"Rainfall" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the towers were freshly painted and in perfect repair; and indeed the custodian said frankly enough, on reappearing, that they were merely built over the prisons on the site of the original towers. The storied stream of the Bacchiglione sweeps through the grounds, and now, swollen by the rainfall, it roared, a yellow torrent, under a corner of the prisons. The towers rise from masses of foliage, and form no unpleasing feature of what must be, in spite of Signor P——, a delightful Italian garden in sunny weather. The ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... still looking down. "No; I was wondering if the rainfall had been as light in the mountains as it has been in the valley, and how the water-supply will hold out through the summer if we have ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... afraid as that they grow into a feeling that the dreadful din, the rattle and bang and dirt and blood, the anguish of men and horses, the distorted and ghastly deaths, will pass them by. The whine of bullets, and the spiteful snarl of exploding shells seems as much an incident as the tin rainfall and the wooden thunder ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... abundant, amounting annually to forty or fifty inches, ordinarily the air is dry and salubrious. This ample precipitation is usually well distributed throughout the growing season and is rarely insufficient or excessive. The summer rainfall comes largely in the form of local showers, scarcely ever attended by hail. Loudoun streams for the most part are pure and rapid, and there appears to be no local cause ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... the most luxuriant growth; or the earth may be iron and the heavens brass, with scarcely a green blade to be seen. The light flying showers that usually occur in July do not render watering unnecessary; in fact, a heavy soaking of a crop after a moderate rainfall is a valuable aid to its growth, for it requires a long-continued heavy downpour to penetrate ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... visited us the day we crossed the Makata proved the last of the Masika season. As the first rainfall which we had experienced occurred on the 23rd March, and the last on the 30th April, its duration was thirty-nine days. The seers of Bagamoyo had delivered their vaticinations concerning this same Masika with solemnity. "For forty days," said ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... annually. The land, rich and rolling, was so varied in its qualities and requirements that a general failure of crops was never experienced—the bottoms would thrive in dry seasons, the hill crops in wet, and moderation in rainfall would prosper them all. The small farmers who continued to dwell nearby included Dabney at first in their rustic social functions; but when he carried twenty of his slaves to a house-raising and kept his own hands gloved ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Atbara, without at once comprehending their effect upon the waters of the Nile. The magnificent chain of mountains from which they flow is not a simple line of abrupt sides, but the precipitous slopes are the walls of a vast plateau, that receives a prodigious rainfall in June, July, August, and until the middle of September, the entire drainage of which is carried away by the above-named ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... safely sleep out of doors for six months of the year. The plains are from 4,000 to 6,000 feet high, and some of the settled "parks," or mountain valleys, are from 8,000 to 10,000. The air, besides being much rarefied, is very dry. The rainfall is far below the average, dews are rare, and fogs nearly unknown. The sunshine is bright and almost constant, and three-fourths of the days are cloudless. The milk, beef, and bread are good. The climate is neither ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... of saturation of the soil piled on and between the bed rocks that lay beneath it and jutted up through it, then centuries of floods caused by rain and perhaps by melting snows, to carry away the loosened mould; then centuries upon centuries more of flowing and of rainfall to wash the debris clean and complete ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... small room at the bottom of a steep, rocky, sloping passage, and contained no standing water, although there had been a heavy rainfall the night before and the opening is so situated as to especially favor the inflow, which naturally indicates a greater cave beneath a hidden passage. Here, as in most of the caves of the region, is found a small lizard: it is totally blind ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... interest. It was really afflicting to turn his back upon the early Spanish settlers, the Jesuit missions, the grape and olive production, mining interests, earthquake statistics, the Chinese problem, annual rainfall on the great plateau, study of the Sierra Nevada range, and last, most alluring of all, that of the Santa Barbara Islands, described by a companion of Drake as densely populated by a white race with light hair and ruddy cheeks. When Sir Robert thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... accumulates. When a can of food is emptied toss it on the fire and burn it out, then drop it in a sink hole that you have dug for slops and unburnable trash, and cover it with earth or ashes so no mosquitoes can breed in it after a rainfall. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... disease to be of microbic origin, the result of climatic conditions, and divides the island of Hawaii into two districts, in one of which the rainfall is 150 inches annually, where bighead is very prevalent, and the second of which is dry and rarely visited by rain, where the disease is unknown. Removal of animals from the wet to the dry district is followed by immediate improvement and frequently by recovery. In the wet district horses ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... they make a line in the rainfall. Well, here it was dry, but Dolores called it a ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... physiognomies, are climatic results. We have rain enough, but not equability of temperature or moisture,—no steady, abundant supply of humidity in the air. In places in Great Britain it is said to rain on an average three days out of four the year through; yet the depth of rainfall is no greater than in this country, where it rains but the one day out of four. John Bull shows those three rainy days both in his temper and in his bodily habit; he is better for them in many ways, and perhaps not quite so good in ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... exception of the district of Mossamedes, the coast plains are unsuited to Europeans. In the interior, above 3300 ft., the temperature and rainfall, together with malaria, decrease. The plateau climate is healthy and invigorating. The mean annual temperature at Sao Salvador do Congo is 72.5 deg. F.; at Loanda, 74.3 deg.; and at Caconda, 67.2 deg.. The climate is greatly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... divided in opinion as to whether the riding plow reduces the labor cost. The lister, recently patented, throws the earth into a ridge and enables the farmer to plant without previously breaking the soil. It is valuable in the dry regions of the West, but useless where the rainfall is great, as the soil must there be broken up anyhow. There have been 920 corn gatherers patented, of which only one is considered a success, and most farmers reject it on account of the waste. The general verdict ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... responsible for the introduction of many, but not all, of these Malayan and Australasian species. The climate is healthy, the temperature varying from 75 deg. to 84 deg. F. The prevailing wind is the S.E. trade, which blows the greater part of the year. The rainfall in the wet season is heavy, but not excessive, and during the dry season the ground is refreshed with occasional showers and heavy dews. Malarial fever is not prevalent, and it is interesting to note that there are no swamps or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... than the gold. It had surprised him when he travelled overland to Adelaide to see from Willunga 30 miles of enclosed and cultivated farms, and it surprised me to see sheepruns close to Melbourne. With a better rainfall and equally good soil, Victoria had neither the farms nor the vineyards nor the orchards nor the gardens that had sprung up under the 80-acre section and immigration systems of South Australia. It had been an outlying portion ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... there are very many who would undoubtedly prefer the temperature enjoyed by those who live west of the mountains. Even where it is coldest, spring comes in February, and the country is so divided into districts of greater dryness or greater moisture, that a man can always choose whether to have a rainfall small or great. I hope I am not wearying you in dwelling on these points, for my only excuse in making these observations is, that I have learnt that the interior is to many on the island as much a terra incognita as it was to me. I can partly understand this after ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... (colalyas) running East and West about ten miles distant, looking very much like a river. To the east and north the view was intercepted by long stony rises, apparently covered with spinifex. Large white gum clumps studded the plains in every direction. Evidences of heavy rainfall at certain times to be seen everywhere. Barometer 28.28; thermometer 72 degrees at 5 p.m.; latitude 26 degrees 13 ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... trees are ever pruned systematically, or taken care of; the Chinese seem to have no idea of this. Of course, the rainfall there is at a different time of the year than ours. Fall, winter and spring, in North China, are practically without rain. Consequently, the atmosphere is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... the Athabaska, for the greater part, the frontier sky was blue and cloudless during most of the year. The rainfall was not great. The atmosphere was dry. It was a cheerful country, one of optimism and not of gloom. In the extreme south, along the Rio Grande, the climate was moister, warmer, more enervating; but on the high ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... national consequence, but it has, at the rate of forty to one hundred sixty miles annually, invaded all of the cotton district except that of the Carolinas and Virginia. The damage it does, varies according to the rainfall and the harshness of the winter, increasing with the former and decreasing with the latter. At times the damage has been to the extent of a loss of 50 per cent. of the crop, estimated at 400,000 bales of cotton ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... the Emperor Tai Dsung had a dream. He saw a giant enter his room, who pleaded with hardly restrained tears: "Save me, O Emperor! Because of my own accord I diminished the rainfall, the Lord of the Heavens, in his anger, has commanded that We Dschong behead me to-morrow at noon. If you will only prevent We Dschong from falling asleep at that time, and pray that I may be saved, misfortune once more may pass ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... As the rainfall in Alaska is usually very large, it naturally follows that an umbrella is a convenient companion. A gossamer for a lady and a mackintosh for a gentleman, and heavy shoes, and coarse, warm and comfortable clothing for both should ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... and pleasant and the heat tempered by a cool breeze. On the coast during the summer rain and fogs prevail, and the sun is only occasionally visible, for there are on an average only sixty-six fine days throughout the year. In 1884, a rainfall of sixty-four inches was registered at Unalaska. The rain seldom pours down here, but falls in a steady drizzle from a hopelessly leaden sky, under which a grey and sodden landscape presents a picture of dreary desolation. But this damp cheerlessness has its advantages, for incessant humidity ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... interior, except for occasional oases, is a desert, inhabited only by wandering tribes. Along the southern and western coasts, between the mountains and the sea, the soil is generally fertile, the climate temperate, and the rainfall sufficient. Here the chief cities ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... water to some pond or reservoir placed as high as possible. Every stiff breeze, therefore, raises millions of tons of water which operate hydraulic turbines as required. Incidentally these storage reservoirs, by increasing the surface exposed to evaporation and the consequent rainfall, have a very beneficial effect on the dry regions in the interior of the continent, and in some cases have almost superseded irrigation. The windmill and dynamo thus utilize bleak mountain-tops ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... is cursed with defective natural drainage. The fall of the greater rivers is so slight that they meander hither and thither in "S's," as they say here, and only require a little surplus on the average rainfall to overflow the more valuable land. And it is astonishing how quickly good land left untilled reverts to its primeval condition, or, in the expressive language of the country, "goes back to bog." This has been shown in ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... The rainfall on Mars is almost nil and the immense population (eight times larger than that of your Earth) is entirely dependent on the water supply from the melting Polar caps. Water on Mars is a most precious fluid and ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... much, and she knew the importance of the irrigation scheme he had embarked upon. Land in the arid belt could be obtained on favorable terms and, Fuller thought, be made as productive as that watered by the natural rainfall. It was, however, mainly because he had talked about finding her scapegrace brother employment on the work that Ida had made ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... green lances of its iris-pseudacorus, the sweep of the winds through its bulrushes and canebreaks, the glory of colour in the blue stars of its veronica, the bright rosy spikes of its epilobium. The river seemed always happy, even when the great rainfall of autumn churned it into froth and the lightnings illumined its ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... very accessible. Many other smaller streams and lakes are part of the Thompson water system, and afford good fishing. The river runs through the "dry belt," which is so called owing to the smallness of the rainfall, which only averages about 8in. in the year. It is from this cause that the banks of the rivers are very open and free from brush, which makes them easy to fish and to travel along; while, for the same reason, the country is generally open rolling hills, covered with grass or scanty pines, ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... little proud to make his decision before he learned all that it might, or might not, reveal; he was proud to believe that he knew a thorough-bred, without a pedigree for confirmation. And when Sunday morning dawned and the floodlike downpour had subsided to a gray and steady rainfall, even Caleb, none too weatherwise, knew that it had come to "stay fer a spell." He knew that the boy who had come marching down the valley road, two days before, was going to stay, too, if it lay within his power to ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... third time and make a third growth. This third growth winter-kills without injury to the tree, however. The significance of the growth presumably relates to the tree being an inhabitant of an arid country, where it has adapted itself to the rainfall of that country. I do not know if the trunk adds a new ring of wood after each resting period, but it likely ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... from the river to make this the location of the best town in the state, and probably eventually the state capital. Land will increase in value by leaps and bounds. No stumps, no stones, just the right amount of rainfall—the garden spot of the West, Mr. Vandemark, the ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... of course, a large increase in the productive resources of that section. Other canals may possibly do as much. The work of sinking artesian wells is also going on there extensively, while the project of constructing great storage reservoirs, in which the rainfall of the wet season may be collected and from thence gradually distributed through the dry season, is already in serious contemplation by private enterprise. Modern scientific irrigation has already accomplished wonders for ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... and rushes, horse-tails, and reeds of all descriptions grow and thrive each year upon the ruins of their ancestors. The formation of such accumulations of decaying vegetation would only be possible where the physical conditions of the country allowed of an abundant rainfall, and depressions in the surface of the land to retain the moisture. Where extensive deforesting operations have taken place, peat-bogs have often been formed, and many of those in existence in Europe undoubtedly owe their ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... is like an apple pie," said Tom Slater—"it's better cold than hot. There's a hundred inches of rainfall at Omar in summer. We'll all have web ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... good soil covered a part of its hard foundation rock, which often in turn lay bare on the surface. The Athenian farmer had a sturdy struggle to win a scanty crop, and about the only products he could ever raise in abundance for export were olives (which seemed to thrive on scanty soil and scanty rainfall) and honey, the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... may, Moses goes down to the very root and ground and true cause of the riches of the land, and of the rainfall, and of the prosperity of the Jews, and of the prosperity of any living nation on earth, when he says, 'Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... Plato's account of the destruction of Atlantis. "In one day and one fatal night," says Plato, "there came mighty earthquakes and inundations that ingulfed that warlike people." "In a single day all was lost," says the Aztec legend. And, instead of a rainfall of forty days and forty nights, as represented in the Bible, here we see "in a single day. . . even the mountains sunk into the water;" not only the land on which the people dwelt who were turned into fish, but the very mountains ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Softer than rainfall at twilight, 5 Bringing the fields benediction And the hills quiet and greyness, Are my long thoughts ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... know how much of a rainfall we have had this time," said Capt. Noah, "but it must have been pretty heavy, for there seems to be as much water around as there was when it rained for 40 days ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... consequence might be foreseen. The load of vapor is in great part precipitated, dense clouds are formed, their particles coalesce to rain-drops, which descend daily in gushes so profuse that the word "torrential" is used to express the copiousness of the rainfall. I could show you this chilling by expansion, and also the consequent ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... face and drew a deep breath through sensitive nostrils. Then he exhaled slowly, deliberately, and his lips moved. Now there was taste in the air as well as perfume. The change had come with the rainfall. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... 'The Military Soudan' the land becomes more fruitful. The tributaries of the Nile multiply the areas of riparian fertility. A considerable rainfall, increasing as the Equator is approached, enables the intervening spaces to support vegetation and consequently human life. The greater part of the country is feverish and unhealthy, nor can Europeans long sustain the attacks of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... what laughter the sun-spot theory was received? At least I know I laughed when I first heard of it—but here in India, where the rainfall is the prime condition of existence to millions and the sun is much more powerful than with us, the Meteorological Department has just reported that there is apparently a sure connection between the rainfall and its distribution and the spots upon the sun. When these spots ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... they lived up till the night of the ninth day since their landing on the isle; then a heavy rainfall, filling the concavity of the boat's sail, enables them to replenish the beaker, with other vessels ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... of skilful exploitation, three years of high pressure passed quickly; years named by the promoters the period of development. In the Year One the very heavens smiled and the rainfall broke the record of the oldest inhabitant. Thus the region round about lost the word "arid" as a qualifying adjective, and the picturesque fictions of the prospectus makers were miraculously justified. In Year Two there was less rain, but still an abundant crop; and ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... had a copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, and studied it up the way I do. Page 442 gives all the hottest places on earth, with the record highest temperature of each, together with all the coldest places, where there is the greatest rainfall, and a chronological table of all the great famines, floods, storms, hot and cold spells the earth has ever known, from the time of Adam to the present day, with pictures of the Johnstown flood, and diagrams of Noah's Ark. This, with the chapter ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... broken in by cattle; in summer they are choked up with dust and rubbish; and, the loose earth having all been thrown up together in a heap on one side, there is no barrier to the water which in eveiy great rainfall flows in and obliterates the kennel, drowning or driving ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... into the treeless expanse of the prairies. In the remaining portions were openings in the midst of the forested area, and then the grassy ocean of prairie that rolled to west and northwest, until it passed beyond the line of sufficient rainfall for agriculture without irrigation, into the semi-arid ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... hour—it had grown much darker—when they heard a tremendous peal of thunder and became aware that the storm had broken. They watched it a while from the upper windows—a violent June shower, with quick sheets of lightning and a rainfall that danced on the pavements. They took it sociably, they lingered at the window, inhaling the odour of the fresh wet that splashed over the sultry town. They would have to wait till it had passed, and they resigned themselves serenely to this idea, repeating ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... however, the couple passed through a heavy rainfall, and the next day, when he was to drive with the bride to Lekkatts, gout, the fiercest he had ever known, chained him fast to his bed. Such are the petty accidents affecting circumstances. They are the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the form which survives is "higher" or "lower." All that matters is adaptation. The germ of malaria renders whole tracts of the earth uninhabitable to those whom we consider representative of the higher culture. In other parts an alteration of the rainfall may crush out a civilisation, and leave a handful of nomadic tribes as the sole denizens of lands where once a lofty civilisation flourished. Throughout the whole of nature there is never the slightest indication that ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... number of years in contrast with wheat straw, alfalfa, timothy, and others. No difference in appearance or behavior of the trees can be noted. Sawdust packs and gives poorer aeration than straw and it requires a large amount to mulch a tree. This mass also absorbs a large amount of rainfall before passing through to the soil but no ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Lakanaii is conceded by all to be the wildest, the most wildly beautiful, and, in its size, the richest of all the islands. Its sugar tonnage per acre is the highest, its mountain beef-cattle the fattest, its rainfall the most generous without ever being disastrous. It resembles Kauai in that it is the first-formed and therefore the oldest island, so that it had had time sufficient to break down its lava rock into the richest soil, and to ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... are rare, there is no wind, but on the coasts one may encounter storms in the time of both the northeast and the southwest monsoons. Though Borneo and the central mountains of New Guinea have the greatest rainfall in the Malay Archipelago, there is a distinct dry season, which is mostly felt during April, May, and June, but is less noticeable in the central parts. As regards the distribution of rain and dry weather, some difference was experienced as ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls of the cottage. For at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such elevated domiciles, the grand difficulty of housekeeping was an insufficiency of water; and a casual rainfall was utilized by turning out, as catchers, every utensil that the house contained. Some queer stories might be told of the contrivances for economy in suds and dishwaters that are absolutely necessitated in upland habitations ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... hurt terribly at first, but grew numb with the circulation shut off. The jolting ride continued endlessly, he had no way of measuring the time. A rainfall soaked him, then he felt his clothes steaming as the ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... weak constitutions. Formerly, many Anglo-Indians visited the north-west coast; but this has not been so much the case latterly. Numbers of tourists come from Australia during the summer months. Compared to the larger island, Tasmania is well watered, and the rainfall is very much greater. The climate has often been compared to that of England, without its damps and fogs, but the lightness and clearness of the atmosphere rather resemble that of the South of France or Italy, and supply that ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... drainage. The North Level includes all that part of the Great Bedford Level situated between Morton's Leam and the river Welland, comprising about 48,000 acres of land. The river Nene, which brings down from the interior the rainfall of almost the entire county of Northampton, flows through nearly the centre of the district. In some places the stream is confined by embankments, in others it flows along artificial outs, until it enters the great ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... stream so low at this time of the year," he remarked, as he followed his companion up the trail. "You might think it was August. But with no snow to melt and no rainfall this spring, it isn't ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... I ask of you: Where, pray, is the water of Kane? Yonder, at sea, on the ocean, In the driving rain, 25 In the heavenly bow, In the piled-up mist-wraith, In the blood-red rainfall, In the ghost-pale cloud-form; There is ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the feast of small talk that he would set before you if he conceived that to be your taste. And again he used them as breastworks in foraging at the boardinghouse. Firing at you a volley of figures concerning the weight of a lineal foot of bar-iron 5 x 2 3/4 inches, and the average annual rainfall at Fort Snelling, Minn., he would transfix with his fork the best piece of chicken on the dish while you were trying to rally sufficiently to ask him weakly why does a hen cross ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... of their surroundings. The perpendicularity of the walls of these channels, or canyons as they are called, depends on the volume and continuity of the flowing stream, on the aridity of the country through which they are cut, and on the rock-formation. A fierce and continuous torrent, where the rainfall is at the minimum, will so speedily outrival the forces of erosion that the canyon will have vertical walls. An example is seen in those frequent "mud" canyons found in arid regions, where some brook, having its source in highlands, cuts a channel through clay or dry earth with vertical ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... dolphins Sighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which bore them Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the maidens, Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming, Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of the mermen. Onward they went in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness, Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... dry summers, one can always be guided by the rainfall on the Pacific coast; a shortage on the western coast means an excess on the eastern. For four or five years past California has been short of its rainfall; so much so that quite general alarm is felt over the gradual ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... critter made off before they had a chance at a shot. But, say!" he exclaimed, "the storm's over an' the sun is out, an' here we are loafin' in here yet. Vamoose, boys! scatter!" and they all piled out into a fresh and made-over world. Everything was washed clean by the torrential rainfall, and, strange to say, comparatively little damage had been done by the terrific wind. The ranchmen set about repairing whatever had been destroyed, and the three comrades walked toward the ranchhouse, discussing Sandy's tale ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... the best hemp in the world grows down there—soil, climate, rainfall all combine wonderfully to make it the one ideal spot for hemp production. In another twenty years it will probably rate as the richest single agricultural area on the globe—that's why those little fellows over there"—he indicated a pair of Japanese passing on the opposite side of the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... by situation; and yet it is only by the collection and collocation of particulars that we can hope to reach any general law. There is, however, a good deal of evidence to support the opinion—the grounds for which were primarily derived from the labours of Dr. Meldrum at Mauritius—that increased rainfall and atmospheric agitation attend spot-maxima; while Herschel's conjecture of a more copious emission of light and heat about the same epochs has recently obtained some countenance from Savelieff's measures showing a gain in the strength ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... surrounding waters. If destroyed in the hurricane season, these structures are not renewed until settled weather. In so small and low lying an island as that of Nassau, it is very plain that this crystal liquid, pure and tasteless, cannot come from any rainfall upon the soil, and its existence, therefore, suggests a problem, the solving of which we submit to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... that the water god has made his appearance on these shores as there has been a terrible drought here for sometime, and we are sadly in need of a rainfall to moisten the parched lips of our soil and I hope the great water god of your country ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... I drew her there alone, Seated amid the gauze Of moisture, hooded, only her outline shown, With rainfall marked across. —Soon passed our stay; Yet her rainy form is the Genius still of the spot, Immutable, yea, Though the place now knows her no more, and has known her ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... Mount Atlas and those inhabited lands where there is a sufficient rainfall and every evidence of man's activity, the Province of Africa, the plateaux which are full of the memories of Rome, end abruptly towards the sun, and are bounded by a sort of cliff which falls sheer ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... cork-tree woods, by which the hills are for the most part covered, presenting considerable variety, while from the more elevated positions charming prospects may be enjoyed." —Dr. Edwin Lee. The mean winter temperature is 47.4 F., and the average annual rainfall is 26 inches. But on the Riviera, as in England, every winter varies in the rainfall and in the degree of cold; and therefore the chances are that the traveller's experience will not agree with the carefully-compiled stereotyped meteorological ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... features of the month are: the hurricane of the 17th to 23d; lower temperatures in the districts east of the Rocky mountains; large excess of rainfall in some districts and large deficiencies in others; low water ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... transplant when the ground is moist, as it is immediately after being dug or plowed. But this cannot always be arranged, neither can one always count upon a shower to moisten the soil just after the plants have been set. If advantage can be taken of an approaching rainfall, it should be done, because this is the ideal time for transplanting. It is much better than immediately after, which is perhaps next best. Transplanting in cloudy weather and toward evening is better than in sunny weather ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... miserable cry against the walls. She hoped Mildred Caniper slept through a wailing that might have a personal note for her, and as she prepared to leave the room and listen on the landing, she thought she heard a new sound cutting through the swish of the rainfall and the shriek of wind. It was a smaller sound, as though a child were alone and crying in the night, and she leaned from her window to look into the garden. The rain wetted her hair and hands and neck, while she stared into varying depths of blackness—the poplars against ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... lies at the southern end of this miserable street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. Its top and curbing caved in ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... complex commercial and social organizations. It has every variety of climate from the tropical humidity along the southern coast to the frigid cold of the mountains; peaks of ice, reefs of coral, impenetrable jungles and bleak, treeless plains. One portion of its territory records the greatest rainfall of any spot on earth; another, of several hundred thousand square miles, is seldom watered with a drop of rain and is entirely dependent for moisture upon the melting snows of the mountains. Twelve thousands different kinds of animals ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... of Spain is almost wholly agrarian. From the Tagus to the Mediterranean stretches a mountainous region of low rainfall, intersected by several series of broad river-valleys which, under irrigation, are enormously productive of rice, oranges, and, in the higher altitudes, of wheat. In the dry hills grow grapes, olives and almonds. A country on the whole much like southern California. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... me desperately. To attempt the plain on foot meant death. What then was I to do? Glancing at the cliff I saw that there was a gully in it worn by thousands of years of rainfall, in which grew scanty bushes. Into this I ran, and finding it practicable though difficult, began to climb upwards, quite unnoticed by the Zulus who were all employed upon the further side. The end of it was that I reached the very crest ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... since the greater part of that period has been spent under conditions calculated to put them to the test. Especially has the sun given penetrating tastes of his quality and bestowed enduring marks of his favour. During these twelve joyful years the annual rainfall has averaged over 131 inches, the average number of days on which rain has fallen being 134. Of the heat of the sun during the hottest month of the year let two unstudied records speak. As January 29, 1907, gave early promise of exceptional heat, I watched the thermometer closely, noting ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... was again mild except for a short cold spell at the end of January, with plentiful precipitation up to the first week of June, and then a long drought with the driest July since 1944. However, the heavy rainfall of August, 8.69 inches,[19] made amends for this, and with the normal rainfall of 3.48 inches of September, prepared the trees to endure the long drought of October and early November. This serious drought,[20] ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... years large numbers of "concrete" or "cement" houses have been built. Our grandfathers would have opened their eyes wide at the suggestion of a house built of sand, and would have felt anxious at every rainfall lest their homes should suddenly melt away. Even after thousands of concrete buildings were in use, many people still feared that they would not stand the cold winters and hot summers of the United States; but ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... along Red Sea coast; cooler and wetter in the central highlands (up to 61 cm of rainfall annually); semiarid in western hills and lowlands; rainfall heaviest during ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Rhine. The climate is on the whole temperate — warmest in the lowest districts (460 ft. above sea-level) of N. Alsace, and coldest on the summits of the Vosges, where snow lies six months in the year. The mean annual temperature at Strassburg is 49.8 deg. F., at Metz 48.2 deg.; the rainfall at Strassburg 26 1/4 in., and at Metz 27 1/2 in. The Rhine Valley is in great part fertile, yielding good crops of potatoes, cereals (including maize), sugar beet, hops, tobacco, flax, hemp and products of oleaginous ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... member of the flock thus freed its coat from the accumulated moisture of a long rainfall; then the huddled heap, in which they had combined to withstand the weather and show tail to the western storm, began to scatter. With coughs and sneezes the beasts wandered forward again, and pursued their business ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... a land like Babylonia. Sir William Willcocks thinks that the word translated "mist" would probably be better rendered "inundation," and that the writer is speaking of a country where inundation rather than rainfall was the support of life to the vegetable world. Genesis ii. 5 and ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... Harrison. The thunder rites are to increase the rain fall, and the magic in such procedures is imitative; that is, a sound similar to thunder is produced, as primitive man believes thunder to cause the rainfall since it often precedes it. Miss Harrison[26] has given a picture of an early thunder god of the Chinese,—a deity surrounded by many objects, which he strikes to cause thunder. Rattles made of gourds are used for the same purpose with some tribes; or down, ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... the storm had subsided the spell was broken and he said "So long," and rode south, followed by Buck and Red. As they swept out of sight behind a grove Red turned in his saddle and waved his hat. Buck discussed with assiduity the prospects of a rainfall and was very cheerful about the recovery of the stolen cattle. Red could see a tall, broad-shouldered man standing with his feet spread far apart, swinging a Colt's .45, and Hopalong swore at everything under the sun. Dust arose in streaming clouds far to the south and they spurred ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... sorcerer of my acquaintance was a most interesting study. If he was asked for fine weather (which, by the way, in the Solomons is the usual request, the rainfall being enormous), he used to temporize in a truly masterly manner. First he would hold out for more payment. This policy he could continue for an indefinite length of time, as he would of course require payment in a form which he knew ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... in quite readily. Repeat the experiment with one of the soils, packing the soil tightly in one tube and leaving it loose in another. The water will be found to penetrate the loose soil more rapidly than the packed soil. We see then that the power of the soil to take in rainfall depends on its texture or the size and ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... be a pretty sheet of water only slightly salt, a mile long and three quarters of a mile wide, separated from the ocean by a long narrow strip of sandy beach. No stream enters it, but it is the reservoir of the rainfall from the low-lying hills sloping ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... much as yield is boosted, the amino acid ratios change markedly, the content of scarce nutritional minerals drops massively, and the caloric content increases. In short, subsisting on irrigated commercially-grown potatoes, or on those grown on relatively infertile soils receiving abundant rainfall will make you fat and sick. They're a ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... wist the pain it should take us to come hither," pursued Isabel, apparently quite careless about interrupting the spiritual labours of her sister nun, "methinks I had prayed my Lord the King to choose another messenger. By the rainfall of late, divers streams have so bisched [overflowed] their banks, that me verily counted my mule had been swept away, not once ne twice. It waked my laughter to see how our steward, that rade with us, strave and struggled ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... observations were copied out at this time, and minute records taken of the rainfall. Books saved up against a rainy day were read in the middle of the "Masika" and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... another period of subsidence occurred. Then the great lake was drained, and the uplift began, slow and sure; then, and not before, were the conditions existent that have made the Canyon country as we see it to-day. Peaks and islets received the rainfall, tiny rivers were formed that grew larger and cut their way in deeper, as the uplift continued. The principal stream, which was then born, was the Colorado. It is supposed, from various evidences, that the rainfall was very much more abundant then than now, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... rainfall that the young pilot could see only a few car lengths ahead of him. Instinctively he tightened the brakes slightly. The car was swaying giddily, not having a train ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the fact that in innumerable instances nonimmune persons had been known to care for yellow-fever patients as nurses, or physicians, without contracting the disease; also the fact that the epidemic extension of the disease depends upon external conditions relating to temperature, altitude, rainfall, etc. It was a well-established fact that the disease is arrested by cold weather and does not prevail in northern latitudes or at considerable altitudes. But diseases which are directly transmitted from ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... the Sevre Nantaise and the Thouet (both affluents of the Loire) in the north from the basins of the Sevre Niortaise and the Charente in the south. The climate is mild, the annual temperature at Niort being 54 deg. Fahr., and the rainfall nearly 25 in. The winters are colder in the Gatine, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... remains to say that it has been thought advisable to retain all the strictly scientific matter found in Dr. Livingstone's journals for future publication. When one sees that a register of the daily rainfall was kept throughout, that the temperature was continually recorded, and that barometrical and hypsometrical observations were made with unflagging thoroughness of purpose year in and year out, it is obvious that an accumulated mass of information ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the derivation of this fantastic brood from the same parents. Wherever the dragon is found, it displays a special partiality for water. It controls the rivers or seas, dwells in pools or wells, or in the clouds on the tops of mountains, regulates the tides, the flow of streams, or the rainfall, and is associated with thunder and lightning. Its home is a mansion at the bottom of the sea, where it guards vast treasures, usually pearls, but also gold and precious stones. In other instances the dwelling is upon the top of ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... dear departed. "Please send down my blankets" it said. But it is the terrible humidity which makes the climate dangerous; a humidity due to the innumerable swamps, the source of pestilence and fever, and to the incredible rainfall, which averages over six and a half feet a year. No wonder that in the Indies Borneo is known as "The White ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... about New Orleans' drainage problem. The city is the bowl of a dish, of which the levees against river and lake are the rim. There is no natural drainage. The rainfall is nearly five feet a year, concentrated at times, upon the thousand miles of streets, into cloudbursts of four inches an hour and ten inches in a day. In the boyhood of men now in their early thirties it was a regular thing for the city to be ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... in the morning,—since that was his ultimatum,—Luck was standing in his bare feet and pajamas, acrimoniously arguing with Martinson over the telephone. Usually he was up at six, but he was a stubborn young man, and the day promised much rainfall, anyway. He would have preferred sunshine; the stand he meant to take would have had more weight in working weather. But since he could not prevent the morning from being a rainy one, he permitted more determination to ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... way' was the shorter of the two that we used to take for our walks round Combray, and for that reason was reserved for days of uncertain weather, it followed that the climate of Meseglise shewed an unduly high rainfall, and we would never lose sight of the fringe of Roussainville wood, so that we could, at any moment, run for shelter beneath its dense thatch ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... dwarfed eucalyptus trees growing in very poor soil and under harsh rainfall conditions. Usually many stems emerging from the ground, creating a low thicket. Maoriland: Lawson's name for New Zealand marine, dead: see dead mooching: wandering idly, not going anywhere in particular mug: gullible person, a con-man's 'mark' (potential victim) ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... crude Tahoe basin ready for the reception of water. This came from the snow and rainfall on its large and mountainous drainage area, a hundred greater and lesser streams directly and indirectly discharging their flow into its ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... abstinence may not be a very severe penance for an island on which the rainfall averages 124 inches per year; but when vegetation suffers from the cruelty of four almost rainless months, promises and slights amount to something more than mere discourtesy. How genuine the thanksgiving to the soft skies after an ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of Mr. Banerjea's tales has been won from the sea by alluvial action. Its soil, enriched by yearly deposits of silt, yields abundantly without the aid of manure. A hothouse climate and regular rainfall made Bengal the predestined breeding-ground of mankind; the seat of an ancient and complex civilisation. But subsistence is too easily secured in those fertile plains. Malaria, due to the absence of subsoil drainage, is ubiquitous, ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... experiences, the region of the Javary River (the boundary between Brazil and Peru), is one of the most formidable and least known portions of the South American continent. It abounds with obstacles to exploration of the most overwhelming kind. Low, swampy, with a heavy rainfall, it is inundated annually, like most of the Amazon basin, and at time of high water the rivers know no limits. Lying, as it does, so near the equator, the heat is intense and constant, oppressive even to the native. The forest-growth—and it is forest ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... A preferable method is to put the lime in flat heaps of large size and about four feet deep, so that water may be applied or advantage be taken of rainfall. The value of the lime is so great that one can well afford to draw water and apply with a hose so that the quantity can be controlled with exactness. When fresh burned lime is perfectly slaked, each 56 pounds of pure lime becomes 74 pounds of hydrated ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... the country which it drains is limited enough. Fifty miles from its northern shores the rugged hills which form the backbone or "divide" of the continent raise their barren heads, and the streams carry from thence the vast rainfall of this region into the Bay of Hudson. Thus, when the voyageur has paddled, tracked, poled, and carried his canoe up any of the many rivers which rush like mountain torrents into Lake Superior from the north, he reaches the height of land between the Atlantic ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... recorded for a series of about ten years at Baguio, Benguet Province, at an altitude of 4,777 feet, and it is from the published data there gathered that the following facts are gained.[7] The temperature and rainfall are the average means deduced ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... neighbor exclaimed. "Fifteen ears to the row a section long would encourage me, Darley Champers told me when I took up my claim, if I'd plant a grove or two, that in three years the trees would be so big that rainfall would be abundant. You all know my catalpa woods is a wonder," he added with ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... much for California horticulture as any other one nurseryman, and he took me up into his orchard on the hill side overlooking his nursery where no drops of rain had fallen between the months of March and October when I was there and where they only have 22 inches of rainfall 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 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... least, agriculture has been by far our most important industry. Of the two billion acres comprising continental United States, approximately half are under cultivation. In most sections of the country the quality of the soil is good, and rainfall is ample. We have long led the world in the value of farm crops grown. Our production of wheat, corn, oats, barley, rye, and dairy products totals an enormous figure. The steady enclosure of lands formerly used for grazing stock is restricting our production ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... I quote: "All about the Bermuda Islands one sees great white scars on the hill slopes. These are dished spaces, where the soil has been scraped off and the coral rock exposed and glazed with hard whitewash. Some of these are a quarter acre in size. They catch and carry the rainfall to reservoirs, for the wells are few and poor, and there are no natural springs and no brooks." (Mark Twain, "Some Rambling ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... prevailed in the southern half of Michigan in the autumn of 1933. A perusal of the meteorological records shows that the average maximum and minimum temperatures in September and October were unusually high and that there was a heavy rainfall in these two months. The following table shows the precipitation and temperatures recorded at the Kellogg Farm where most of our nut cultural experiments ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... water in a channel from Dartmoor. But the cutting down of the trees has now rendered the great wet sponge of the Dartmoor region, from which the water was drawn all the year, no longer a sponge. It no longer "holds" the water of the rainfall, but in consequence of the removal of the forest and the digging of ditches the water quickly runs off the moor, and subsequently the whole countryside suffers from drought. This sort of thing has occurred wherever man has been sufficiently civilised and enterprising to commit the folly of ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... enough south to enjoy plenty of bright sunshine, it is still some distance north of the tropics. Pleasant and regular breezes from the sea mitigate the discomfort which might otherwise prevail in a country almost surrounded by desert. The whole of the rainfall comes in the winter months. From about April to October, though dews are heavy, rain is unknown. But in the winter months, especially December and January, and to some extent February, the rainfall is intense, and the country on the Plains and lower lying districts is ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock |
