The Gisborne Times PUPLISHED EVERY MORNING GISBORNE, JUNE 19, 1903. DESCRIPTION OF A FLOOD.

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 920, 19 June 1903, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUPLISHED EVERY MORNING GISBORNE, JUNE 19, 1903. DESCRIPTION OF A FLOOD.

“ Have you ever seen a Hood ?” is. a question asued by a clever writer in the Aueniand tterald, under the pen-name oi “ Tohunga.” It is explained that what is meant is not an ordinary sort or wetting that peopie in New Zealand have got into me habit of terming a Hood, “ but a deluge oi waters such as the tableman lias been Lelimg us about, when towns go under and when a whole

countryside vanishes lroin sight.” it is added that ny seeing suen a Hood one would see lifeloug cause lor being perpetually thankful that we live in a laud where great Hoods are generally unknown. Tnen follows a description so line that we reprint it, with acknowledgements to me .journal quoted from. “ Toliunga ” goes on to state For a Hood, a great liood, is among those lew deadly happenings which make a man feci that he is no bigger than an ant. \ou can light a lire, even a hush lire, lulling uaeiv perhaps from clearing to clearing, but always having a “ go ” at it—choking, coughing, blistering, feverish, but kept hot-hear-ted by being one of a long line of lire-lighters and cool-tougued by the girls who run up and down with the unnking-pails. The flames are an enemy you can see and hate and strike at, an enemy who comes against you with the wind behind him, and smoke-banners waving over him, Who shouts at you with crack and crash of timber, who enjoys his savage raid on fence and field and homestead, and dies unwillingly beneath your feet. Against lire there is a ciiance, but not against Hood. When the heavens open and the waters rise you save life where you can and let the rest go. Of course they try to light a hood sometimes. They tried on the Australian Darling, back in the ’nineties, when Dourke stood on the defensive, and for long days and nights held its own beneath the cloudless sky. Then the trains ran out and in, ticketless and chargeless, over the high embankment, carrying out to distant safety women and children, and the men would go, carrying into beleaguered Bourke thousands of would-be

rescuers, anybody and everybody who could swing a pick or handle a shovel. The engineers planned the de-

fence, and upon their lines rose the encircling bank, drawn by hurrying from street and garden and vacant lots, built inch by, inch, up and up the narrowing wall. At a weak angle, they made their breach with insidious current, undermined it, crumbled it an inch or two. And on the instant, the silent, smiling water leapt through foaming. A gathering torrent poured headlong down upon the sunken town. It. was then the defenders found that you cannot fight water. They rolled full tanks into the breach to see them swept away like corks. They clasped waists, and for a moment made a living wall of squatting flesh, against which carts dumped their loads and shovellers levelled. They worked and toiled and schemed—but every instant the breach widened and the torrent deepened. And they talked over what might have been done perched on roofs and standing ankle deep on the useless embankment, waiting to be ferried over to the one solitary knoll that rose flatly out of the world of waters. And all the time the sun shone by day and the stars burned untwinkling at night. The flood had seized upon every house and didn’t even seem interested in what it was doing. Hut you cannot usually get up even an attempt at lighting flood. For, usually, it comes with blinding rains and pitch-black nights, with the flight of birds and the scurrying of wild beasts, with tremors of stock selfherded in terror, and the panic movements of creeping things. You think of the lower levels and you say you feel sorry for poor Smith, and wnen poor Smith arrives with weeping wife and bedraggled children and a few scanty salvages in Ins cart, you fling the hospitable door wide open and pile the tire up and talk with loud, cheerful- voice, as you make them cat and drink. Then you and Smith turn out, greatcoated—and you Jind that the boggy road is being travelled as never on a market day, and that the downhill houses are alive with lights. The rain takes up and you see lantern lights moving hither and thither over the black level. You blunder down

slope and you are knee-deep in water before you understand. There is a glimmer of light, a splash of oars, a shout through the darkness. Over yesterday’s fields a boat comes sweeping, a dozen white-faced outcasts are bundled out into your hands, and the volunteer oarsmen are off again with a desperate eagerness that speaks more than all their hasty words. A baby wails in your arms for its mother, who shelters in hers a sick child. A tottering old woman babbles feebly of having forgotten some cherished token. Strong and weak, old and young, siek and well, master and men, mistress and

maid, are alike homeless and destitute ; only the weaker cling to stronger shoulders and the neipless are not flung aside to die. Then the rain comes drenching down again. As proud owner of an unbonded roof, vou take command. Smith lieutenant —his despair lost in kindly pity for others. A friendly waggon is at service, and while the fugitives warm and comfort by your preside you and .muin aarne.ss up and take the downhill road on wheels. The stranger and his man go with you.

There is work 10-night for every strong man and for every team. So through the night of flood on settled level. There is a steam whistle now, for a launch has come in the nick of time, and brings in load after load from where the toiling boats visit house after house, work-

ing in from the river towards the ever-deepening shallows, sweeping the night as with a drag-net. Nut always do the living land alone, for twice a covered thing is tenderly handed out and borne in deep silence to a cart that stands apart. A bunlire of kerosened fence-wood hissei

and blazes against the rain, to guide the water-men. There is open house to-night, go where you will, and every scattered house on the upland, and every barn, are full. The grey dawn and the gloomy, soaking day only come to show the desolation. A great lake stretches out to the further hills—a lake dotted with treetops and marked on its edges by jutting roofs, and smeared everywhere with wreckage. The boats are salvaging at hall-drowned houses, the carts at homesteads whose feet

are laved by the water that sti rises silently. Unless it cease to rise before your verandah is awash, you and yours and those you shelter must turn out into the rain. For when the floods knock no man can say them nay. As long as the heavens remain open, man must leave to the rising waters all that they claim. And as it comes over the countryside, so it comes upon the town, more fiercely because townsmen always try to cripple and confine the natural powers. Pent between embankments, the flood is as a giant running amuck. It surges against the railway bridge that ciatty engineers have weighted with coal trucks, ballast trucks, crowded on to the uttermost ; it batters with trunks of trees, hammers with floated houses, presses with great masses of debris that jamb between the pier's and from which the water spurts fountains to the roadway. The shaking bridge sways at last—is gone. And half the town that night is outcast, sheltered in churches and schools and public buildings, or in the house of more fortunate friends. And the rescue boats ply the streets as in Venice. .Such is flood, only more so. It cannot he told to he understood. It must he seen. Just as must the solemn loneliness of flooded grass flats, through which you journey on starry nights ny lamiliar track, where, saddle-deep in water, there is nothing visible in the mirk hut the faint t sheen of the flooded earth, yet through which that wonderful beast, the horse who knows, will pick his unseen way for miles unblimderingly. But one would never end if one. began to write of all the weird and woeful and wondrous sights that are to he secu when the heavens open.