Higher and higher
rose the water, and faster and faster came the rain. Boats were washed away from
the wharves; steamers could not face the current and get up the river, so had to
remain in Moreton Bay. Debris of all kinds floated on the water. Houses were washed
away and homes ruined. There is nothing so pitiless as water. I think it beats fire.
There is a chance of getting a fire under, water never.
— Gould, Nat, Town and Bush. London 1896,
Ringwood: Penguin, 1974, 37.
The rain it raineth
on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just’s umbrella
— Charles Bowen (1835-1894), Sichel, Sands
of Time.
Après nous le deluge.
Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793).
The question is, ‘Do
most people understand that by the time we, the scientists, are all absolutely certain
it will be much too late to avert most of the changes that humanity is currently
effecting?’
— ‘When should scientists speak out?’, Professor Ann Henderson-Sellers, Ockham’s Razor 3, ABC Books, 1991.
I have received petrified
shells of very different kinds from the first sources of the Kentucky, which bear
no resemblance to any I have ever seen on the tide-waters. It is said that shells
are found in the Andes, in South-America, fifteen thousand feet above the level
of the ocean. This is considered by many, both of the learned and unlearned, as
a proof of an universal deluge. To the many considerations opposing this opinion,
the following may be added. The atmosphere, and all its contents, whether of water,
air, or other matters, gravitate to the earth; that is to say, they have weight.
Experience tells us, that the weight of all these together never
exceeds that of a column of mercury of 31 inches height, which is equal to one of
rain-water of 35 feet high. If the whole contents of the atmosphere then were water,
instead of what they are, it would cover the globe but 35 feet deep; but as these
waters, as they fell, would run into the seas, the superficial measure of which
is to that of the dry parts of the globe as two to one, the seas would be raised
only 52 1/2 feet above their present level, and of course would overflow the lands
to that height only. In Virginia this would be a very small proportion even of the
champaign country, the banks of our tide-waters being frequently, if not generally,
of a greater height. Deluges beyond this extent then, as for instance, to the North
mountain or to Kentucky, seem out of the laws of nature.
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of
Virginia, 1781 – 2. [There was a time when US Presidents had common sense:]
Fifteen cubits upward
did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
— Holy Bible, Genesis, 7:20.
Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Around the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England — now!
And after April, when
May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows —
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray’s edge —
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
— Robert Browning (1812 – 1889), Home-thoughts,
from abroad.
Gilbert White, weather watcher
April 17, 1779: Rain
greatly wanted. No spring corn comes up. The dry weather has now lasted four months
…
April 5, 1780: The
frost injured the bloom of the wall-trees.
April 6, 1782: Many
hail-storms about.
April 4, 1784: Snow
as deep as the horses belly under the hedges in the North field.
April 1, 1785: Snow
hangs in the trees & makes a perfect winter scene.
— Gilbert White (1720 – 1793), Journal,
MIT Press, 1970.
… the moon was in
its first quarter, during which time it is popularly believed in some parts of Maoriland
that the south-easter is most likely to be out on the wallaby and the weather bad.
— Henry Lawson, ‘The Geological Spieler’, in While the Billy Boils, second series, 148 in the collected short stories.
For three successive
years (1827, 1828, and 1829) the usual supply of rain was in great measure withheld
from the colony. An entire failure of the crop in some districts, and a partial
failure in others, were the necessary consequences; while the pasture grounds presented
the aspect of a beaten highway, and the cattle were reduced to extremities from
the scarcity of water.
— Maclehose, J, Picture of Sydney; and Strangers’
Guide in New South Wales for 1839. Sydney: Maclehose, 1839 and St Ives: John
Ferguson Pty Ltd, 1977, 55.
Two years of desolating
drought had preceded our arrival in Sydney, and the melancholy proofs of its ravages
among the brute creation met us here at every turn, in the remains of unfortunate
oxen, that had perished for want in their toilsome journeys over the mountains,
where neither food nor water remained for them; and as the dray-journeys from the
distant stations to Sydney occupy from three to six weeks, the lingering, protracted
misery endured, even by the wretched animals who survived, is horrible to contemplate.
In some places by the road side white skeletons alone remained; farther on we saw
other carcasses still covered with hide; then bones again; and so on, continually
meeting these terrible proofs of the poor brutes’ suffering and death. It recalled
to my mind descriptions I have read of the caravan tracks in the sandy deserts of
Africa, where the bleached bones of animals that have perished in the journey serve
as guides to future travellers..
— Louise Ann (Mrs Charles) Meredith, Notes
and Sketches of New South Wales. London: John Murray, 1844, and Ringwood: Penguin
Books, 1973, 71.
April 13. A great
thunderstorm at Woodstock, & Islip; the Charwel much flooded and discoloured…
Prodigious was the damage done about the Kingdom on this day by storms of thunder,
lightening, & vast torrents, & floods, & hail.
— Gilbert White (1720 – 1793), Journal,
(1792).
Just as a reservoir
is of little use when the whole countryside is flooded, scriptures are of little
use to the illumined man or woman, who sees the Lord everywhere.
— Bhagavad Gita, 2:46, in the translation
of Eknath Easwaran, Arkana Books, 1985.
It freezes under people’s
beds.
— Gilbert White, Journal, 3 January, 1768.
Hoist your sail when
the wind is fair.
— Proverb.
The current of air
which runs through our nose in normal inhalation corresponds to Force 2 on the Beaufort
scale …
— Primo Levi (1919 – 1987), ‘The Book of Strange Data’ in Other People’s Trades, 114.
Fair stood the wind
for France,
When we our sails advance.
— Michael Drayton (1563 – 1631), Agincourt.
They have sown the
wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
— Holy Bible, Hosea, 8:7.
The wind bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh,
and whither it goeth.
— Holy Bible, The Gospel according to
St John, 3:8.
And on the third day
in the morning, there was thunder and lightning and a dark cloud upon the mountain
and a very loud trumpet blast, and all the people who were in the camp trembled.
And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God and they assembled at the
foot of the mountain…
— Exodus 19.
If we had never been
molested by alarms at celestial and atmospheric phenomena, nor by the misgiving
that death somehow affects us, nor by neglect of the proper limits of pains and
desires, we should have had no need to study natural science.
— Epicurus (341 – 271 BCE)
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