"Rainfall" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Banneker was innocently confident of his own ability to outwit the trained reporter and prevent his finding the object of his quest. A prospective and possible ally was forecast in the weather. Warning of another rainfall impending had come over the wire. As yet there was no sign visible from his far-horizoned home, except a filmy and changeful wreath of palest cloud with which Mount Carstairs was ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... worst sinners are the larger varieties, and in point of filling quality, medium and small-sized varieties will, in nearly all cases, be found to have the greatest range of adaptability. The larger varieties are more likely to succeed on rich lands where the rainfall, particularly during the summer ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... 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 ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... wide belt stretching westward from the one-hundredth meridian to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains is arid land. It includes parts of Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Although the rainfall here is mostly too light to grow corn and wheat without irrigation, these dry plains have sufficient growth to support great herds of sheep and cattle, and supply us with a large part of our beef. Cattle by the hundred thousand feed ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... time yet—fifteen or twenty minutes at the best—before I dared attempt to carry out my plan of escape. In spite of the overspreading cloud, and steady rainfall, daylight lingered in the west, and a spectral glow hung above the ocean. It was a peculiar, almost ghastly light, yet of sufficient intensity to render objects visible for a considerable distance. However, there were ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... Lord of the lightning and of the clouds, the Lord of the highlands and of the lowlands, and the Lord of the rainfall and of the drought, the Lord of good seasons and of bad, of rich harvests and of scanty. They, like all things, obey Thine everlasting laws; and of them, whatever may befal, poor purblind man can say in faith and hope—"It is ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... 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, Pitiful, floated in silence apart; in ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... gradually disappearing, and more and more flowers of the temperate zone coming into evidence. And as we pierce farther into the mountains the climate becomes sensibly drier and the forest lighter. There is still a heavy enough rainfall to satisfy any ordinary plant or human being. But there is not the same deluge that descends upon the outer ridges. So the forest is not so dense. Frequently in its place social grasses clothe the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... 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 is that the labor of producing corn has been reduced very little, ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... toward Plock, the wind had already somewhat dried the road, and although it rained often, yet the rainfall, as is usual in the spring, consisted of larger drops, but warm, and of short duration. The furrows upon the fields glistened with water. The moist, sweet smell from the cultivated fields was wafted by the strong wind. The marshes were covered with buttercups ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... time, his plan took shape. He went one night to the temple foundations, still in process of digging, and with standing water in them which had collected from the rainfall or otherwise; here he deposited a goose egg, into which, after blowing it, he had inserted some new-born reptile. He made a resting-place deep down in the mud for this, and departed. Early next morning he rushed into the market-place, naked except for a gold-spangled loin-cloth; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the stream has been applied to downward trenching; the greater spreading sides were cut by the erosion of countless side streamlets resulting temporarily from periods of melting snow or of local rainfall. It was these streamlets which cut the side canyons and left standing between them the bold promontories of the rim. It was these streamlets, working from the surface, which separated portions of these promontories from the plateau and turned them into ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... stone-laden boat goes from Perasto to the rock. There are two festivals celebrated here, of which the more important is that of the Assumption, August 15. The other, the Birth of the Virgin, on September 8, is less so. There is a proverb "Entre le due Madonne cade la pioggia," the greatest rainfall occurring between the two festivals. On festival days the picture is decked with rings, chains, &c., kept locked up at Perasto during the rest of the year. The property of the church is over L30,000. For ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Climate, including those conditions of light, air, rainfall and temperature that make possible the maintenance of life ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... they did get a shelter designed, and started teaching some of the students at the native schools how to build them, and then the meteorologists told them it was no good. It was a dugout shelter; the weathermen said there'd be rainfall measured in meters instead of inches and anybody who got caught in one of those dugouts would be drowned like ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... length, and thus renders it 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 ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... prone to think that soil and climate, hill-side or plain, mountain and shore, temperature and rainfall, constitute the sole or the most important elements in human environment. Every one of these elements is doubtless important. Frost, drought, or barrenness of soil may make a region a desert, or dwarf ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... been a severe famine, which had made matters worse, for there had been numbers of mouths to feed and barely anything to feed them on. No country is more subject to famine than Palestine, for the harvest there is entirely dependent on the rainfall. There are but few springs, there is no river but the Jordan, and that runs in a deep ravine; the whole fertility of the country hangs on the amount of rain that falls in autumn and winter. No rain means no corn, no corn means starvation, and the people know it well. Nowhere ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... 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 Jethro Simsby, drifting in ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... technique. In order to help the subject relax, I have been using a phonograph record or tape that I recorded containing the continuous sound of various degrees of rain. One side has a half hour of very soft, light rainfall such as you have experienced in listening to rain falling on grass, canvas or a tent top. The other side or track contains a half hour of rain effects such as one would hear in a heavy downfall with loud ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... Zizzbaum, "just as I know that the rainfall in El Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and that therefore Navarro—Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits this spring instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be tomorrow. There is first a cigar in my private office that will remove ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... supported a large population. The 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 ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... path, and its dripping from the eaves into 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 dish-waters that are absolutely necessitated in upland habitations during the droughts of summer. ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... should agitate the 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
... event of the second decade was the rise and decline of the Workingmen's Party, following the remarkable episode of the Sand Lot and Denis Kearney. The winter of 1876-77 had been one of slight rainfall, there had been a general failure of crops, the yield of gold and silver had been small, and there was much unemployment. There had been riots in the East and discontent and much resentment were rife. The line of least resistance seemed to ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... "There hasn't been much rainfall lately," he added. "I reckon it has come at last and for a long stretch." His eyes swept the western horizon, where the clouds hung ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... result that when 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 ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... was evident here. There was, indeed, no lack of water. I could see a storm cloud gathering in the distance. The air I was breathing seemed unwarrantably moist; and all about me on the ground little pools remained from the last rainfall. But here there was no soil, not so much even as a grain of sand seemed to exist. The air was warm, as warm as a midsummer's day in my own land, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... 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 there is none to waste. Our oceans evaporated ages ago, ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... 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 influenced by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... smaller, or become less liable to be flooded than formerly. It may be true that in the history of almost every country the rivers have been both larger and smaller than they are at the present moment. For the rainfall in particular regions varies according to climate and physical geography, and is especially governed by the elevation of the land above the sea, or its distance from it and other conditions equally fluctuating in the course of time. But the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... of a constant and adequate supply of moisture throughout the growing season than by any other one factor. Decayed organic matter has great capacity for holding moisture, and in some measure should supply the water needed during periods of light rainfall. ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... the Mississippi, stretching from Texas to North Dakota, and westward to the Rocky mountains, lies the plains country. This is a region of light rainfall, where the ground is clad with short grass, while cottonwood trees fringe the courses of the winding plains streams; streams that are alternately turbid torrents and mere dwindling threads of water. The great stretches of natural pasture are broken by gray sage-brush ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... next attempt. There were good reasons for the choice: it derived its volume from the highest known mountains, snow-capped peaks in fact, that reminded the spectator of far northern latitudes, and thus it was to a great extent independent of the variable local rainfall. ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... we have the 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 ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... 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 so hot in summer nor so cold in winter as ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... hasty construction and the heavy rainfall, or perhaps to both, the tunnels and bridges frequently cave in or are washed away and the railroad is chiefly remarkable for the number of days in the year in which it does not operate; nevertheless the French deserve great credit ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... original effort of a self-trained back-country Quaker youth named John Dalton, who along towards the close of the eighteenth century became interested in the weather, and was led to construct and use a crude water-gauge to test the amount of the rainfall. The simple experiments thus inaugurated led to no fewer than two hundred thousand recorded observations regarding the weather, which formed the basis for some of the most epochal discoveries in meteorology, as we have ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... earth's land surface receive an annual rainfall of less than twenty inches, and can be reclaimed for agricultural purposes only by irrigation and dry-farming. A perfected world-system of irrigation will convert about one tenth of this vast area into an incomparably fruitful garden, leaving ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... from the basin by some mighty force of the bygone ages. The soil, as so often happens in the West, was fertile to the very edge of the Frying-pan and young pinons and bushes had taken root there and managed to keep themselves alive with the snow-moisture of winter, in spite of the scanty rainfall the rest of ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... September, however, the Potomac's flow reached an all-time low of about 390 million gallons a day. Even if the demand on those days had risen as high as in June, which it did not, there would still have been an excess, but not a very safe one. Heavy storms shortly thereafter eased the situation, and rainfall since then has definitely broken the long drought pattern, returning stream ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... Faso has a high population density and a high population growth rate, few natural resources, and a fragile soil. Over 80% of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture which is highly vulnerable to variations in rainfall. Industry remains dominated by unprofitable government-controlled corporations. Following the African franc currency devaluation in January 1994 the government updated its development program in conjunction with international agencies, and exports ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 her keen intelligence, told her 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
... 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 ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... 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 ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... 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 incense-stimulating shower. Insects whirl in ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... these countries is not only larger than that even in our Atlantic and Gulf states, but it falls more exclusively during the summer season when its efficiency in crop production may be highest. South China has a rainfall of some 80 inches with little of it during the winter, while in our southern states the rainfall is nearer 60 inches with less than one-half of it between June and September. Along a line drawn ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... third larger than Scotland, and presents a prairie surface crossed by the Arkansas, Cimarron, and Canadian Rivers, and rising to the Wichita Mountains in the S. There are many brackish streams; the rainfall is light, hence the soil can be cultivated only in parts. Ceded to the United States under restrictions by the tribes of the Indian Territory in 1866, there were various attempts by immigrants from neighbouring ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... successful cultivation had been fruitless. The drought of this year had caused a general scarcity. The months of July and August should have the heaviest rainfall; July had just expired with a rainfall of only 1.13 inch. The mean temperature had been 71 degrees F at 6 a.m.; ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... to the river-god from the embankment which he had made at Memphis; but though this uniformity is great, and remarkable, and astonishing, it is not absolute. There are occasions, once in two or three centuries, when the rainfall in Abyssinia is excessive. The Blue Nile and the Atbara pour into the deep and steady stream of the White Nile torrents of turbid water for months together. The windows of heaven seem to have been opened, and the rain pours down as if it would never cease. Then the river of the Egyptians ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... in flood, a heavy storm having cast nearly two inches of rainfall upon part of the watershed. On the crest of the flood it was fast running and there was no delay, no stopping between dawn and dusk. Standing all day at the sweeps Rasba cleared the shore in sharp bends, avoided the obstacles in mid ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... general with the troops that were available to aid his loyal officers, whilst he should collect further troops to follow. He marched about ten days later, reached Kanauj, received there the submission of one of the rebel leaders, remained there ten days, waiting till the river, swollen by the rainfall, should subside. Learning then that the chief who was the head of the rebellion had proceeded to Lucknow, he promptly followed him thither with a small but chosen body of troops, and marching incessantly for ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... Territory means, 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 the agriculture of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... hatching from August to September. Actually, it is likely that the season is more restricted in time for any one year. Lowe's find was made in a year in which the summer rains were late, beginning in late July (Stebbins, 1951:137), whereas ours were made in a year having abundant and relatively early rainfall, beginning in late June. Microclimatic humidity is of extreme importance to both the salamanders ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... we came to a dead stop in the road four or five miles from town. Our exclamations of disgust were still hovering in the air when the storm struck us. As Sahwah has always described it, "And then the water came down at Lodore." I could devote several pages to the fury of that rainfall, but what is the use of taking up the reader's time when her own imagination will supply the details? Just imagine the worst storm you were ever caught in, or ever saw anyone else caught in, and multiply it by two or three times and ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... 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 in ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... small creek. Bathing was forbidden, as the creek was the only water supply for the army. The troops remained at this place until the afternoon of June 30th. The camp was in the valley of the creek, the ground is low and flat, and with the heavy rainfall every one was uncomfortable. Rations had to be brought from Siboney over a trail ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... given over to fruit farming, stock raising and pasturage. We next reached Cuyamaca and visited the dam of that name, which impounds the winter rains for the San Diego Flume Company. The country around the lake showed a deficiency of rainfall. ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... deep-throated gurgle echoed in the cold morning air and huge bubble, then a geyser of water shot up into the air in a cloud of moisture and vapor spray. It fell back to the dry river bed, spread once again upon the gravel that had known only the gentle touch of rainfall for three-quarters of a century and then boiled and roiled in a gathering head downstream rolling loose boulders ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... between sun-spots and terrestrial weather. So far, then, he would not be surprised on hearing the announcement of Professor Lockyer's recent paper before the Royal Society on the connection between sun-spots and the rainfall in India. But when the paper goes on to speak of the actual chemical nature of the sun-spots, as tested by a spectroscope; to tell of a "cool" stage when the vapor of iron furnishes chief spectrum lines, and of a ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... the jetty, with news from the Old World and the commodities which the New World did not yield. It must, then, have been one of the most eventful places in the uncomfortable isthmus; but no place can be very pleasant which has an annual rainfall of 120 inches and a mean annual temperature of about 80 deg.. The country adjacent is indescribably beautiful; the river is clear and brilliant; the woods are gorgeous with many-coloured blossoms, and with birds ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... another bread pellet upon the heap. "The roads of England are mended with pebbles! 'With the first heavy rainfall,' I've told 'em, 'your road will be a swamp.' Again and again my words have proved true. But d'you suppose they listen to me when I tell 'em so, when I point out the consequences, the consequences to the public purse, when I recommend 'em to read Coryphaeus? ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... hunter. "There's been no rainfall since August. If they find the tenaja empty they'll, have barely enough in the canteens they pack to get them to the next water, the Tenaja Poquita, around behind the mountains and across the desert into ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the rainfall, everything is ideal for crops and for living conditions. In the matter of food, one needs in fact do practically nothing. Fruits of a variety ample to sustain life, grow wild in abundance. Vegetables planted are harvested seemingly without blight or hazard of any ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... from pole to pole, civilization might be practically as well as ideally one, though it may fairly be doubted whether in such a world civilization, such as we know, would arise; but with the present distribution of land and water, temperature and rainfall, and the complex of plants and animals which results from their interaction, unity among the phenomena of culture ceases to be practicable, and it has become hard for some (as we have seen) even to keep their faith in the unity of ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... torrents that attended the breaking-up of the glacial period, as if in every way Nature had been making haste to prepare the land for the husbandman. Soil, climate, topographical conditions, all that the most exacting could demand, are present, but one thing, water, is wanting. The present rainfall would be wholly inadequate for agriculture, even if it were advantageously distributed over the lowlands, while in fact the greater portion is poured out on the heights in sudden and violent thundershowers called "cloud-bursts," the waters of which are fruitlessly swallowed up ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... about 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
... amuse the traveller. The only town which is at all worthy of the name is Beaufort West, nestling amid its trees, a bright patch of colour amid the neutral tints of the hills and surrounding country. Here reside many patients suffering from phthisis, for the air is dry and warm and the rainfall phenomenally small. But after all what a place to die in! Rather a shorter and sweeter life in dear England than ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... disinfectant. Burn all solid kitchen refuse as fast as it 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
... hours after the cattle had been bedded, and from then until dawn every man was in the saddle, the herd drifting fully three miles during the night. Such keen flashes of lightning accompanied by instant thunder I had never before witnessed, though the rainfall, after the first dash, was light in quantity. Several times the rain ceased entirely, when the phosphorus, like a prairie fire, appeared on every hand. Great sheets of it flickered about, the cattle and saddle stock were soon ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... night from the bottle which Fat Joe, in obedience to Steve's command, had left standing upon the shoulder-high shelf—drank first in a self-conscious fashion with a mumbled excuse to Joe that the rainfall had chilled him; then more and more openly, until he forgot that he had ever felt the need of an excuse. Not one of the three men had made a move to go to bed, and before midnight came around Garry's black fit of absorbtion had given way to another mood. Blithely he chafed Fat Joe one minute, blind ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... financial arrangements with Blizzard he had lived a life free from care, and indeed had grown and developed in many ways, just as a forest tree will, to which air and sunlight has been admitted by removing its nearest neighbors, together with all their claims upon the rainfall and the tree-food locked up ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the entire surface had a faint tint of green, as the young shoots of grass had replied to the late showers of rain; so perfect a level was this great tract of fertile country, that within a mile of the valley of the Atbara there was neither furrow nor watercourse, but the escape of the rainfall was by simple soakage. As usual, the land was dotted with mimosas, all of which were now bursting into leaf. The thorns of the different varieties of these trees are an extraordinary freak of Nature, as she appears to have exhausted all her art ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... for millstones and constructional purposes; the subsoil is limestone. The Yeres, a tributary of the Seine, and the Grand Morin and Petit Morin, tributaries of the Marne, are the chief rivers, but the region is not abundantly watered and the rainfall is only between 20 and 24 in. The Brie is famous for its grain and its dairy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... of May the monsoon blows up from the Indian Ocean and from the Bay of Bengal, when a rainfall averaging about twenty inches takes place and lasts during the ensuing quarter. This usually ceases about the end of September, when the weather is at its most sickly point. Constant exhalations of malaria take place till the return ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... 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 ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... assured by Drake, who brought 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 ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... rainfall," says the Department of Agriculture, "stimulate a luxuriant forest development throughout the country which in turn provides ample fountain heads for rivers. The rivers and streams run in all directions, affording opportunity for irrigation all over the country. The insular position ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... 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 ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... Water, warmth, and soil will grow anything in Australia, if rationally managed. Australia has abundance of water now running to waste. On thousands of house-roofs water enough is caught for the domestic use of the respective families. Over large areas of the country there are 30 inches of rainfall, and the average rainfall over vast areas is 24 inches, and could be made much greater by cultivation. Four-fifths of this water now runs to waste. Again surface-parched Australia has vast areas of underground ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Waters," bounded north and south by Canada and the Rio Grande, and extending west to the Rocky Mountain foot-hills, lay a huge empire of rolling territory. It was grass-covered, but lacked sufficient rainfall to make it fertile, so that it was considered, as part of it had early been called, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the rainfall. In a wet winter the moisture sinks far into the ground, but not so deep that the thirsty little roots cannot find it in the summer. Early rains are needed to soften the ground for November ploughing, and young ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... usually characterized by broken and more or less rugged surface features. As a rule they are deficient in the amount of rainfall necessary to produce an abundance of the grains and similar food-stuffs, although this is by no means the case ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... gifts in the cobbler's shoes. Now she could not risk spoiling the feather in her bonnet. The nine brats expressed their disappointment by slapping one another on the staircases. Peter felt that Mrs. Crowl connected him in some way with the rainfall, and was unhappy. Was it not enough that he had been deprived of the pleasure of pointing out to a superstitious majority the mutual contradictions of Leviticus and the Song of Solomon? It was not often that Crowl could count on such ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... abundance of water and a very large lagoon in the middle of it. He used the word laguna—lagoon, not lago—lake. His arrival in the Bahamas was at the height of the rainy season. Governor Rawson's Report on the Bahamas, 1864, page 92, Appendix 4, gives the annual rainfall at Nassau for ten years, 1855—'64, as sixty-four inches. From May 1, to November 1 is the wet season, during which 44.7 inches fall; the other six months 19.3 only. The most is ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... neighbours, and made each other's wills. (I am to leave my money—I rely on you to tell Quadratus—to a curled darling here who hums Alexandrian dance tunes divinely). And we have discussed ad nauseam the rainfall in Upper Egypt, the number of legions on the Rhine and the ships in from Africa. That clever Spanish friend of yours—what was his name?—Martial—was quite right about our conversations. It is a pity he had to pay out his obol for the longer journey before ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... impurity which the water may carry in is soon oxidised and rendered harmless. Those who have scampered like myself over the downs of Hants and Wilts will remember the scarcity of water in these regions. In fact, the rainfall, instead of washing the surface and collecting in streams, sinks into the fissured chalk and percolates through it. When this formation is suitably tapped, we obtain water of exceeding briskness and purity. A large glass globe, filled with the water of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of the public land, however, are less productive than others. Where the rainfall is slight and where irrigation is impracticable, and yet where crops can be raised by the "dry farming" process, the law allows a settler to take ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... marine, moderated by southeast trade winds; annual rainfall averages 124 inches; rainy season from November to April, dry season from May to October; little ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... summits perpetual thunderstorms seem to play, and from which fierce gales swoop down on the sea. Clammy, suffocating heat, fever-dealing swamps, decaying towns, with an effete population and a huge rainfall, do not constitute an attractive whole. Owing to the intense humidity, even the gales bring no ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... 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 not Ever ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... former experience. This appears in the fact that the various ideas which are necessary to interpret the new problem are to be selected out of larger complexes of past experience. For example, in a lesson whose problem is to account for the lack of rainfall in the Sahara desert, the pupil may have a complex of experiences regarding the position of the desert. Out of this mass of experience he must, however, select the one feature—its position in relation to the equator. In the same way, he may have a whole body of experience regarding ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... through which the big rivers flow is very flat, and is therefore liable to great floods. Australia has the reputation of being a very dry country; as a matter of fact, the rainfall over one-third of its area is greater than that of England. In most places the rainfall is, however, badly distributed. After long spells of very dry weather there will come fierce storms, during which the rain sometimes falls at the rate of an inch an hour. This fact, ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... if you 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 ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... struggled for years in town-meeting to secure some system of sewerage for 'the center,' but the 'ends of the town' always voted 'no'. On one occasion, in order to allay suspicion of extravagance, a leading villager moved that, whatever system of sewerage be adopted, the surface water and rainfall be allowed to take their natural course down-hill in the ordinary gutters. The farmers sniffed danger in this wily proposition and voted an overwhelming 'No.' Accordingly by the local law of Amherst, water had to run uphill until ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... as the place which has the greatest measured rainfall on the globe, became a popular station, and the discovery of coal there, and at several other places in the hills, attracted to it many visitors, some of whom published accounts of the country and people. The first detailed description ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... period, and 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 ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... had some trip over the hills in this storm," remarked Mr. Simpson, after the party had trooped into his place. "It's about as heavy a rainfall as we have had in some time. ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... 1911, at Eton, Bucks, England, the ground was found covered with masses of jelly, the size of peas, after a heavy rainfall. We are not told of nostoc, this time: it is said that the object contained numerous eggs of "some species of Chironomus, from which ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Rothamsted in 1879, and witnessed the injurious effect of an excessive rainfall, in washing out of the soil nitrate of soda and salts of ammonia, which were sown with the wheat in the autumn. It was an exceedingly wet season, and the loss of nitrates on all the different plots was ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... 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 air; and as to profanity—well, you could see the air about an enraged teamster turn blue as he exhorted his impenitent mules. And the rain! how it did come down! As I recall it, the spring of 1862 did not measure its rainfall in Western Tennessee by ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... 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 ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... he can by the grace of God always rejoice. Alum thrown into muddy water will clarify it. The grace of God thrown into a cup of sorrow will turn it to joy. Sorrows are needful. It is only a barren waste where there is no rainfall. ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... 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 ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... operations. Far 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 reduced to ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... Disputes - international: Abundant rainfall in recent years along much of the Mexico-US border region has ameliorated periodically strained water-sharing arrangements; the US has intensified security measures to monitor and control legal and illegal personnel, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... as it 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
... the best results are to be secured; this is especially true when deep-rooted plants, as beets, parsnips, and other root-crops, are to be grown; it prepares the soil to hold moisture; and it allows the water of heavy rainfall to pass to greater depths rather than to be held as puddles and in mud on ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... district, marked by its equably distributed rainfall, and therefore naturally forest-clad, I have seen the trees diminish in number, give place to wide prairies, restrict their growth to the borders of streams, and then disappear from the boundless drier plains; ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... 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 ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... 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 ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... cell contents. This residue is described as 'permanent tissue.' The observations were carried out through two growing seasons—1894-5—which were very different in character, the former being rainy with low temperature, the latter being abnormal in the opposite direction, i.e. minimum rainfall and maximum sunshine. The barley selected for observation was that of two experimental plots of the Royal Agricultural Society's farm, one (No. 1) remaining permanently unmanured, and showing minimum yield, the other ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... begins the flood and is followed at dawn by a thunderstorm and hurricane. But in itself the term abubu implies flood, which could take place through a rise of the rivers unaccompanied by heavy local rain. The annual rainfall in Babylonia to-day is on an average only about 8 in., and there have been years in succession when the total rainfall has not exceeded 4 in.; and yet the abubu is not a thing ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... stifling sense, inspired by the crush of towering hills, was exaggerated as the sun rose in the heavens and revealed the obscurer recesses of the stupendous world. And now, too, the forest grew dank and moist, and the steady dripping of the melting snow upon the branches became like a heavy rainfall within the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... workers, dependent on grass and rainfall, lived close to the subsistence margin and were at the mercy of forces they could not control. Traders and money changers, with an eye for business in a growing marketplace made a more ample living. At the same time ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... this street, formerly the Grand'Rue de Saumur, the words: "Here's golden weather," are passed from door to door; or each man calls to his neighbor: "It rains louis," knowing well what a sunbeam or the opportune rainfall is ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... with mud, obtrudes on the left the village of Elchingen, now in the hands of the French. Its white- walled monastery, its bridge over the Danube, recently broken by the irresistible NEY, wear a desolated look, and the stream, which is swollen by the rainfall and rasped by the storm, seems ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... 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 seeing the beautifully engineered ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... the months of April, May and June, the thermometer ranged from forty deg., at 5 A.M., to about sixty-five deg., in the middle of the day. I kept no record later than June, having loaned my instrument to a vessel, whose barometer had become useless. The annual rainfall varies according to local topography, from forty-five inches to seventy-five inches, the west coast, especially at the heads of the inlets, receiving much the largest amount, and the north and eastern portions of Graham Island ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... government left its people alone; that was one great virtue. And, again, any government, however good, however bad, is but a small factor in the life of a people; it comes far below many other things in importance. A short rainfall for a year is more disastrous than a mad king; a plague is worse than fifty grasping governors; social rottenness is incomparably more dangerous than ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... 1951-52 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] which resulted in disastrous forest fires filling ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... which 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 ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... that 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 upon the desert. On the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... easy," was the answer, "but costly. If big reservoirs are built on all the headwater streams so that—no matter what the rainfall may be—only a constant amount is allowed to flow out of these reservoirs, then floods will be avoided, there will be plenty of water for irrigation, and a steady depth of water in the channel will extend navigation that ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler |
