The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-01-01
BEATS A BAROMETER.


NEW YORK, Dec. 31.-Lordville, in this
State, has a natural weather gauge of its
own. 1t belongs to the community at large
and it is confidently consulted by every in
habitant No resident of Lordville has
need of glass tube TO foretell the weather.
for store barometers sometimes lie, and
Lordvilles has never yet been known to
fail Whenever one of the citizens wants
to know absolutely and beyond question
whether or not there is going to be
storm, he merely walks down to the Della
ware river and listens to the trains on the
Ontario & Western Railroad, the nearest
point of which is fully eight miles distant.
If he hears nothing he can safely go rabbit
shooting make preparations TO get in
his hay in the morning. If. on the other
hand, he can hear the railroad doing bust
ness, he knows ii is time to suspend out-of-
door operations.
Reputable people who have investigated
the matter report that the sounds come
from a certain curve on the road near Fish
Eddy, which is the east branch of the
Delaware river. Some popularity of the
formation of the country allows the sound
to be carried from this point to Lordville.
and, SO far as yet discovered, the sounds
are not observed at any intermediate
points. The most curious thing about IL is
that these sounds are not heard at Lord
vile except when a storm is coming. The
explanation is that undoubtedly the wind
must be i'm the right direction, and the pc
culiar climatic conditions that prevail while
storm is brewing must be present. The
sounds seem to pour down through the air
from no particular direction, and manifest
themselves in comparatively narrow
piece OF territory on the north bank of the
river. Like all other trustworthy barome-
tiers, Lordville's is graded, and the violence
n m he IF ed
by the distinctness of the sounds. Ii is as
serted that before the blizzard of 1858 one
could hear the trains clearly, and that the
exact language of every brakeman could
be made out. The correspondent is eager
TO add. however. that he believes that local
pride in the phenomenon has somehow got
mixed up in this statement.
AT the store convention held at Lordvile
recently the matter came up for informal
discussion. The oldest inhaDitant said that
the phenomenon was even more marked
before the forests were cut down. AT one
time, he said, people near Lordville could
hear the men of the lumber camps at work
at various points at the east branch After
the disappearance of the forests the sounds
were not reproduced with such distinct
ness. Then the direction that the sounds
travelled was commented upon. One man
said that they came down the east branch
of the Delaware to Hancock and thence
down the river proper to Lordville. Others
asserted that they came down the pike.
which is even more circuitous route.
One of these views is perhaps correct for
the intervening country between Fish Eddy
and Lordville is very rough and billy, and
I'm some degree impossible. A stranger
mildly suggested that perhaps the noise
was caused by trains on the nearby Erie
Railroad, but IL was triumphantly pointed
out to him that the Erie engines do not
have duplex whistles. The Ontario e.
Western whistles of this variety, and
this is the kind of whistles that accompa-
MES the other noises when II is going TO
storm in Lordviile.