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What a change had taken place! A continuous drought had reduced the lake from its original size of twenty-two miles in circumference to a mere pool of about four miles in circuit; this was all that remained of the noble sheet of water around which I had formerly enjoyed so much sport.
Our first and last object, therefore, as might be supposed, from knowing these circumstances, was to ascertain, before mounting the hill-range, which route would afford us the best facilities for a speedy march now. No one, however, could or would advise us. The whole country on ahead, especially Ugogo, was oppressed by drought and famine.
At such times I hear the beat of the waves at the foot of the rock, and feel like a prisoner on an island. Eden would not be Eden in a rainstorm. The drought occurred just after the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples, and many think on account of it.
Here a parching drought, accompanied by famine, commenced in the tract of country watered by the rivers Kiang and Hoai. This was followed by such violent torrents of rain, in and about Kingsai, at that time the capital of the empire, that, according to tradition, more than 400,000 people perished in the floods. Finally the mountain Tsincheou fell in, and vast clefts were formed in the earth.
The similarity in the phrases, telegraph pole and dry heaven, had inspired the common belief that the line of poles then stretching across the country was responsible for the long-existing drought. In one night several miles of poles were sawed short off, by the secret order of a banded conspiracy.
These wildernesses were rendered unfit for man, sometimes by excessive heat, sometimes by excessive cold, sometimes from being parched by perpetual drought, which produced bare and desolate deserts, and sometimes by incessant rains, which drenched the country and filled it with morasses and fens.
Following a heavy downpour of rain on Easter Sunday night the atmosphere at Topeka, Kansas, was filled with dust until it had the appearance of a heavy fog. The dust came from the western part of the state where severe dust storms prevailed. In western Kansas the "blowout" has been as great a source of damage to the wheat fields as the drought or chinch bugs or hot winds.
It is very rarely that it will be possible to supply water enough in a whole week to equal in its effect a half-hour's rain; but the difference between towns where even the small amount of water is available for the garden and those which are hopelessly given over to drought shows how much may be accomplished in this direction even with limited means.
It may be stated, that in the very same paper we are informed that the drought had recently been so great that scarcely a cabbage, or any other vegetable but potato, was to be obtained in the town.
Walking out until I was certain that the musicians were between me and our fire, I found that they could be merry on nothing else but a prospect of rain. From the Bushmen I afterward learned that the matlametlo makes a hole at the root of certain bushes, and there ensconces himself during the months of drought.
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