The New York herald., 1870-08-13


Presidents Indian policy has been eminently
successful and shows that the red man can be
conquered more easily with justice and fair
dealing than with the sabre and the bullet.
Cheering signs of the End OF tho Dry
scasen-Do Heavy Cannonadinss Bring
Rains
We have the good news In our dispatches
from the seat of war that simultaneously 9th
the oopious, life-renewing rains which have
been falling for some days past over all our
own thirsty land, from the coast of New Eng
land westward to the Rocky Mountains, heavy
and widely extended showers have fallen over
Europe. From these interesting and cheering
facts we are drawn to the conclusion that the
long dry season, which has been 30 disastrous to
all the crops in Europe, from tho Atlantic to
the Black Sea, and so alarming to the farmers
of our Northern States in reference to their
growing crops Of Indian corn, potatoes, grass,
forests, &C., is ended, and that now, on both
sides of the ocean, the suffering cultivators Of
the soil may look for bountiful supplies Of rain.
Recently, in the suburbs of Paris, they
tried the experiment Of heavy cannonadlng,
under the idea that the electrical perturbations
In the atmosphere caused by the concussion
would result in attracting great volumes of
vapor 10 be condensed in the locality Of the
salute to Jupiter Pluvius. The experiment. it
appears, was not successful, and yet we
are inclined to believe that the heavy
cannonading Of great battle, or Of
a series of great battles in quick
succession, will bring in the clouds and floods
of rain. We think so, because the cases
wherein great battles have been attended or
quickly followed by heavy rains are 80 nume-
rous that we can hardly account for these phe-
nomena in the chapter Of accidents. Take the
campaigns of Napoleon the First for example,
and from field TO field he appears to have been
followed by the ablutions of the rain king. In
his last desperate and disastrous struggle,
after several days Of cannonadings in the
battles eliminating in Waterloo, the French
army on that field, we may say, was van
quished by the heavy rains Of that fatal 18th
of June, in consequence of the deep mud thus
created, in which Napoleon's artillery was
mred and by which his cavalry and infantry
were impeded in their movements upon the
enemy.
But again, in turning TO the great battles of
our late rebellion, we find nearly all of them
attended or Immediately followed by drench-
ing showers of rain. The mere mention of the
first Bull run, the sanguinary battle of Shiloh,
the bloody and disastrous seven days battles
of Mcclellan on the Richmond peninsula the
Bull run battles Of Pope, ending In the rain
and night battles at Chantilly, Antietam, the
three terrible days Of Hooker In the Wilder
ness, the Aercely contested fields Of Chica-
mausa, Getty ysburg, and Grants battles OF
Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Hooker's battle
iu the clouds, Grants campaign in the Viii
derness and down to Richmond, and many
other fields of battles and rains, from the Po.
tomac to the Red river, go strongly to support
the opinion that heavy cannonadings do bring
down the rain. The facts to which we have
referred in this connection are certainly very
curious and interesting.
nonadings have operated to bring On, at the
same time, these refreshing rains on both sides
of the Atlantic, although the vapor in the
European atmosphere may have been most
heavily diverted to the Rhine frontier by the
atmospheric perturbations resulting from the
late heavy cannonadings in that quarter. We
adhere to our explanation of this dry summer
in Europe, and the United States and the
Canadas, given the other day from the interest
ing meteorological reports embraced in the
''logs" of the yachts Cambria and Dauntless, in
their late Atlantic race. The great material
centre and source of light and life to our plane
tary system-the glorious sun-has been giving
out an extraordinary degree Of heat this summer.
Consequently from the rocky shores of both
sides OF Bafin's Bay a-much larger summer
procession of icebergs than usual has been cut
loose by the sun, and has drifted down with
the Arctic current from "Greenland's icy
mountains into the Northern Atlantic. These
icebergs have thus, to much greater extent
than usual, operated as condensers in the
Atlantic of the exhalations from the warm
| Gulf Stream, which otherwise would have
been carried by the winds to the land on both
sides. We may safely assume, however, that
by this time, those icebergs seen from the
Cambria, and all the great procession to which
they belonged, have been dissolved by the sun,
and that with their removal the vapor of the
North Atlantic is being borne on the winds to the
marched 1ands or Eurnna and North Amarico
But while first consulting the great general
causes indicated for the explanation of these
returning rains in Europe and America, we
are still Inclined to the belief that the late
heavy cannonadings on the Rhine frontier have
had much to do with the heavy rains that have
80 closely followed them.
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