46 THE WORLDS LUMBER ROOM. 



once they are embedded in the soil, the whole mass creeps 

 down even the gentlest slope, and so fills the valleys. 



But rain does more than produce springs and landslips. 

 A heavy fall will do a certain amount of direct damage, even 

 in this temperate climate, by washing away gravel, and 

 making watercourses down the sides of the hills and along 

 the roads ; but in the tropics its operations are on a much 

 larger scale. There it comes down, r not in drops, but in 

 strings, and is often so heavy that fresh water may be 

 scooped up from the surface of the sea ! 



After seven hours' rain in Brazil, on one occasion, there 

 were torrents rushing down every slope; the water streamed 

 through the roofs and out at the doors, and it was feared 

 that the whole village of Capelhinha would be washed 

 away. At such times the rain descends in streams so 

 dense that the level ground is quite unable to absorb it, and 

 is quickly covered with a sheet of water, while it rushes 

 down the hills in torrents of such volume as to wear deep 

 channels in their sides, and to wash away all the mould 

 from the rocks. 



A few miles from Sydney, where the soil is friable, a 

 chasm, twenty feet deep and twenty yards across, has been 

 scooped out by the rain in the course of a dozen years 

 or so ; and the Blue Mountains of Australia have been cut 

 into extraordinary deep gullies and chasms by the same agent. 



It is not often possible to distinguish between the effect 

 of driving rain and that of running water, as the two are 

 generally combined ', but in several places, notably in the 

 Ravine of Finsterbach, columns of hardened mud, from 

 twenty to a hundred feet in height, have been cut out, and 



