“‘Oh, nonsense. That is no rain at all.’
“‘No rain at all,’ I answered. ‘Do you have worse rains than this in Australia?’
“‘Why, certainly we do,’ he replied. ‘I have known it to rain so hard that this would be a sprinkle by comparison. I remember the 25th of February, 1873, when nine inches of rain fell here in Melbourne inside of nine hours. An inch of rain in an hour is a good deal, isn’t it?’
“Ned and I admitted that it was, and then our informant continued:—
“‘I happened to be in Newcastle early in 1871, when they had the greatest rainfall that I ever saw or heard of in any country. In less than three hours ten and a half inches of rain fell, and the story was that it was so thick that the fishes in the harbor could not distinguish between the rain cloud and the bay, and actually swam up half a mile or so into the air. One man said that he had a barrel with both ends knocked out, and the rain went in at the bung hole faster than it could run out at the ends.’
“I asked the gentleman how long the storm lasted, and he said that twenty-one hours elapsed between the beginning and the end of it, and during that time twenty inches of water fell, and the streets of Newcastle were like small rivers.
“The gentleman remarked, in conclusion, that it was a great pity the rainfall was not distributed more evenly, both in time and amount, than it is. Some parts of the coast get a great deal more rain than they have any use for. The floods destroy a large amount of property, and the superfluous rain flows away in the rivers, inundating large areas of ground and doing more harm than good, but through the greater part of the interior the rainfall is far less than the land requires. The ground becomes parched, the streets dry up, and the grasses wither, and the whole face of nature presents a scene of sterility. Sometimes there is no rain for long periods. There have been times when not a drop of rain fell for two years, and but for the heavy dews at night, a vast extent of land would have been absolutely turned to a desert. Cattle and sheep perished by the million, of starvation and thirst. The production of grain fell off enormously and the whole country was very seriously affected.
“Ned asked if no remedy had ever been found or proposed for this state of affairs.
“A remedy had been suggested, said the gentleman, which would save herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, but it would not save from destruction the crops in the fields.
“‘What is that?’ Ned asked.