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The total rainfall of the wettest locality in Victoria was 42.11 inches. Here the month of March alone gave 44.90 inches. The two driest months of Dunk Island fell short by a trifle more than 2 inches of the total fall for 1904 for that parched area. That was a dry year with us. What is known in this neighbourhood as "the drought year" gave just 60 inches.
In the summer, there is no dew, and the ground dries up and cracks, the plants withering up: 1841, not considered as a dry year, gave only 8-1/2 inches of rain; but in 1831, one of the wettest, the moisture interfered with agriculture more than the drought does, saturating the soil, which rests on a deep impermeable clayey formation. In April and May, when the snows melt, the steppe is a vast sea of mud, liable to be hardened by occasional frosts, until, as the season advances, myriads of crocuses, tulips, and hyacinths, cover the soil, which perhaps a few days later will be hidden by north-east snowstorms, or drenched by gales from the north-west.
Two delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them, where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest, had assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet shoes and stockings given Marianne a cold so violent as, though for a day or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing ailments on the concern of every body, and the notice of herself.
Edwin Hunt, writing in the "Madras Mail," Feb. 27th, 1891, says that he attaches the greatest importance to change of seed irrespective of the poorness or richness of the soil on which it has been raised, and thinks change of climate does as much as change of soil, and has for some years found it advantageous to procure seed from the wettest climate for the driest climate, and vice versa.
Now they were standing "before the sea" in a long, jubilant row. They ran out with the receding wave to the larger stones out in the water, and then stood on the stones and jumped when the water came up again, like a flock of sea birds. The art consisted in keeping yourself dryshod, and yet it was the quickest boys who got wettest.
The soldiers of France in that strange land called la-bas had one consolation which should have helped them a little did help them, I think, more than a little to endure the almost intolerable misery of their winter quarters at the front in one of the wettest half years within living memory.
In the due revolution of the seasons King Cotton donned his royal robes of ermine once more, and sacks again became the one thing needful. It was the very rainiest, wettest, muddiest picking-season that had ever been seen. In pursuance of my plan, I had seven or eight women down from the quarters, and a spinning-wheel also, which was set to humming right under our bed-room window.
A number of men left their stations suddenly without permission, and seemed to take great interest in the sea just over the rail. As the sun sank, the wind rose, and with it came rain rain in sheets the "wettest" kind of rain. When the port watch was relieved at eight o'clock, even the veriest landsman among us could tell that the situation was becoming serious.
Her retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same direction through the wettest of the wet grass. "Is that young woman mad?" said my guardian.
Presently we saw a jackass laden with vegetables come swimming down the street, carried along by the current. He was swept away into a large open drain, and disappeared. The peasant who owned him, and who had also been carried away, only saved himself from a like fate by clinging to a lamp-post. In one hour there fell more water than there falls in Paris during the two wettest months in the year.
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