New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-07-11
TIC Earth Out OF Order.

The London Telegraph, alludng to the in
undations, earthquakes, &C., which have
visited Europe lately, says:
Something surely must be the matter with
the internal and external health of the little
planet upon which we liye. The earth is
apparently out of order, and her malady
takes the form of volcanic eruptons, earth
quakes, cyclones land hurricanes in the warmer
attitudes, and of damp, wretched weather,
or ruinous floods in the colder regions. We
Britons have passed moist, ungenial spring
here at home, and our farmers begin to ask
each other with anxiety whether the drenched
grain crops can be nursed by any amount of
future sunshine into good harvest.
Meantime the sunshine does not come,
or will not stay when it does come I; and
the grass, which has been growing fast, with
all this wet, wants bright skies to make 1t
seed and mellow properly. But the state of
things upon many parts of the continent is
far more serious. During the last fifteen or
twenty days floods of extraordinary volume
have ravaged some of the finest and most
fruitful parts of mid-Europe. Bohemia has
especially suffered.
A tremendous rain-storm recently broke
over the district about Prague and such
torrents have since rolled from mountain and
upland that the rivers of that province are
pastures and arabic land lies under water.
Houses and farmsteads have been swept
away; whole villages indeed have disap-
peared, with. live stock, stacks, implements,
and, what is worst Of all, scores, nay, it
is said hundreds, of the agricultural inhabi-
tants. The Moldau and Eyer, thus prefer
naturally swollen, have poured a INDUSTRIOUS
volume into the Elbe, which has in turn
flooded its banks with great damage. Other
German rivers have similarly burst their
bounds, and even steady Father Rhine has
gone mad, and submerged the country near
Starsburg while further off the Moselle,
near Nancy, presents the aspect Of u vast
and tempestuous lake. Switzerland has
experienced a corresponding visitation. At
Berne the Aar has overfiowedin into the town;
Frburg and the Valais are drenched; the
pleasant cantons near and far beneath tho
Bernes and Pennine Alps have seen their
bridges swept away, their growing rye and
oats laid low, and their hay crops sodden.
But, next to Bohemia, the case of North
Italy appears perhaps the worst. The lakes
and rivers of Lombardy have been gorged
with flood of waters eqnaling or exceeding
that which came down in 1869. The noun
tain roads of the Simplon and st. Gothard
have been rent and blocked up by furious tor
rents, bursting their embankments and leap
ing through the massive bridges which span
them. The Sesia, Maggia, and other Alpine
channels which lead the upper waters to the
plains, have flung foaming dcluge into the
lakes of Maggiore, LuganO, and Como, and
these, no longer able to discharge it fast
enough by the Ticina, AIDA, and Pc, have
risen above bank and wall, and laid the flax
and mulberry districts of Lombardy under a
sea of inundation which stands half way up
the telegraph poles, and is reported to have
wrought ruin estimated at many millions of
livres. We might lengthen the melancholy
catalogue of damages by speaking of the
Lere, the Rhone, and many other rivers OF
France, which have followed the example of
the Alta-Italian streams, but enough has
been said, no doubt, to prove that while our
farmers are soaked, those of neighboring
countries have been deluged, il, indeed, the
worst be over yet.