in the desert may vary—and we shall not need to care whether the encampment be beneath the palm-trees and beside the wells of Elim, or amidst the drought of Marah, so long as the same covering protects us, and the same pillar of fire burns ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... assist much in enlivening and adding beauty and elegance to the appearance of the town. Left Frankfort at 9 o'clock. Crossed the Kentucky river, which was only three feet wide, owing to the uncommon drought. Foot passengers were crossing on a rail. Passed through Shelbyville, a small village. Many creeks, rivers and branches entirely dry. Every animal suffering for water. The farmers compelled to cart a sufficient quantity to support life, many miles. No water to be obtained in the village for our horses. ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... lucky shot, and it probably saved our lives that night. When asked why they raided the Notus, the prisoners said that they were friends until two years ago, when they quarrelled, and had been constantly fighting since. In particular they now blamed the Notus for the late drought, which they said was due to their sorcery, the result being that they were forced to live on sago alone, and to vary this diet were compelled to get ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... export prices for raw materials and agricultural products are fueling the economy, particularly in mining states. Australia's emphasis on reforms, low inflation, a housing market boom, and growing ties with China have been key factors behind the economy's 16 solid years of expansion. Drought, robust import demand, and a strong currency have pushed the trade deficit up in recent years, while infrastructure bottlenecks and a tight labor market are constraining growth in export volumes and stoking inflation. Australia's budget has been in surplus since ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... feelings under the drought that was exhausting the kingdom; and the fifth and sixth claim to be the work of Yin Ki-fu, one of ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... on. The little settlements, wherever water and soil permitted, were from twenty to fifty miles apart. Between stretched the barrenness of sand and alkali and drought. And at every settlement our peaceful attempts to buy food were vain. They denied us harshly, and wanted to know who of us had sold them food when we drove them from Missouri. It was useless on our part to tell them we were from Arkansas. From Arkansas ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Yankee proprietor, and could certainly boast of no architectural beauties. We lived about a mile and a half from the lake shore, and I took advantage of my vicinity to the water to bathe daily. I found great refreshment in this, for the weather was very hot and dry. The drought lasted for some time, and among its consequences, I may mention the prevalence of extensive fires.* Several broke out in our neighbourhood, and, at last, the mischief reached our own farm. It destroyed several thousand rails, and spread over forty ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... on one of the transcontinental lines winding among the mountains far above the level of the sea, the burning rays of the noonday sun fell so fiercely that the few buildings seemed ready to ignite from the intense heat. A season of unusual drought had added to the natural desolation of the scene. Mountains and foot-hills were blackened by smouldering fires among the timber, while a dense pall of smoke entirely hid the distant ranges from view. Patches of sage-brush ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... are bad in Nijni town, but worse in Nijni fair, for if in the former all is hard, sharp, uneven flint, in the latter, what is not wood is mud, and what is not mud is dust, for heavy showers alternate with stifling heat; and, after a three hours' drought one would say that these good people, who live half in and half out of a swamp, and who drink anything rather than water, can never spare a poor drop to slake the pulverized clay ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steele-yard, and the wind mighty high, and driving it into the City: and every thing after so long a drought proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things, the poor steeple [St, Lawrence Poultney, of which Thomas Elborough was Curate.] by which pretty Mrs. — lives, and whereof my old schoolfellow Elborough is parson, taken ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... as these is a terribly hazardous pursuit. A single year of drought will suffice to ruin a breeder completely. In the years 1854-5 we lost from twenty to forty per cent. of our cattle; in 1856-7 from seventeen to twenty per cent: and bear in mind that every beast, before it died, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... light in the rocky South that so tenderly touches the soul as this. Here the spurge drinks of the wine of heaven with golden lips wide open; but the hellebore, which has already lost all its vernal greenness, and is parched by the drought, ripens its drooping seeds sullenly on the shadowy side of the jutting crag, and seems to hate the sun. Higher and yet far below the plateau is a little field where the lately cut grass has been thrown ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... spring, during April or May, and in fall, from September to November, the latter being the more important. For the periods between, the animal must rely largely on stored materials. Not infrequently a season of severe drought precludes the possibility of any storage. The summer and fall of 1918 was such a season on the Range Reserve (Pl. II, Fig. 2). If food stores are inadequate at such a time the kangaroo rats must perish in considerable numbers. Fisher found many deserted mounds ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... certain sections of the West [he told a reporter of the Mandan Pioneer in July] the losses this year are enormous, owing to the drought and overstocking. Each steer needs from fifteen to twenty-five acres, but they are crowded on very much thicker, and the cattlemen this season have paid the penalty. Between the drought, the grasshoppers, and the late frosts, ice forming as late as June 10th, there ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... is impossible, it is impossible!" he said so loudly, that his little dog awoke and climbed on his knee uneasily and in alarm. "What could the people do? What could the village do, or the land or the fisher folk? Are we to have drought added to hunger? Can they respect nothing? The river belongs to the valley: to seize it, to appraise it, to appropriate it, to make it away with it, would be as monstrous as to steal his mother's milk from ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... of the spruce is sometimes affected by red spider, but is apt to be more seriously injured by drought, wind, ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... which are blessed on Palm-Sunday, and the candles burnt on Good-Friday before the sacrament, have power to preserve houses from thunderbolts. The same faculty is attributed to a small bell blessed by the priest. In times of drought, which are the greatest calamities that afflict the Spanish soil, a favourite image is taken out and conducted in procession, in order to implore genial showers of rain. Thanks to the invention of the barometer, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... yonder door hangs out Its Red Triangle to a world of drought, Inviting to the Palace of the Djinn, Where Death, ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with his showers swoot*, *sweet The drought of March hath pierced to the root, And bathed every vein in such licour, Of which virtue engender'd is the flower; When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath Inspired hath in every holt* and heath *grove, forest The tender croppes* and the younge sun *twigs, boughs Hath ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the long window that gave on the street, or walked slowly up and down among the vegetable rows in the garden. The growing of the crops became an unending interest to her and she watched them, day by day, until she learned to know each separate plant and to look for its unfolding. When the drought came she carried water from the hydrant, and assisted by Mammy Riah sprinkled the young tomatoes until they shot up like weeds. "It is so much better than war," she would say to Jack when he rode through the city. "Why ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... time partly to extinguish the works which had caught fire, and partly to cut off the communication. As the townsmen still continued to make an obstinate resistance, and even, after losing the greatest part of their forces by drought, persevered in their resolution: At last the veins of the spring were cut across by our mines, and turned from their course. By this their constant spring was suddenly dried up, which reduced them to such despair that they imagined that it was not done by the art of man, ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... would undertake it; at least, the other species would grow very well and yield a good profit. We have seen proof of this in the colony of Renselaerswyck, though it was all sown too late and upon a barren rock where there was little earth. It came up very well, but in consequence of the drought turned very yellow and withered, and was neglected; nevertheless it was evident that if it were well covered it would succeed. Madder plants also would undoubtedly grow well both in field and gardens, and better than ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... because he felt the exceeding value of that which was purchased by loyal love. A like story is told of Rodolf of Hapsburgh, the founder of the greatness of Austria, and one of the most open-hearted of men. A flagon of water was brought to him when his army was suffering from severe drought. 'I cannot,' he said, 'drink alone, nor can all share so small a quantity. I do not thirst for myself, but for my ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rains there, this river, which waters the whole country by its regular inundations, supplies that defect, by bringing, as a yearly tribute, the rains of other countries; which made a poet say ingeniously, "the Egyptian pastures, how great soever the drought may be, never implore ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... observations and researches carried out at the South Orkneys—a group of sub-Antarctic islands at the entrance to the Weddell Sea—it has been found that a cold winter in that sea is a sure precursor of a drought over the maize and cereal bearing area of Argentina three and a half years later. To the farmers, the value of this knowledge so far in advance is enormous, and since England has some three hundred million pounds ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the parched world drowsed in drought, And a fat bee, there, Prying and probing at a poppy's mouth That ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the prince; "but in time of drought, if there is no bread in a city, can they make ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... when the rains usually were over till the next October. For three years this bounty of heaven had been withheld from the inhabitants of these deserts. We were now entering upon the fourth year of drought, to be exposed to the most horrid distress, and almost inevitable death. The desolation was become universal, when an Arab from a distant part of the country came to inform them, that abundant showers had covered several cantons where he resided. Joy ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of the Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... of falling waters on its crags; no musical rivulets flow down its sides, led carefully along the slopes, as in Switzerland, by the peasants, to keep their hay-crops green and gladden the thirsty turf throughout the heat and drought of summer. The soil is a Jurassic limestone: the rain penetrates the porous rock, and sinks through cracks and fissures, to reappear above the base of the mountain in a full-grown stream. This is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to tell Katherine how matters seemed to be progressing. When he called that night toward ten he was surprised to be directed around to the summer-house. His surprise was all the more because the three months' drought had that afternoon been broken, and the rain was now driving down in gusts and there was a far rumbling of thunder that threatened a nearer ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the tree whose dauntless boughs Brave summer's drought and winter's gloom. Rome bound with oak her patriots' brows, As ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the Australian crow. It is a bird of prey and perhaps the best-hated bird in the world. An Australian bushman will travel a whole day to kill a crow. For he has, at the time when the sheep were lambing, or when, owing to drought, they were weak, seen the horrible cruelties of the crow. This evil bird will attack weak sheep and young lambs, tearing out their eyes and leaving them to perish miserably. There have even been terrible cases where men lost in the Bush and perishing of thirst have been ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... the curving fillet of meadow, where the grass seems to grow while the eye watches it, rises the shrill little song of the stream hurrying over its yellow bed, which may be dry again to-morrow. This Alzou is no more to be depended upon than a coquette. After a period of drought, a storm that has passed away hours ago will cause it suddenly to come hissing down over the dry stones; but the next day no trace of the flow may be found save a few pools. Or it may grow to a torrent, even ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... they had taken from their enemies. The conquerors made a most valiant resistance, but experienced some severe losses, especially that of Juan Pizarro. Almagro left Chili in the greatest haste, crossed the stony and sandy desert of Atacama, where he suffered as severely from heat and drought as he had done in the Andes from cold and snow, penetrated into the Peruvian territory, defeated Manco-Capac in a great battle, and succeeded in approaching the town of Cuzco, after having driven away the Indians. He then tried to get the town given ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... after the arrival of the Mercy, took a terrible mood, and a prolonged drought settled upon Calhoun. The days dawned lurid and long. The nights fell dewless and deadly. Fatal and beautiful colors lurked in the swamps, and in the sifting dust, fine and hard, blown by siroccos across the glare of noon, like sands on the shores of the Lake of Fire. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... magical procedure follow these principles; they are as various as the sequences that savage man thinks he observes.[1537] Many of them are suggested by natural phenomena. Since rain was observed to fall from the sky, it was held that in time of drought it might be obtained by casting water into the air and letting it fall, or by dipping a stone in water and letting it drip; in general, by any process in which water falls on the ground. The wind might be raised by ejecting air from ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... to the American people that they cannot conceive what this strain upon the populations of Europe is at this moment, and, in the cruel grip of Winter, hundreds of thousands will agonize till death or relief comes. In Australia in drought times vast flocks of sheep go traveling with shepherds looking for food and water, and no flock ever comes back as it went forth. Not in flocks guided by shepherds, but lonely, hopeless units, the Belgian people take flight, looking for food and shelter, or remain paralyzed ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... "umbrella-trees" (ficus), acacias and calabashes, palms and cotton-trees, all wilted, stunted, and dusty as at Cairo. We are in the latitude of East African Kilwa and of Brazilian Pernambuco; but this is a lee-land, and the suffering is from drought. Yet, curious to say, the flora, as will appear, is here richer than in the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... animate creatures did, but the man's face grew more somber as the day of toil wore on. Still, he did his work with the grim, unwavering diligence that had already carried him, dismayed but unyielding, through years of drought and harvest hail, and the stars shone down on the prairies when at last he ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... Bari sorcerers an influential position is held by the "rain-maker," and the villagers lavish upon him, in days of drought, gifts of oxen, fruits and trinkets, as an inducement to evoke from the clouds their treasures of genial rain. Greatness, however, has always to pay a penalty; and if after the rain-maker has performed his rites, the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... stated, arises from various fissures in the limestone rock, upon which formation the greater part of the town of Buxton is built. The flow is uniform (during the heat and drought of summer, and the cold and frost of winter) in volume, about 140 gallons per minute, in temperature 82 deg. ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... stone-throwing he had found and thrown at the sharks every stone as small as his fist, within a sector formed by the beach and the rocky wall to an equal distance inland. The fruits, nuts, edible roots, and grasses growing in this area had hitherto supported him, but would no longer, owing to a drought of the previous year, which, luckily, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... acknowledgements from the Giver of every thing that contributes to render it agreeable? But does he not frequently offer up his thanksgivings for actions that overwhelm his neighbour with misery? Does not the husbandman on the hill, return thanks for the rain that irrigates his lands parched with drought, whilst the cultivator of the valley is imploring a cessation of those showers which deluge his fields—that render useless the labour of his hands? Thus each becomes thankful for that which his own limited views points out to him as his immediate interest, regardless of the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Art and Heart Mockery As by Fire If I Should Die Mesalliance Response Drought The Creed Progress My Friend Creation Red Carnations Life is Too Short A Sculptor Beyond The Saddest Hour Show Me the Way My Heritage Resolve At Eleusis Courage Solitude The Year Outgrows the Spring The Beautiful Land of Nod The Tiger Only ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that vanity and vexation of spirit have been the prevailing characteristics of his hunting life. On how many evenings has he returned contented with his sport? How many days has he declared to have been utterly wasted? How often have frost and snow, drought and rain, wind and sunshine, impeded his plans? for to a hunting man frost, snow, drought, rain, wind and sunshine, will all come amiss. Then, when the one run of the season comes, he is not there! He has been ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... advice to his two sons, given when, only a few months before his death, he resigned a crown grown too heavy for his failing strength. "Think carefully, execute promptly, never give up, never delay. Resolves not carried out are like clouds without rain in times of drought." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there. The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve, And man rebounds whole ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... spoke, while he drank in her words as desert sands, parched by years of drought, drink in the rain—and watched her face, out of which all mischief and mockery had departed, leaving it that of a most beauteous and most earnest woman, to whom a sense of the weight of life, with its mingled joys and sorrows, had come home suddenly. ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... there is some music, sculpture, painting, and poetry still in the service of religion, but its relative proportion is small; kings and congresses still appeal for divine aid in times of crisis, but that is perfunctory; men still pray for rain during drought, but without faith. No one would pretend that our commerce and manufacturing have any direct relation to religion. People still invoke divine authority for moral prescriptions, but the sanctions actually operating ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... came the year of the great drought, the year of eighteen-sixty-two. From end to end of the land the earth cried for water. Man and beast turned their eyes to the pitiless sky, that like the roof of some brazen oven arched overhead. On the ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... p.m. There are a great number of natives here; the water appears very deep. Mr. Hodgkinson swam out about 300 yards with a plumb-line and found the depth 10 1/4 feet; but further south and east it is much deeper. This lake must be at times a great rendezvous for natives in extreme drought. One of our best working bullocks, before he came ten miles, was killed by the heat although, after getting to camp at 1 p.m., the thermometer was tried and the greatest heat arrived at was 144 degrees. I was not aware that the bullock was dead until the arrival of the cart later in the ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... is the spirits of the inland tribes, the aborigines of the country, that the coast tribes most fear. They believe, when the natives are in the neighbourhood, that the whole plain is full of spirits who come with them. All calamities are attributed to the power and malice of these evil spirits. Drought, famine, storm and flood, disease and death are all supposed to be brought by Vata and his hosts, so that the people are an easy prey to any designing individuals who claim power over these. Some disease charmers and rain-makers levy heavy ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... fourteen years elapsed, and the plague again made its appearance, and nearly twenty thousand people, including a dozen cardinals and an hundred bishops, fell its victims. Of late years, there has fortunately been no appearance of this horrible disease. It was at the time imputed to an extraordinary drought, attended by an uncommon heat and stillness of the air, which, being without motion, and confined as it were in a narrow channel, became putrid and pestilential. The vent de bize is perhaps a greater blessing to this country than it ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... natives, but for what purpose Yuranigh could not form any conjecture. These clods were so very large and hard that we were obliged to throw them aside, and clear a way for the carts to pass. The whole resembled ground broken up by the hoe, the naked surface having been previously so cracked by drought as to render this upturning possible without a hoe. There might be about two acres in the patch we crossed, and we perceived at a distance, other portions of the ground in a similar state. The river had, where we made it, a deep wellmarked channel, with abundance ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... may help himself to understand something of the complicated problem of earth tensions, and the corresponding movements of the rocks, by considering certain homely illustrations. He may observe how the soil cracks as it shrinks in times of drought, the openings closing when it rains. In a similar way the frozen earth breaks open, sometimes with a shock which is often counted as an earthquake. Again, the ashes in a sifter or the gravel on a sieve show how each shaking may relieve ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... bright, embattled lances; Thunder, booming round your stirless feet;— Winds that set the orchard with sweet fancies All abloom, or ripple the ripening wheat; Moonlight, starlight, on your mute graves falling; Dew, distilled as tears unbidden flow;— Dust of drought in drifts and layers crawling; Lulling dreams of softly whispering snow; Happy birds, from leafy coverts calling;— These go on, yet none of these you know: Hearing not our human voices Speaking to you all in ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Here, in exchange for their money, they were given poisonous and adulterated liquors, imbibing which, with empty stomachs and discouraged hearts, they became ill-natured and selfish, as well as in a chronic state of internal drought. ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... an old woman (Tuglibung) and an old man (Tuglay) lived in a town at the centre of the world. There came a season of drought, when their bananas spoiled, and all their plants died from the hot sun. Tuglibung and Tuglay were very hungry, and looked skinny, because they had nothing ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... beings was certainly Mme. Vauquer, who reigned supreme over this hospital supported by voluntary contributions. For her, the little garden, which silence, and cold, and rain, and drought combined to make as dreary as an Asian steppe, was a pleasant shaded nook; the gaunt yellow house, the musty odors of a back shop had charms for her, and for her alone. Those cells belonged to her. She fed those convicts ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... stillness. A swift zigzagged across the cattle trail he was following. Out of a blue sky the Arizona sun still beat down upon a land parched by aeons of drought, a land still making its brave show of greenness against ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... "What if it fall on the Sabbath (Saturday)?" "That is Saturn's day and portendeth the preferment of slaves and Greeks and those in whom there is no good, neither in their neighbourhood; there will be great drought and dearth; clouds will abound and death will be rife among the sons of Adam and woe to the people of Egypt and Syria from the oppression of the Sultan and failure of blessing upon the green crops and rotting of grain; and Allah is All-knowing!"[FN426] Now with this, the astronomer hung his head ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... secured. Without money one can do nothing. Cecil Rhodes had had the natural wealth of Rhodesia at his back. McKeith had set himself the task of opening up the fine country out West, which he knew only needed a system of irrigation by Artesian Bores to defy drought, the squatters curse. That object once accomplished—he gave himself with luck and good seasons five or six years—there would be nothing to stop his becoming a ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... although recent, under the concise forms of the triads, is still deserving of attention. As usual, the legend is localized in the country, and the Deluge counts among three terrible catastrophes of the island of Prydian, or Britain, the other two consisting of devastation by fire and by drought. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... her son might be that very moment in that draught, as indeed he was. He stood in the strong current of fresh storm-air, with its pungent odors, more like revelations than odors, of things which had been in abeyance for some time past in the drought. The smell of the wet green things was like a paean of joy. It was a call of renewed life out of concealed places of fainting and hiding. There were scents of flowers and fruits, and another strange odor, like the smell of battle, from all the ferment on the earth which ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... itself. They all descended on the other side of the mountains, and wound away through broad plains and by populous cities. But the clouds were drawn so constantly to the snowy hills, and rested so softly in the circular hollow, that, in time of drought and heat, when all the country round was burnt up, there was still rain in the little valley; and its crops were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its grapes so blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it was a marvel to every one who beheld it, and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... — N. dryness &c adj.; siccity^, aridity, drought, ebb tide, low water. exsiccation^, desiccation; arefaction^, dephlegmation^, drainage; drier. [chemical subs. which renders dry] desiccative, dessicator. [device to render dry] dessicator; hair drier, clothes drier, gas ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is always veiled, unless her interposition is urgently demanded by the apprehension of famine, plague, cholera, or some other public calamity. During my own residence at Florence, I have never known the miraculous picture to be uncovered during a drought, without the desired result immediately following. In cases of long continued rains, its intervention has been equally happy. I have heard several persons, rather inclined to skepticism as to the miraculous qualities of the picture, hint ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... be upon thee, O my son," he said, "and upon thee, little daughter. My son's messenger brought word of thy coming, and thou art welcome as a silver shower of rain after a long drought in the desert. Be thou as a child of my house, while thou art in ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and I have tried camping a number of times. When I go camping it rains. It begins to rain when I start and it keeps on raining until I come back. It never fails. I have often thought that drought-sufferers in various parts of the country who seek to attract rain in dry spells make a mistake. They try the old-fashioned Methodist way of praying for it, or the new scientific way of shooting dynamite bombs off and trying to blast it out of the heavens; when, as a matter of ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... rest for toil, no drink for drought, For bosom-peace the shadow's wing— So feeds expectancy on nought, And suckles ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... economically operated, but it is only with greater cost and difficulty that the system can be successively extended. In temperate climates the use of canals is limited by ice to a part of the year, and by the summer's drought sometimes still further. At its best, therefore, the small land-locked canal is fitted only to be a supplementary agent in the system of transportation wherever another transportation agency of higher speed and greater regularity ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... touching the employment of children six and one-half and of all other operatives twelve hours are now legislative provisions, and by them and by the limitation of overwork for making up time lost through breakdown of machinery or insufficient water-power by reason of frost or drought, a working-day of more than twelve hours has been made well-nigh impossible. There remains, however, no doubt that, in a very short time, the Ten Hours' Bill will really be adopted. The manufacturers are naturally all against it, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... with black lips baked, We could nor laugh nor wail; Through utter drought all dumb we stood! I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail! ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... a mass of snakes squirming in agony, and now and again a clear white jet of light came out of the darkness, as if one of them was spitting venom at the sky. In reality, the boys were looking at one of those terrible electric storms which tear across Central Australia after a severe drought, and the lurid colours were caused by lightning flashing inside ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Mzimu' is riding on an elephant in the direction in which the sun rises, beyond the mountains out of the waters; there the 'Good Mzimu' will tell the Great Spirit to send you clouds, and those clouds during a drought will water with rain your millet, your manioc, your bananas, and the grass in the jungle, in order that you may have plenty to eat and that your cows shall have good fodder and shall give thick and fat milk. Do you want to have plenty of food ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... prescribe the limits of Jamestown as well as of "the corporation and parish" of which it was the chief seat. He soon re-established good relations with Opechancanough now the dominant Indian personality. He was hampered by a great drought and a severe storm that damaged corn and tobacco, and he sought to control profit and tobacco prices by proclamation. Moreover, he was the author of a policy of watchfulness and carefulness in ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... earnestly for certain things that intelligent men would hardly think of praying for in the same fashion to-day. It was not an uncommon thing, a few years ago, to have a special prayer- meeting during a drought in the endeavor to prevail upon God to send the rain; and there was certainly a Scriptural warrant for it; for Elijah is represented in the Old Testament as having, by the power of prayer, shut up the heavens for three years and a half, and ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... Farmers What Crops Are Grown Where Drought Means Death Reducing the Ravages of Famine Usury and a Remedy Where America Is Behind Landowner and Farm Laborer ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... breezes. But if no meteorological phenomena indicates the coming earthquake, either on the morning of the shock or a few days previously, the influence of certain periods of the year, (the vernal and autumnal equinoxes,) the commencement of the rainy season in the tropics, after long drought, cannot be overlooked, even though the genetic connection of meteorological processes, with those going on in the interior of our globe, is ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... Hartigan rode home from the Fort after the evening's fun was over leaving it entirely to his horse to select the road, after the manner of the wise horseman. In mid-August there had been one of the typical Black Hill storms. After a month of drought, it had rained inches in a few hours. The little Rapid Fork of the Cheyenne was a broad flood which carried off most of its bridges, including that on the trail to the Fort. The rain had ceased the day before, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... not to know how it has been prophesied that this year the drought will be very great, that the sun will dissipate all the waters, and that the abysses of the sea will be dry; and that an easy road will lie open to us across ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... a time it is expedient for thee to flee to humble and external works, and to renew thyself with good actions; to wait for My coming and heavenly visitation with sure confidence; to bear thy exile and drought of mind with patience, until thou be visited by Me again, and be freed from all anxieties. For I will cause thee to forget thy labours, and altogether to enjoy eternal peace. I will spread open before thee the pleasant pastures of the Scriptures, that with enlarged heart ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... through the district, and there is a line from Howrah to Bankura. The climate of Bankura is generally healthy, the cold season being bracing, the air wholesome and dry, and fogs of rare occurrence. The district is exposed to drought and also to destructive floods. It suffered in the famines of 1866, 1874-1875 and 1896-1897. The temperature in the hot season is very oppressive and relaxing. The Bishnupur raj was one of the largest estates in Bengal in the end of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... rainy season, are pools of stagnant water, but so sure as there is a pond, there also are the little muddy fish which the Malays call ruan and sepat. Where they vanish to when the water in which they live is licked up by the sunrays, or how they support life during a long season of drought, no man clearly knows, but it is believed that they burrow deep into the earth, and live in the moist mud underfoot until better times come with the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... long-continued drought invented a machine for watering his fields. The very first day while he was trying it there suddenly came a downpour of rain. He ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... southeast, washing the dust from the patient orange-trees and the draggled bananas, and luring countless green things out of the brown mould of the mesa into the winter sun. Birds fledged in the golden drought of summer went mad over the miracles of rain and grass, and riotously announced their discovery of a new heaven and a new earth to their elders. The leafless poinsettia flaunted its scarlet diadem at Palmerston's tent ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... where the soil was composed of a light shifting sand, which the wind raised into a succession of hillocks that resembled the waves of an interminable sea. The soldiers, he says, fainted with the heat and with the drought, while the audacious Osrhoene scoffed at their complaints and reproaches, asking them whether they expected to find the border-tract between Arabia and Assyria a country of cool streams and shady groves, of baths, and hostelries, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... describe to you what a mere drought and famine my life has been, as regards that multitude of matters which I fancy one absorbs when one is in an atmosphere of art, or when one is in conversational relation with men of letters, with travellers, with persons ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... anyway, and I found growing there this collection of pistache trees which we had sent him about ten years ago. The nuts are borne towards the ends of the branches. The tree is able to withstand any amount of drought and as I sat there and he told me how prohibition had wiped out the vineyards of the surrounding country, how the Italians had deserted them and gone back to Italy, I could not help feeling that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... a great drought in the land and there was only one watering place where the beasts could drink. The tiger knew that the monkey would have to go there when he was thirsty so he decided to wait for him and catch him when ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... steadily for some time of an intertropical degree)—true yellow fever, which is no more than the highest grade of malarious disease; but this has never occurred in European towns, unless during the driest seasons—seasons actually blighted by drought, when hot withering land winds have destroyed surface vegetation, and as in the locality of Gibraltar, have left the low-lying becalmed, and leeward town to corrupt without perflation or ventilation amidst its own accumulated exhalations. I know not how I can ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... At least Jims drought she was dead. He flew into the house like a mad thing, shrieking for Martha. Nobody answered. Jims recollected, with a rush of sickening dread, that Miss Avery had told him Martha and Edward were going away that day to visit a sister. He rushed blindly across the lawn again, through the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... most of the people saddened and silenced in the heat. From time to time the clouds idling about overhead met and sprinkled down a cruel little shower of rain that seemed to make the air less breathable than before. The lonely shores were yellow with drought; the islands grew wilder and barrener; the course of the river was for miles at a stretch through country which gave no signs of human life. The St. Lawrence has none of the bold picturesqueness of the Hudson, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... its height in the closing years of the century, anything, however trivial, would arouse suspicion. A cow would go dry, or a colt break its leg, or there would be a drought, or a storm, or a murrain on the cattle or a mildew on the crops. Or else a physician, baffled by some disease that did not yield to his treatment of bleeding and to his doses of garlic and horses' dung, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... to which we have referred, is a luxury usually indulged in during the hot months of summer, when the buffaloes are tormented by flies, and heat, and drought. At this season they seek the low grounds in the prairies where there is a little stagnant water lying amongst the grass, and the ground underneath, being saturated, is soft. The leader of the herd, a shaggy old bull, usually takes upon himself to prepare ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... the village, which runs from south-east to north-west, arises a small rivulet: that at the north-west end frequently fails; but the other is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by drought or wet seasons, called Well-head. This breaks out of some high grounds joining to Nore Hill, a noble chalk promontory, remarkable for sending forth two streams into two different seas. The one to the south becomes a branch of the Arun, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... young artist had pointed out; by slumbering villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the fire of the last great autumnal drought had turned all the green beauty of the woods into brown desolation; and again amidst broad expanses of open meadow stretching as far as the eye could reach in the uncertain light. A faint yellow tinge was beginning to stain the eastern horizon. Her boat was floating quietly along, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... outwit the rogues with their own weapon? He had faded from human memory—let it be so. Was he to be cut off from this sudden joy of friendship with one of his blood and race, he whose soul was perishing with drought, though, until this moment, he had been too proud ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... touching picture, and the old lady's heart was one easily touched. She looked and saw that the face of the boy, whose hunger was as plain as his rags, was calm as the wintry sky. She wondered, but she needed not have wondered; for storm of anger, drought of greed, nor rotting mist of selfishness, had passed or rested there, to billow, or score, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... one of these makeshift observatories that Justus Hoxon stopped the first evening after his electioneering tour in the interest of his brother. The weather had turned hot and fair; a drought, a set-off to the surplusage of recent rain, was in progress; the dooryard on the high slope of the mountain, apart from its availability for the surveillance of any eccentric doings of the comet, was an acceptable lounging-place for the sake of the air, the dew, the hope of a vagrant breeze, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of cracks or fissures in the nearly mature fruit is due to variations in the water supply and other conditions affecting growth at this stage. If after the development of the outer portion of the fruit has been checked by drought there follows a period of abundant water supply and rapid growth, the fruit expands more rapidly than its epidermis and the latter is ruptured. Some varieties of tomatoes are much less subject to this trouble than others and should be given preference on this account. The ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... State is better watered for all purposes, except manufacturing in times of drought. Many of the farms might be divided into fields of ten acres each and, in ordinary seasons, would have water in each ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... Stepping lightly and quickly up on to the square stern of the ferry-boat, she went forward and kept her back resolutely turned upon the old fellow as he scrambled on board after her, shoved off and settled to the oars. The river was low, and sluggish from the long drought with consequently easy passage to the opposite bank. It took but a short five minutes to reach the jetty, crawling like some gigantic, damaged, many-legged insect out over the smooth ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the interior. Ice half an inch thick is found at the distance of twenty miles from the coast. Very little rain falls at this season, but the dews are very heavy when it does not freeze, and tend considerably to preserve the young crops from the effects of drought. Fogs too are frequent and dense in low damp situations, and on the banks of the rivers. The mean temperature at day-light is from 40 degrees to 45 degrees, and at noon from 55 degrees to ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... work, the Giraffe and I drifted together and down by the river in the cool of the evening, and sat on the edge of the steep, drought-parched bank. ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... I grow in a newly planted orchard? The soil is on a gently inclined hillside - red, decomposed rock, very deep, mellow, fluffy, and light, and deep down is clayish in character. It cannot be irrigated, therefore I wish to put out a drought-resisting plant which could be harvested, say, in June or July, or even later. I find the following plants, but I cannot decide which one is the best: Yellow soja bean, speltz, Egyptian corn, Jerusalem corn, yellow Milo maize, or one of the ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... depth of the Mineral, 15, 20, or more fathoms, as the Vein leads the Workmen, or the subterranean waters will give them leave, which in Summer so overflow the Mines, that the upper waters, by reason of the drought, not sufficing to make the ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... a rainy season when we first went there, and for a long time our cisterns gave us full aqueous satisfaction, but early this year a drought had set in, and we were obliged to be exceedingly careful of ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... day was a quarter of a pint of coconut milk and the meat, which did not exceed two ounces to each person: it was received very contentedly but we suffered great drought. I durst not venture to land as we had no arms and were less capable of defending ourselves than ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... here and there clearings or intervening fields that had been devoted to the cultivation of cotton and corn. The ground was of a low character, typical of northeastern Mississippi, and abounded in small creeks that went almost totally dry even in short periods of drought, but became flooded with muddy water under the outpouring of rain peculiar to a semi-tropical climate. In such a region there were many chances of our being surprised, especially by an enemy who knew the country well, and whose ranks were filled with local ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... much intelligence and energy for himself as he had done under the direction of a master were doomed to disappointment. Want of skill, the fitfulness of the small holder, aggravated perhaps by national calamities, drought, flood, and pestilence, being felt more severely by laborers than by capitalists, led to a gradual shrinkage in the area of cultivated land, and at last to the suffering of the classes who were to specially benefit from the scheme of ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... I could talk of the disastrous drought with Waster Lunny as I walked over his parched fields, but I had not such cause as he to brood upon it by day and night; and the ins and outs of the earl's marriage were for discussing at a tea-table, where there were women to help one to conclusions, rather than for the ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... political world at large,—and were facts upon which the newspapers were able to display their wonderful foresight and general omniscience with their usual confidence. And as to the points which were in doubt,—whether or not, for instance, that consistent old Tory Sir Orlando Drought should be asked to put up with the Post-office or should be allowed to remain at the Colonies,—the younger Duke did not care to trouble himself till the elder should have come to his assistance. But his own ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... O'HARA, Australian explorer, born in Galway; conducted an expedition across Australia, but on the way back both he and his companion Wells perished, after terrible sufferings from privation and drought (1820-1861). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... often elapses between the periods of rainfall, soils, if they are to support vegetable growth, must be able to store up their water-supply against periods of drought. This is all the more necessary when we remember that, in the case of heavy crops, the rainfall would often be inadequate to supply the water necessary for their growth. In fact, it has been estimated that the average evaporation from ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... fair-meeting was held at Dr. Blackwell's. The new plan was brought forward; and, although it was as yet nothing but a plan, it acted like a warm, soft rain upon a field after a long drought. The knitting and sewing (for which I have a private horror under all conditions) were laid aside, to my great relief; and the project was talked of with so much enthusiasm, that I already saw myself in imagination making my evening visits ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... confluence of the forks, and the face of the country no longer presented the refreshing green which had hitherto characterized it. The rich grass was now found only in dispersed spots, on low grounds, and on the bottom land of the streams. A long drought, joined to extreme heat, had so parched up the upper prairies, that they were in many places bald, or covered only with a thin growth of yellow and poor grass. The nature of the soil renders it extremely susceptible to the vicissitudes of the climate. Between the forks, and from their junction ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... favors. Yet we had watched his smooth brow furrow and corrugate as under some carking care or devouring sorrow. We had watched his thick, black hair thin and silver as green grain under brazen skies and parching drought. Who can forget, in the midst of the hilarious scenes he toward the last sought with greater and greater avidity—who can forget, I say, the deep abstractions and black moods into which he fell? At such times, when the fun rippled and soared from height to height, suddenly, without ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... sown in the river bottom and the seed was carried entirely away by the rising of the stream in the winter; and the next year, which proved to be a dry one, it was planted so far from the water that it was almost all destroyed by drought. At San Gabriel the first crop was drowned out, but the second, planted on the plain where it could be irrigated, was a success. San Gabriel was chief among the missions for wheat raising, and was called ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... plagues of Egypt. To-night there will be fire in the Abbey—such fire as fell on Cranwell Towers. Nay, nay, I know; the church will not burn, nor all the great stone halls. But the dormitories, and the storehouses, and the hayricks, and the cattle-byres, they'll flame bravely after this time of drought, and if the wains are ashes, how will they draw in their harvest? Will you do ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... little personal matter. For two years I have made up my mind to leave this place—mainly for two reasons: drought and wind prevent the satisfactory growth of all delicate plants; and I cannot stand being unable to attend evening meetings and being obliged to refuse every invitation in London. But I was obliged to stay till I had got it into decent order to attract a customer. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... a great drought, and the rooks, unable to get their usual food from the hard, sun-baked pasture-lands, attacked the roots and would have pretty well destroyed them if the farmer had not protected his swedes by driving in stakes and running cotton-thread and twine ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... lightened their toil; but toward the close of the second year in their home they had suffered a series of reverses that sadly crippled Benito's resources. First there had been a season of such heat and drought that all their labor in the dozen acres which Benito cultivated came to naught, and they gathered hardly more than enough to keep them from starving before the next year's harvest. Then one of Benito's horses, of which he had three, and fine ones they were, had been taken sick and ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... said David, "an' told him to sell out there an' come home, an' to draw on me fer any balance he needed to move him. I've got somethin' in my eye that'll be easier an' better payin' than fightin' grasshoppers an' drought ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... insects and drought, floods are the enemies of rice. When the plants are young, three or four days' flooding do not matter much, but in August, when the ears are shooting, it is a different matter. The sun pours down and soon rots the rice lying in the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Ballyshannon you must pay four pounds a week and give up all the take except two. Salmon are scarce all over Ireland this year. Three English fishers on the Erne shared the universal bad luck, for in three days they had only captured one five-pounder. The unusual drought has made the water low. The weather of the past five months has been finer and dryer than any season for sixty years. Ballyshannon looks dirty and dingy in any weather. It lacks the smartness, the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.) |
