PROVING THE RULE 



so prodigious a rainfall? Two inches an 

 hour is not beyond experience in temperate 

 latitudes; there had been many hours of 

 this so-called 'cloud-burst', half a day of 

 exceedingly heavy rain upon the top of it, 

 and not a moment's pause throughout the 

 twenty-four hours. Our guess at a fall of 

 ten inches erred, I am pretty sure, on the 

 side of defect. (The conditions were local, 

 but the weather-map, afterwards examined, 

 does not deny the possibility.) 



Consider what ten inches of water 

 means: — 1000 tons to the acre; 640,000 tons 

 to the square mile. Reckoning the catch- 

 ment-basin above us at 300 square miles, 

 here were 192,000,000 tons of surplus water 

 which the river must hurry past our door. 

 Heap it upon a single acre, and your four- 

 square column mounts thirty miles into the 

 sky. 



All day the river rose; the rapid above 

 us, no more than whispering yesterday, was 

 now hoarse with mad rage ; rock after rock, 

 island after island, drowned before our 

 eyes in the red swirling current where be- 

 fore had stretched a peaceful dead-water. 



One strange little drama unrolled itself 

 as we looked across the flood. A mother 

 loon with two chicks, washed from their 

 117 



