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Drought   Listen
noun
Drought  n.  
1.
Dryness; want of rain or of water; especially, such dryness of the weather as affects the earth, and prevents the growth of plants; aridity. "The drought of March hath pierced to the root." "In a drought the thirsty creatures cry."
2.
Thirst; want of drink.
3.
Scarcity; lack. "A drought of Christian writers caused a dearth of all history."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drought" Quotes from Famous Books



... scratching so many hours a day. Some scratch a little deeper than those who aren't so skilled or so strong. And when I stand off a little, it's all alike. The end is as blind and senseless as the beginning on this farm—drought and dust." ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... water. You see, no matter how much you take out, there's always more coming. See that little brook? Well, this spring feeds that, and it runs off and joins other brooks, but there's always water here just the same. Of course, in a drought, if there was no rain for a long time, it might dry up, but it doesn't look as ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart

... sideways over land to a mud-bank again, not to have another climbing fit until the next big tropical shower comes after a period of drought. But if you wanted to find out all the strange habits of fishes," continued his friend, as the schooner ran into New Bedford harbor, "it would take more time than one swordfish trip would ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... dry season." Kho rippled his tentacles and moved lissomely to the doorway, assuming a grotesquely furtive posture as he peered out. "The people are maddened by the drought. The will be aroused to sacrifice you to the Canal Gods, like ...
— Flamedown • Horace Brown Fyfe

... no moisture to assist its growth, and never came up at all till the wet season had come again, and then it grew as if it had been but newly sown. Finding my first seed did not grow, which I easily imagined was by the drought, I sought for a moister piece of ground to make another trial in, and I dug up a piece of ground near my new bower, and sowed the rest of my seed in February, a little before the vernal equinox; and this having the rainy months of March and April to water it, sprung up very pleasantly, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... a fellow-creature on the road, they turn into the field to avoid me; if I ask for food, it's to a deaf ear I speak; if I am thirsty, they send me to the river. What house would shelter me? In cold, in hunger, in drought, in storm, and in tempest, I am alone and unfriended, hated, feared, an' avoided; starving in the winter's cold, and burning in the summer's heat. All this is my fate here; and—oh! oh! oh!—have mercy, tormentor—have ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... As the drought wore on to its third day I began to perceive that siphoning the pinks with soda-water out of the dining-room window was insufficient to meet the crisis. I rang up the nearest fire station and told them in my most staccato tones that the garden was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... Without these periodical floods many parts of the plain of Mesopotamia would be beyond the reach of irrigation, but their regular occurrence allows water to be stored in sufficient quantities for use during the months of drought. To obtain the full advantage of this precious capital, the inhabitants must, however, take more care and expend more labour than is necessary in Egypt. The rise of the Euphrates and of the Tigris is neither so slow nor so ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... went on. The little settlements, wherever water and soil permitted, were from twenty to fifty miles apart. Between stretched the barrenness of sand and alkali and drought. And at every settlement our peaceful attempts to buy food were vain. They denied us harshly, and wanted to know who of us had sold them food when we drove them from Missouri. It was useless on our part to tell them we were from Arkansas. From Arkansas we truly were, but they insisted ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... vestments of the Wu-ist priests are endowed with magical properties which are considered to enable the wearer to control the order of the world, to avert unseasonable and calamitous events, such as drought, untimely and superabundant rainfall, and eclipses. These powers are conferred by the decoration upon the dress. Upon the back of the chief vestment the representation of a range of mountains is embroidered as a symbol of the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... irregular summer rains were usually sufficient to water a widely-spaced garden, also mistakenly thought that mulched gardens lost less soil moisture because the earth was protected from the drying sun and thus did not need irrigation through occasional drought. I suspect that drought resistance under mulch has more to do with a plant's ability to feed vigorously, obtain nutrition, and continue growing because the surface inches where most of soil nutrients and biological activities are located, stayed moist. ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... summed up in his advice to his two sons, given when, only a few months before his death, he resigned a crown grown too heavy for his failing strength. "Think carefully, execute promptly, never give up, never delay. Resolves not carried out are like clouds without rain in times of drought." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... flour, but only to a small and strictly limited extent, because, practically, there is no limit to the amount of bread-stuffs procurable from abroad. When, on the contrary, the turnip crop fails, or that excessive drought greatly curtails the yield of grass, the price of meat and butter increases greatly, and is but slightly modified by the importation ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... van Cannan say that his father knew the man whose grandfather was the first Dutchman to introduce the prickly-pear into the Karoo. It was a great treasure then, being looked upon as good fodder for beast and ostrich in time of drought, and the boy used to be beaten if he did not properly water the leaves which were being laboriously preserved on the great trek into the desert. Unfortunately, the preservation had been so complete that it was now the ruin of many a fine Karoo estate, springing ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... they know not spring; while already reduced to the lees of fire, ruin itself can work little more upon them. The showers refresh the deserts; but in these isles, rain never falls. Like split Syrian gourds left withering in the sun, they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky. "Have mercy upon me," the wailing spirit of the Encantadas seems to cry, "and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... the fields to Kleinwalde; he even went a little way along it, with an uneasy eye on the ditches, but he did not see Klutz, either upright or prostrate. Well, if he were in a ditch, he said to himself, he would not drown; the ditches were all as empty, dry, and burnt-up as four weeks' incessant drought and heat could make them. He turned back repeating that eminently consolatory proverb, Unkraut vergeht nicht, and walked quickly to his own gate; for it was late, and he had work to do, and he had wasted more time than he could afford with Klutz. A man on a ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... his various strivings to do well: he commenced a small-beer brewery, and the thunder turned it all into vinegar; he tried vinegar, and nothing on earth could make it sour; he opened a milk-walk, and the parish pump failed; he invented a waterproof composition—there was fourteen weeks of drought; he sold his patent for two-and-sixpence, and had the satisfaction of walking home for the next three months wet through, from his gossamer to his ci-devant Wellingtons, now literally, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... llamas would stand in the first rank as ruminants. Besides the usual character of four stomachs, their paunch and honeycomb-bag are furnished with large cells which act as reservoirs, and fill with water whenever the animal has the chance of drinking freely, and from whence in time of drought he draws it up into his mouth and swallows it. This is what makes the camel so valuable to the wandering tribes in the great deserts of Africa and Asia. He is the only animal who can pass several days under the burning sun of Sahara without drinking—or rather without ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... the horrors of the tedious night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts My anxious mind: or sometimes mournful verse Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades, Or desperate lady near a purling stream, Or lover pendent on a willow tree. Meanwhile I labor with eternal drought, And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose: But if a slumber haply does invade My weary limbs, my fancy's still awake, Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream, Tipples ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... on the bank of the Derwent River, which runs into Storm Bay. The surroundings are beautiful, and the soil evidently extremely fertile; but woods and fields were almost burnt up on our arrival; a prolonged drought had prevailed, and made an end of all green things. To our eyes it was, however, an unmixed delight to look upon meadows and woods, even if their colours were not absolutely fresh. We were not very difficult ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." And, on the other hand, it is still a land which to the natural man seems a wilderness, a "great and terrible wilderness, wherein are fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there is no water;" where faith is still necessary, and where, still more forcibly than in the case of Israel, the maxim holds, that "man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... is a big hotel with a bath in each room. On a big street opposite to us is the wall of the legation quarter, which has trees in it and big roofs which represent all that China ought to have and has not. The weather is like our hot July, except that it is drier than the August drought on Long Island. The streets of Peking are the widest in the world, I guess, and ours leads by the red walls of the Chinese city with the wonderful gates of which you see pictures. It is macadamized in the middle, but on each side of it run wider roads, which are used for the traffic. Thank ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... had resolved to act a silent lie. Was it not fair to outwit the rogues with their own weapon? He had faded from human memory—let it be so. Was he to be cut off from this sudden joy of friendship with one of his blood and race, he whose soul was perishing with drought, though, until this moment, he had been too proud ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... created this state of mind. It is impossible to regard the partial distress of the factory districts as a general question for an unpolitical country like Germany, let alone as a blot upon the whole civilized world. For the Germans the incident has the same significance as any local drought or famine. Consequently the King regards it in the light of a defect of administration or a lack of charity. For the same reason, and because a few soldiers settled accounts with the weak weavers, the destruction of factories and machines caused no fears to the King and the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... that there had been a long drought, during the latter part of which prayers had been vainly offered up in all the temples of the air god. When I first told her Majesty that I wanted a balloon, I said my intention was to go up into the sky and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... and I have tried camping a number of times. When I go camping it rains. It begins to rain when I start and it keeps on raining until I come back. It never fails. I have often thought that drought-sufferers in various parts of the country who seek to attract rain in dry spells make a mistake. They try the old-fashioned Methodist way of praying for it, or the new scientific way of shooting dynamite bombs off and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... the dry land springs of water' (Isa 41:17,18). Behold here is a pool of water as big as a wilderness, enough one would think to satisfy any thirsty soul. O, but that will not do! wherefore he will open rivers, fountains, and springs, and all this is to quench the drought of one that thirsteth for the grace of God, that they have enough. 'They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures, for with thee is the fountain of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... opponents, and make up their minds to receive the same in return; but they seem neither to look nor to prepare for sickness and death in their camps. And when these come upon their armies, they seem either to shut their eyes to the facts, or submit to the loss as to a disturbance in Nature, a storm, a drought, or an earthquake, which they can neither prevent nor provide for, and for which they feel no responsibility, but only hope that it will not happen again. Nevertheless, this waste of life has followed every army which has been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... there is no regular rainy season. In fact it rains in moderation all the year round. Three days seldom pass without refreshing showers, and if there are ten rainless days together, a rare phenomenon, people begin to talk of "the drought." Practically the year is divided into two parts by the "monsoons."* The monsoon is not a storm, as many people suppose, from a vague association of the word "typhoon," but a steady wind blowing, in the case of the Malay Peninsula, for six months from ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... which of the days of a man's life are wasted and which are fruitful. It is not necessarily the days in which a man gives himself up to his chosen work in which he makes most progress. Sometimes a long inarticulate period, when there seems to a man to be a dearth of ideas, a mental drought, acts as a sort of incubation in which a thought is slowly conceived and perfected. Sometimes a long period of repression stores force at high pressure. The lean years are often the prelude, even the cause, of the years of fatness, when the exhausted and overteemed ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Drought proves that certain species of exotic plants are hardier than natives. Wattles suffer more than mangoes, and citrus fruits have powers of endurance equal to eucalyptus. Whence does the banana obtain the liquid which flows ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... compelled to remain in the same spot by lack of water the worse becomes the prospect of catching them, and "unfishable" is one of the expressive words which fishermen use to indicate the condition of a river during the long periods of drought which too ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... when inexperienced students were to take charge of classes, when the kindergartner was weary and wanted a quiet moment to rest, when everybody was in a hurry, when the weather was very cold, or oppressively warm, when there was a torrent of rain, or had been a long drought, the sticks were hastily brought forth from the closet and as hastily thrust upon the children. These small sufferers, being thus provided with work-materials in which it was obvious that superior grown people took no interest, immediately lost interest themselves. ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... first rain for four months pours down to-day. We drove, nevertheless, from 7 A.M. until 6 P.M. (only stopping for our meals), over barren, sandy, and desolate country. We saw whole flocks of sheep dead and dying by thousands from want of care and drought. We (seven and the driver) were packed away in an open three-seated wagon with four horses, and drove over the dreariest road one can imagine. We passed continually places where the ground was all upturned, evidently either worked-out or abandoned gold-diggings. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... underneath: crested dog's tail and sheep's fescue are common grasses, while spurrey, knotwood, corn marigold, are a few of the numerous weeds in the arable fields. Gardens are easily dug, but it is best to put into them only those plants that, like the native vegetation, can withstand drought: vegetable gardens must be well manured and well limed. Fig. 50 shows some of this kind of country in Surrey, the barley field is surrounded by wood and very poor grass on ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... two following seasons, New South Wales suffered a serious drought, which increased in severity. Rivers were exhausted, and their beds left dry. Not only the want of rain was felt, but a withering blight, travelling in a defined current over the cultivated districts, cut off ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... when, emerging from the narrow glen, he gained the open valley of the Tweed, which held on its majestic course from current to pool, and from pool stretched away to other currents, with a dignity peculiar to itself amongst the Scottish rivers; for whatever may have been the drought of the season, the Tweed usually fills up the space between its banks, seldom leaving those extensive sheets of shingle which deform the margins of many ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... and away they went on a spring, tearing over the ground, the driver only keeping them from going the wrong way, for they had a wide, level pampa to run over the whole thirty miles to the Pueblo. This plain is almost treeless, with no grass, at least none now in the drought of midsummer, and is filled with squirrel-holes, and alive with squirrels. As we changed horses twice, we did not slacken our speed until we turned into the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... and rich in promise, with the sad reality, my heart grew heavy and my chest heaved painfully. So sunk was I in my reflections, so lost in thought, that I never knew that the storm had broken loose, and that the heavy rain was falling in torrents. The very ground, parched with long drought, smoked as it pattered upon it; while the low, wailing cry of the sea-gull, mingled with the deep growl of far-off thunder, told that the night was a fearful one for those at sea. Wet through and shivering, I sat still, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... of GDP and 90% of export revenues. After two years of weak performance, economic growth improved significantly in 1988-91 as a result of good weather and a broadly based economic adjustment effort by the government. Drought cut overall output sharply in 1992. The economy depends on substantial inflows of economic assistance from the IMF, the World Bank, and individual donor nations. National product: GDP - exchange rate conversion - $1.9 billion (1992 est.) National product real ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... an important part in determining the average numbers of a species, and periodical seasons of extreme cold or drought I believe to be the most effective of all checks. I estimated that the winter of 1854—'55 destroyed four-fifths of the birds in my own grounds; and this is a tremendous destruction, when we remember that ten per cent, is an extraordinarily severe ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... the northern kingdom Ruled by bad kings Given to idolatry under Ahab Influence of Jezebel The priests of Baal The apostasy of Israel The prophet Elijah His extraordinary appearance Appears before Ahab Announces calamities Flight of Elijah The drought The woman of Zarephath Shields and feeds Elijah He restores her son to life Miseries of the drought Elijah confronts Ahab Assembly of the people at Mount Carmel Presentation of choice between Jehovah and Baal Elijah mocks the priests of Baal Triumphs, and slays them Elijah promises ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... chaps getting up in the night and 'sucking the monkey' while we were all asleep, every drop of water had disappeared from the vessel, and although we all awoke thirsty, the same as we had done the previous morning, there was nothing left now to quench our drought with. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... was purchased by loyal love. A like story is told of Rodolf of Hapsburgh, the founder of the greatness of Austria, and one of the most open-hearted of men. A flagon of water was brought to him when his army was suffering from severe drought. 'I cannot,' he said, 'drink alone, nor can all share so small a quantity. I do not thirst for myself, but for ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... manner would be the tribe of the reservoir, or pond. AKAL is the Maya name for the artificial reservoirs, or ponds in which the ancient inhabitants of Mayab collected rain water for the time of drought. ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... the day was a quarter of a pint of coconut milk and the meat, which did not exceed two ounces to each person: it was received very contentedly but we suffered great drought. I durst not venture to land as we had no arms and were less capable of defending ourselves than ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... drought in the land. For weeks and months not a drop of rain fell; and the sun beat down, and dried up the whole country, so that there was no water to be found. Now there was a certain pond in that country; and as day after day the ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... Geese lived together in a pond for many years. At last there came a drought and dried up the pond. Then the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... millions of years it was threatened by climatic changes, by the lack of food, by the ferocity of fellow-creatures. Heat, cold, flood, drought, earthquake, and volcanic eruption were forever against it. Struggling from stage to stage upward from the slime a new danger was always to it a new incentive to ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... and a biscuit dipped in honey. He gave him a silken cap with a tassel and himself put round his throat one of our best strings of beads, and into his hand not one but three of the much-coveted hawk bells. He was kinder than rain after drought. First and last, he could well lend himself to the policy of kindness, for it was not lending. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... the tedious night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades, Or desperate lady near a purling stream, Or lover pendent on a willow tree. Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose. But if a slumber haply does invade My weary limbs, my fancy still awake, Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream Tipples imaginary pots of ale In vain; awake I find ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... in the shower—to be the very shower—by the poet at least—perhaps by the cattle, in their thirsty hunger forgetful of the brown ground, and swallowing the dropping herbage. The birds had not been so sorely distressed by the drought as the beasts, and therefore the poet speaks of them, not as relieved from misery, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... river slid along noiselessly as a shade, the swelling reeds and sedge forming a flexible palisade upon its moist brink. To the north of the mead were trees, the leaves of which were new, soft, and moist, not yet having stiffened and darkened under summer sun and drought, their colour being yellow beside a green—green beside a yellow. From the recesses of this knot of foliage the loud notes of three cuckoos were resounding through ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... altered, with the door to the south, Which did very well in time of a drought; Then Lieutenant G., he thought it to better— He changed it a little, but not to ...
— Our Little Brown House, A Poem of West Point • Maria L. Stewart

... still as to suggest a solid rather than a liquid; to the west shadowy mountains of cloud charged with thunder swelled toward the zenith. The long midsummer drought was coming to an end, and all birds and insects were silent, as if tired of complaining. Across the lake one maple, turned prematurely scarlet, brought out the soft greens of the woods with an astounding accent. Directly in front of this flaming tree, a snow-white heron stood motionless ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... Archibald Hamilton, who was, perhaps, of all the Hamiltons the most royal in his hospitality. Moreover, he was a person of energy and ambition, for it is on record that he paid a visit to Boston, fleeing from the great drought which visited Nevis in 1737. Then there were William Leslie Hamilton, who practised at the bar in London for several years, but returned to hold official position on Nevis, and his brother Andrew, both sons of Dr. William Hamilton, who spent the greater part of his ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... the west, where we found a fair well or fountain whence flowed an abundant stream of water, and where we and our beasts were satisfied with drink. According to a tradition among the inhabitants, this region was formerly burnt up with drought and sterility, till the evangelist St Mark procured this fountain from God by miracle. We came into the sea of sand before our arrival at the mountain of the Jews, formerly mentioned, and in it we journeyed three days and nights. This is a vast plain covered all over by white ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... see her again, but I hold her smile in my heart, And she is with me in my shop and about the streets. My shop may tumble down; West India Dock may some time suffer a drought; Grief and Joy come for a day; And Hope and Fear, and Desire and Deed Arise and pass, and are no more; But the beauty born of her quickened ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke

... the earth hath no oblivion For the noblest chance it gave, None, save in its latest refuge— Seek it only in the grave! Love may die, and hatred slumber, And their memory will decay, As the watered garden recks not Of the drought of yesterday; But the dream of power once broken, What shall give repose again? What shall charm the serpent-furies Coiled around the maddening brain? What kind draught can nature offer Strong enough to lull their sting? Better to be born a peasant Than to live an exiled ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau, Maundrell, Troilo, D'Arvieux) that after an excessive drought, the vestiges of columns, walls, &c. are seen above the surface. At any season, such remains may be discovered by looking down into the transparent lake, and at such distances as would argue the existence of many settlements in the space now ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... rule is certain, that plants for want of culture degenerate to be baser in the same kind; and sometimes so far as to change into another kind. 1. The standing long and not being removed maketh them degenerate. 2. Drought unless the earth, of itself, be moist doth the like. 3. So doth removing into worse earth, or forbearing to compost the earth; as we see that water mint turneth into field mint, and the colewort ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... slowly, "it is. However, I can see no reason why this secret should not be entrusted to you. We are seeking a means of ending the great drought which has ravaged the United States ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... combined peak of 4 to 6 million refugees. Gross domestic product has fallen substantially over the past 20 years because of the loss of labor and capital and the disruption of trade and transport; severe drought added to the nation's difficulties in 1998-2002. The majority of the population continues to suffer from insufficient food, clothing, housing, and medical care, and a dearth of jobs, problems exacerbated ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... dryness &c adj.; siccity^, aridity, drought, ebb tide, low water. exsiccation^, desiccation; arefaction^, dephlegmation^, drainage; drier. [chemical subs. which renders dry] desiccative, dessicator. [device to render dry] dessicator; hair drier, clothes drier, gas drier, electric drier; vacuum oven, drying ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... region of llanos, or grassy plains, shut off from the harbors of the Caribbean Sea, by mountain-ranges. On account of their pleasant climate the mountain-valleys constitute the chief region of habitation. The plains are flooded in the rainy season and sun-scorched during the period of drought; they are therefore ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... reason now, for the streets are as green as the fields: we are burnt to the bone, and have not a lock of bay to cover our nakedness: oats are so dear, that I suppose they will soon be eaten at Brooks's and fashionable tables as a rarity. The drought has lasted so long, that for this fortnight I have been foretelling haymaking and winter, which June generally produces; but to-day is sultry, and I am not a prophet worth a straw. Though not resident till now, I have flitted backwards and forwards, and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... beneficent rule of the Savoyards and proclaimed himself count of Nice. In 1524 war broke out between Francis and the emperor Charles V., and the contending armies alternately devastated and pillaged Nice and its environs. The pest reappeared, and with it a drought and famine of so fearful a character that many thousand persons perished, and others in their despair slew themselves. Pope Paul III. undertook the difficult task of reconciling the belligerents, and even went so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... tell me, in so very natural an occurrence? Does not the plague rage each year in Stamboul? What wonder, that this year, when as we are told, its virulence is unexampled in Asia, that it should have occasioned double havoc in that city? What wonder then, in time of siege, want, extreme heat, and drought, that it should make unaccustomed ravages? Less wonder far is it, that the garrison, despairing of being able to hold out longer, should take advantage of the negligence of our fleet to escape at once ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... opinion; and so the operation of the demon introduces itself therein, wherefore it will be a superstitious and unlawful divination. On the other hand if one were to apply the observation of the stars in order to foreknow those future things that are caused by heavenly bodies, for instance, drought or rain and so forth, it will be neither an unlawful nor ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... blowing in soft and warm from the southeast, washing the dust from the patient orange-trees and the draggled bananas, and luring countless green things out of the brown mould of the mesa into the winter sun. Birds fledged in the golden drought of summer went mad over the miracles of rain and grass, and riotously announced their discovery of a new heaven and a new earth to their elders. The leafless poinsettia flaunted its scarlet diadem at Palmerston's tent door, a monarch robbed of all but his crown, and the acacias ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... laughing at it. That broad, pale peninsula, built of shells and crystal-dust, which droops toward the south like some vast tropical leaf, and spreads its two edges toward the fresh and salt waters, enervated with drought and sunshine—that flat leaf of land has characteristics that are almost Oriental. To make it the sea heaved up her breast, and showed the whitened sides against which her tides were beating. To walk upon it is in a sense to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... miles north-east of Melbourne, are supposed to be the highest in the world, and are above 440 feet in height. In several places are seen groups of tree ferns some 20 feet high, which form a pleasant oasis. Gipp's Land did not look its best at the time of my visit. There had been a drought, more or less, for three years, and everything was dried up. The cattle appeared parched, with hard dry skins. Since then, however, there has been a good deal of rain. Sale itself is an uninteresting town of 3,000 inhabitants, with streets at right angles, and the usual Public Library and Mechanics' ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton

... the land-tax, register all conveyances of land and house-property, act as preliminary examiner of candidates for literary degrees, and perform a host of miscellaneous offices, even to praying for rain or fine weather in cases of drought or inundation. He is up, if anything, before the lark; and at night, often late at night, he is listening to the protestations of prisoners or ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... the Giraffe and I drifted together and down by the river in the cool of the evening, and sat on the edge of the steep, drought-parched bank. ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... Sakravapin, those persecutors of all enemies, as also the Naga Swastika and that other excellent Naga called Manu. Manu himself had ordered the country of the Magadhas to be never afflicted with drought, and Kaushika and Manimat also have favoured the country. Owning such a delightful and impregnable city, Jarasandha is ever bent on seeking the fruition of his purposes unlike other monarchs. We shall, however, by slaying him to-day ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... fret not at the length of his discourse, But listen with respect to his remarks Upon the various seasons he remembers; For well he knows the many divers signs Which do fortell high winds, or rain, or drought, Or ought that may affect the rising crop. The silken clad, who courtly breeding boast, Their own discourse still sweetest to their ears, May grumble at the old man's lengthened story, But here it is ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... like unto thee. They, too, will foreknow what things shall happen, and in what month and on what day or in what night. All will be manifest to them—they will know and understand whether a calamity will come, a famine or wild beasts, floods or drought; whether there will be abundance of grain or dearth; whether the wicked will rule the world; whether locusts will devastate the land; whether the fruits will drop from the trees unripe; whether boils will afflict men; whether wars ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... lady's heart was one easily touched. She looked and saw that the face of the boy, whose hunger was as plain as his rags, was calm as the wintry sky. She wondered, but she needed not have wondered; for storm of anger, drought of greed, nor rotting mist of selfishness, had passed or rested there, to billow, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... sun-parched boulders spread away to the stream, which was diminished by the long drought. Beyond the narrow sheen of water, stretched another rocky space, and then came the green of meadows and a brown city ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... is often obliged to distribute seed, without which the disaster of the current year would be followed by sterility the following year[5129]. Every calamity, accordingly, in these days affects the future as well as the present; during the two years of 1784 and 1785, around Toulouse, the drought having caused the loss of all draft animals, many of the cultivators are obliged to let their fields lie fallow. In the second place, cultivation, when it does take place, is carried on according to medieval modes. Arthur ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... said, "is showers after drought, seas after sand; to cry, unechoed; to be thirsty, the pitcher broken. And—ask now this pitiless darkness of the eyes!—to be remembered though Lethe flows between. Nay, you shall watch even hope away ere another comes like me to mope and sigh, and ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... Puna is strewn with fires clean to Apua, 10 Thickets and tall trees a-blazing. Sweep on, oh fire-ax, thy flame-shooting flood! Smit by this ax is Ku-lili-kaua. It's a flood tide of lava clean to Kali'u, And the Sun, the light-giver, is conquered. 15 The bones of wet Hilo rattle from drought; She turns for comfort to mountain, to sea, Fissured and broken, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... mouthfuls of tepid water gave them new life. One sense can deceive the others. A man developing all the symptoms of hydrophobia has been cured by the assurance that the dog which bit him was not mad. So these two, not yet aflame with drought, banished the arid phantom for ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... in the Sea, with a shell on his backe as broad as a target. It raineth not in this Iland but in three moneths of the yeere, from the midst of Iuly to the midst of October, and it is here alwayes very hote. Kine haue bene brought hither, but by reason of the heate and drought ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... longer Yashts are in verse, and some of them have poetic merit. Chiefly to be mentioned among the longer ones are: first, the one in praise of Ardvi Sura Anahita, or the stream celestial (Yt. 5); second, the Yasht which exalts the star Tishtrya and his victory over the demon of drought (Yt. 8); then the one devoted to the Fravashis or glorified souls of the righteous (Yt. 13) as well as the Yasht in honor of Verethraghna, the incarnation of Victory (Yt. 14). Selections from the others, Yt. 10 and Yt. 19, which are among ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought and frost ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... they were received by the lord and people like angels from heaven and, after having eaten all their provisions in six months, the Indians again uncovered the store of corn they had laid up for themselves and their families in time of drought and barrenness, tearfully offering it for their consumption. The payment that was finally awarded the natives, was to put them to the sword, for they killed great numbers with lances, and those whom they captured alive, they ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... those wild ones in the woods, that solace the pedestrian and give a momentary calm even to the jaded victims of the White Hills. He keeps a strict eye over one's fruit, and knows to a shade of purple when your grapes have cooked long enough in the sun. During a severe drought a few years ago, the robins wholly vanished from my garden. I neither saw nor heard one for three weeks. Meanwhile a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of bearing, seemed to find the dusty air congenial, and, dreaming perhaps of its sweet ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... struggle for existence has compelled the natives to adopt habits of industry, the presence of the Chinaman is not a necessity, but in a country like Borneo, where the inhabitants, from time immemorial, except during unusual periods of drought or epidemic sickness, have never found the problem of existence bear hard upon them, it is impossible to impress upon the natives that they ought to have "wants," whether they feel them or not, and that the pursuit of the dollar for the ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... SORBEO, supping up, sipping, drinking, drought; any liquid food that may be sipped, a drink, a potion, a broth, a ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... and charity won the hearts of all who spoke to him. He seemed to surpass the great Arsenius in the gift of perpetual tears. Cyril relates many miracles which he wrought, usually by the sign of the cross. In the time of a great drought, he exhorted the people to penance, to avert this scourge of heaven. Great numbers came in procession to his cell, carrying crosses, singing Kyrie eleison, and begging him to offer up his prayers to God for them. He said to them: ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... pedestrian, and give a momentary calm even to the jaded victims of the White Hills. He keeps a strict eye over one's fruit, and knows to a shade of purple when your grapes have cooked long enough in the sun. During the severe drought a few years ago the robins wholly vanished from my garden. I neither saw nor heard one for three weeks, meanwhile a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of bearing, seemed to find the dusty air congenial, ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell

... 'Good Mzimu' is riding on an elephant in the direction in which the sun rises, beyond the mountains out of the waters; there the 'Good Mzimu' will tell the Great Spirit to send you clouds, and those clouds during a drought will water with rain your millet, your manioc, your bananas, and the grass in the jungle, in order that you may have plenty to eat and that your cows shall have good fodder and shall give thick and fat milk. Do you want to have plenty ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... the planet, they had used up most of the oil, they had swept away their forests, and they were running short of tin and copper. Their wheat areas were getting weary and populous, and many of the big towns had so lowered the water level of their available hills that they suffered a drought every summer. The whole system was rushing towards bankruptcy. And they were spending every year vaster and vaster amounts of power and energy upon military preparations, and continually expanding the debt of industry to capital. The system ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... coming from the interior had a flow at the close of the long drought in 1918 sufficient to fill a 2-inch pipe with a rapid fall; in wet seasons the water spreads from wall to wall until it comes to within 100 ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... in the State is better watered for all purposes, except manufacturing in times of drought. Many of the farms might be divided into fields of ten acres each and, in ordinary seasons, would have ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... warm and without a breath of air. A two weeks' drought, unusual at this season, had parched the country, bringing the wheat prematurely to head and causing anxiety about the hemp. But since tobacco, the most important crop, would not be set out till June, this agricultural unrest permeated little farther than impolite ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... singularly stagnant. The cycle of natural changes goes its perpetual round and the ploughman's mind, caught in that narrow vortex, plods and plods after the seasons. Apart from an occasional flood, drought, or pestilence, nothing breaks his laborious torpor. The most cursory inspection of field and sky yields him information enough for his needs. Practical knowledge with him is all instinct and tradition. His mythology can for that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... giver of all good things,—the special helper and guardian of the people. That this belief still prevails may be verified by any one who studies the peasant-life of Japan. It is not to the Buddhas that the farmer prays for bountiful harvests, or for rain in time of drought; it is not to the Buddhas [88] that thanks are rendered for a plentiful rice-crop—but to the ancient local god. And the cult of the Ujigami embodies the moral experience of the community,—represents all its cherished traditions and customs, its unwritten laws of conduct, its sentiment of duty .... ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... these rivers appear to be but mere fractions of their former selves. The same is true of all the great lakes. If not Noah's flood, then evidently some other very wet spell, of which this is a tradition, lies far behind us. Something like the drought of summer is beginning upon the earth; the great floods have dried up; the rivers are slowly shrinking; the water is penetrating farther and farther into the cooling crust of the earth; and what was ample to drench and cover its surface, even to make a ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... thirteen months right across the continent, from Adelaide to a point a little to the south-east of Port Darwin. The expedition was most difficult and trying—much more so than it would have been in any ordinary year, on account of the drought. The thermometer sometimes stood at 125 deg. in the shade, and could not register the heat in the sun! The explorers were obliged to travel by day, in order that they might see and report upon the country. They were once seven days without water, and constantly ran very ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... holy fire And do the bidding of his sire. Then, seated on the Angas'(81) throne, Shall Lomapad to fame be known. But folly wrought by that great king A plague upon the land shall bring; No rain for many a year shall fall And grievous drought shall ruin all. The troubled king with many a prayer Shall bid the priests some cure declare: "The lore of Heaven 'tis yours to know, Nor are ye blind to things below: Declare, O holy men, the way This plague to expiate and stay." Those best of Brahmans shall reply: "By every ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... they are our guests. Now return to Simba the King, and say to Simba that if he lifts a spear against us the threefold curse of the Child shall fall upon him and upon you his people: The curse of Heaven by storm or by drought. The curse of famine. The curse of war. I the prophet have ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... over ethnically Armenian exclave of Nagorno-Karabakh; some irredentism by Armenians living in southern Georgia; traditional demands on former Armenian lands in Turkey have greatly subsided Climate: continental, hot, and subject to drought Terrain: high Armenian Plateau with mountain; little forest land; fast flowing rivers; good soil in Aras River valley Natural resources: small deposits of gold, copper, molybdenum, zinc, alumina Land use: 10% arable land; NA% permanent crops; NA% meadows and ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... will speak the truth out wholly: Earth bears fruit by my gift solely, And the meadows bloom in May; When it rains not, herbs and grasses Dry with drought, spring's beauty passes, Flowers and lilies ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... snakes squirming in agony, and now and again a clear white jet of light came out of the darkness, as if one of them was spitting venom at the sky. In reality, the boys were looking at one of those terrible electric storms which tear across Central Australia after a severe drought, and the lurid colours were caused by lightning flashing inside a very ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... The drought is also causing a scarcity of water. There are a few springs on this side of the island, but they come only from a little distance, and in hot weather are not to be relied on. The supply for this house is carried up in a ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... Aprille with his schowrs swoote The drought of Marche had perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertue engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swet breethe Enspired hath in every holte and heethe The tendre cropps, and the yong ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... day wore on we went up into the little garret and strained our eyes across the stretching prairie to see if some one was coming. There had been much rain, for on the prairie there was always too much rain or else too little. It was either drought or flood. Dark swarms of wild ducks were in all the ponds; V-shaped flocks of geese and brants screamed overhead, and down in the slough cranes danced a ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... even at this distant period, to reflect without horror on the miseries of that year known in Lower Volga by the name of the "Famine Year." I remember the summer, whose scorching heats had dried up all the fields, and the drought had no relief but from the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... will have an important bearing upon this branch of the subject. The work accomplished is full as much as could have been properly done in a single season, marked, as the last was, by an unusual drought of long continuance, which rendered it impossible to ascend, even with light canoes, some of the smaller streams, especially those forming the northwesternmost sources of the Aroostook. These might be profitably ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... with me where yonder door hangs out Its Red Triangle to a world of drought, Inviting to the Palace of the Djinn, Where Death, Aladdin, waits ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... looked particularly representative of the rank and aristocracy of their native land. The back blocks are very effectual levellers, and each saw in the other a very ordinary bushman, riding a horse so poor, the wonder was he was deemed worth mounting at all. Both were dusty and dirty, for the drought held the land in iron grip, and the fierce north wind, driving the dust in little whirls and columns before it, blew over plains bare of grass and other ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... head that I could make more money if I took to making fences; I sharpening the rails, and making the mortice-holes, and a stranger man setting them. I did several jobs at odd times, and was thought very handy. Well, Mr. Ronalds, during the time of the great drought, five years ago, determined to send up a lot of cattle to the north, where he had heard there was plenty of water and grass, and form a station there. Dick was picked out as stockman; a young gentleman, a relative of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... life, for love lightened their toil; but toward the close of the second year in their home they had suffered a series of reverses that sadly crippled Benito's resources. First there had been a season of such heat and drought that all their labor in the dozen acres which Benito cultivated came to naught, and they gathered hardly more than enough to keep them from starving before the next year's harvest. Then one of Benito's horses, of which he had three, and fine ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... swayed a moment or two on his slender legs like a drunken man, and then, suddenly falling on his knees, he kissed the hem of his benefactor's garment, and fairly wept. Those tears relieved him; they seemed to wash the drought of despair from ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... east of Java I had suffered from the intense heat and drought of the dry season, which had been very inimical to insect life. Here I had got into the other extreme of damp, wet, and cloudy weather, which was equally unfavourable. During the month which I spent in the interior of West Java, I never ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... him home. (Trying cupboards which are locked.) Well, isn't he a nasty man to get into such staggers at a morning wake? and isn't herself the divil's daughter for locking, and she so fussy after that young gaffer, you might take your death with drought ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

... whose dauntless boughs Brave summer's drought and winter's gloom. Rome bound with oak her patriots' brows, As Albyn ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... making a hole large enough for the roots to remain in an easy and natural position. Press the earth gently around the plant if the soil is moist, but if dry, more firmly. See that the plant stands in an upright position. If dry after "setting" the plants, water them, and if a protracted drought follows, cover them up with grass or hay dipped in water; remove, however, in a day or two.[75] Plaster may also be used to advantage, as it keeps the hill moist, besides fertilizing the plant; put a little just around the plants. In taking up from the bed select ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... in no mood to listen to your clatter. Although I tramped the woods for half a day, I've taken nothing, for the very rats, Badgers, and hedgehogs seem to have died of drought, And there was scarce a ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats

... fit for procreation." The other consequences supposed to flow from the omission of the rites are mentioned by Father Campana. From Mr. Dennett's account (op. cit. pp. 53, 67-71) we gather that drought and famine are thought to result from the intercourse of a man with a girl who has not yet passed through the "paint-house," as the hut is called where the young women live in seclusion. According to O. Dapper, the women of Loango paint ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... which conjunctions was to happen, and did happen, in October, and the other in November; and they filled the people's heads with predictions on these signs of the heavens, intimating that those conjunctions foretold drought, famine, and pestilence. In the two first of them, however, they were entirely mistaken, for we had no droughty season, but in the beginning of the year a hard frost, which lasted from December almost to March, and after that moderate weather, rather warm than ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... north.[34] The rainfall is very great in the south, but in the north it is only just sufficient to prevent the land from being a desert. When I arrived in China, in the autumn of 1920, a large area in the north, owing to drought, was afflicted with a terrible famine, nearly as bad, probably, as the famine in Russia in 1921. As the Bolsheviks were not concerned, foreigners had no hesitation in trying to bring relief. As for the Chinese, they regarded ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... air is mild and soft; a warm, blue smoke lies in the mountain gaps; the tracery of distant woods upon the upland hangs in the haze with a dreamy gorgeousness of coloring. The river runs low with August drought, and frets upon the pebbly bottom with a soft, low murmur, as of joyousness gone by. The hemlocks of the river-bank rise in tapering sheens, and ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... free man's worship of nothing. His despair, his disillusion, are, however, no illustration of personal weakness; they are perfectly objective, because they are essential moments in the progress of the intellectual soul; and for the type of Pascal they are the analogue of the drought, the dark night, which is an essential stage in the progress of the Christian mystic. A similar despair, when it is arrived at by a diseased character or an impure soul, may issue in the most disastrous consequences though with ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... visit to a western state where she had invested a sum of money in farm mortgages. "I was horrified," she says, "by the wretched conditions among the farmers, which had resulted from a long period of drought, and one forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind.... The farmer's wife [was] a picture of despair, as she stood in the door of the bare, crude house, and the two children behind her, whom she vainly tried to keep out ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... answer, but could not speak for drought. He ran and got me a great tumbler of claret-and-water; and, in the evening, having drunk about an imperial gallon of water, and taken afterwards some claret, I felt ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... being royally entertained and looked after. One had heard a great deal about Russia having "gone dry" by ukase; but the drought was not permitted to cast its blight over guests of the nation, and our presence ensured that those at the feast would be enabled to abandon rigid temperance for the moment, an opportunity which was not missed. Who, after all, ever heard of a pleasant party round a pump? ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... would depend upon the season. In a rainy season the grass would come up very fast, in a drought it might not grow ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... cacique. The Pueblo Indians now have two religions, that of Montezuma, and the Roman Catholic. The Sun, Moon, and Stars were Gods, of which the greatest and most potent was the Sun; but greater than he was Montezuma. In time of drought, or actual or threatened calamity, the Pueblo Indians prayed to Montezuma, and also to the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The old religion (that of Montezuma) is believed in all the New Mexican pueblos. They practice the Catholic religion ostensibly; but in their consciences ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... inwash, this depth must indicate a very remote period for their construction. But a large amount of the earth thrown out into the surrounding ring or wall will find its way back into the depression. The water will stand in them a good part of the year, and the soil remain damp even in prolonged drought; vegetation is thus more luxuriant than on the outside, and its decay will fill up rather rapidly. In addition, much sand blows from the prairies as well as from the bottom lands, and whatever finds its way into the pit will ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... gliding shadows gave life to the line of their barren mountains—no Goddess of Beauty rose from the pacing of their silent and foamless Nile. One continual perception of stability, or changeless revolution, weighed upon their hearts—their life depended on no casual alternation of cold and heat—of drought and shower; their gift-Gods were the risen River and the eternal Sun, and the types of these were forever consecrated in the lotus decoration of the temple and the wedge of the enduring Pyramid. Add to these influences, purely physical, those dependent on the superstitions ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... rattlesnake, the centipede, the Gila monster, the tarantula, all carry poison. Even the toad has a horn. Everywhere it is a fight to survive. The vegetation, as well as the animal life, fights all the time against drought. It's a regular hell on earth," ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... who lodges there! With silken raiment, store of rice, And for this drought, all kinds of fruits, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the dome palm (Hyphoene Thebaica, Mart.) grew upon the banks; these trees are of great service to the Arab tribes, who at this season of drought forsake the deserts and flock upon the margin of the Atbara. The leaves of the dome supply them with excellent material for mats and ropes, while the fruit is used both for man and beast. The dome palm resembles the palmyra in the form and texture of its fan-shaped ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... season, too, all the uplands would be green. So we were told, at any rate, though the pleasing story was almost impossible of belief. In August, as soon as we left the immediate vicinity of Little Harbor, the very bottom of the valley itself was parched and brown; and the look of barrenness and drought increased as we advanced, till toward the end, as the last houses were passed, the total appearance of things became subalpine: stunted, weather-beaten trees, and broad patches of bearberry showing at a little distance like ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... house of Cecrops (because she wickedly revenged the brutal lusts of kings), now builds her nest. The keepers of the sheep play tunes upon the pipe amid the tendar herbage, and delight that god, whom flocks and the shady hills of Arcadia delight. The time of year, O Virgil, has brought on a drought: but if you desire to quaff wine from the Calenian press, you, that are a constant companion of young noblemen, must earn your liquor by [bringing some] spikenard: a small box of spikenard shall draw out a cask, which now lies in the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... be more thinly populated than Ceylon, and yet we have these numerous proofs of a powerful nation having once existed. Wherever these lakes or tanks exist in the present day, a populous country once flourished. In all countries which are subject to months of drought, a supply of water is the first consideration, or cultivation must cease. This was the object in forming the tanks, which are especially numerous throughout the Tambancadua district. These tank countries afford a great diversity of sport, as they all abound with wild fowl, and snipe in their ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... cantata of which only the tenor solo, "Khamsin," is done. This is by far the best work Bartlett has written, and displays unexpected dramatic powers. The variation of the episodes of the various phases of the awful drought to the climax in "The Plague," make up a piece of most impressive strength. The orchestration is remarkably fine with effect, color, and variety. If the cantata is finished on this scale, its production will ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... have mentioned, as there is no help for it, and their great thirst makes them do so. But it scours them to such a degree that sometimes they die of it. In all those three days you meet with no human habitation; it is all desert, and the extremity of drought. Even of wild beasts there are none, for there is nothing for them ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... son might be that very moment in that draught, as indeed he was. He stood in the strong current of fresh storm-air, with its pungent odors, more like revelations than odors, of things which had been in abeyance for some time past in the drought. The smell of the wet green things was like a paean of joy. It was a call of renewed life out of concealed places of fainting and hiding. There were scents of flowers and fruits, and another strange ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... upon the blood-ties of the most tenacious of European peoples; upon a Nature that spread her wings over the rough children of the veld and menaced their enemies with the heat and glamour of her sun, with famine and drought and weariness, with all the hidden dangers that lurked in her glittering ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... than all, the sudden crimes engendered By the down-thundering of the prison-wall, And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered, Gushing from Freedom's fountains—when the crowd,[240] Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud, And trample on each other to obtain The cup which brings oblivion of a chain Heavy and sore,—in which long yoked they ploughed The sand,—or if there sprung the yellow grain, 'Twas not for them, their necks were ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... was now our only law. We learned from Aina that there must be stores of provisions in the neighborhood of the palace, because it was the custom of the Martians to lay up such stores during the harvest time in each Martian year in order to provide against the contingency of an extraordinary drought. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... all the water in the earth was contained in the body of an immense frog, where nobody could reach it. The spirits held an investigation, and ascertained that if the frog could be made to laugh the water would run out of his mouth when he opened it, and the drought then prevailing would be broken. All the animals of the world gathered together and danced and capered before the frog in order to make him laugh, but all to no purpose. Then they called up the fishes to see if they could accomplish ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... the termination th, a small change being sometimes made; as long, length; strong, strength; broad, breadth; wide, width, deep, depth; true, truth; warm, warmth; dear, dearth; slow, slowth; merry, mirth; heal, health; well, weal, wealth; dry, drought; young, youth; and ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... his pat of fatty matter, his package of starch or sugar, his vial of aromatic spices suited to his personal taste; all manufactured economically and in unlimited quantities; all independent of irregular seasons, drought and rain, of the heat that withers the plant and of the frost that blights the fruit; all free from pathogenic microbes, the origin of epidemics and the enemies of human life. On that day chemistry will have accomplished a world-wide revolution ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... the bowlers in the Wolcombe Eleven, whose cricket-ground was the very meadow in which he had erst gathered cowslips with Ruperta Bassett; and he had a canoe, which he carried to adjacent streams, however narrow, and paddled it with singular skill and vigor. A neighboring miller, suffering under drought, was heard to say, "There ain't water enough to float a duck; nought can swim but ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... and when we render thanks, we do so for special mercies actually experienced. The thanksgiving of last year occurred at a time of most trying financial embarrassment, at the close of a season remarkable for its drought and meagre harvests, and for the prevalence of disease and the destruction of property by land and sea. Surely, God called us then to humble ourselves and fast, rather than to rejoice and give thanks, and a thanksgiving service was appropriate only for the reason that God ...
— National Character - A Thanksgiving Discourse Delivered November 15th, 1855, - in the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church • N. C. Burt

... sunny region, in which the tropical heat is tempered by almost constant refreshing breezes, and, in the eastern part at least, by abundant showers. Some of the western parishes not unfrequently suffer terribly from drought. There are two or three which have not even a spring, depending wholly upon rain water collected in tanks. These sometimes become dry, causing unutterable distress both to man and beast. We hear even sometimes of poor people starving during these seasons ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Most of these ponds are more or less brackish, some sulphurous, and others perfectly salt. After heavy rains such aqueous deposits are more numerous, and their waters sweeter; but rain seems to fall by accident over this desolate region, and after long spells of drought the greater number of ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... been a rainy season when we first went there, and for a long time our cisterns gave us full aqueous satisfaction, but early this year a drought had set in, and we were obliged to be exceedingly ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton

... I blew upon it. Why?' saith Jehovah of hosts. 'Because of my temple that lieth in ruins, while ye are running each to his own house. Therefore the heavens withhold the dew, and the earth withholdeth its fruit. And I have called forth a drought upon the land and upon the mountains, and upon the grain and the new wine and the oil and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men and animals, and upon all the ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... correct, and revealing to us even the natural causes of the seven years high Nile and plenteous harvests; in the overflow of the great central lake in Nubia wearing away the embankment; and of the seven years subsequent low Nile and famine, by the drought consequent on this immense drainage. The very titles of Joseph as, "Director of the Full and Empty Irrigating Canals," "Steward of the Granaries," etc. etc., are still to be read on his tomb at Sakkarah,[133] and much more of the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... of God's prophets, and his mission was to announce to Ahab that a judgment was about to fall upon the land, because the people had forsaken the worship of God, and bowed down to idols instead. This punishment was to be in the shape of a drought, at all times a terrible infliction, but especially so in Eastern countries where all vegetation quickly dries up when there is a scarcity ...
— The Man Who Did Not Die - The Story of Elijah • J. H. Willard

... they smell, you'd better keep the basket to fall back on. Where'd you get THAT?" Mr. Dick looked at me over the bottle and winked. "In the next room," he said, "iced to the proper temperature, paid for by somebody else, and coming after a two-weeks' drought! Minnie, there isn't a ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Nothing but the thought of necessities that might arise for help on Bart's account made her make the toilsome passage, knee-deep among the flowers, to see whether, beyond that, the road was passable; but she only found that it was not fit for walkers except at a time of greater drought than the present. The swamp crept round in a ring, so that she discovered herself to be upon what was actually an island. Ann turned back, realising that ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... opposition of use-inheritance, it must clearly be fully competent to reduce wings without its aid. In considering the rudimentary wings of the apteryx, or of the moa, emu, ostrich, &c., we must not forget the frequent or occasional occurrence of hard seasons, and times of drought and famine, when Nature eliminates redundant, wasteful, and ill-adapted organisms in so severe and wholesale a fashion. Where enemies are absent there would be unrestrained multiplication, and this would greatly increase the severity of the competition for food, and ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... taken after meat, or otherwise gently procured with warm water, oxymel, &c., now and then. Fuchsius cap. 33. prescribes hellebore; but still take heed in this malady, which I have often warned, of hot medicines, [4385]"because" (as Salvianus adds) "drought follows heat, which increaseth the disease:" and yet Baptista Sylvaticus controv. 32. forbids cold medicines, [4386] "because they increase obstructions and other bad symptoms." But this varies as the parties do, and 'tis not easy to determine which to use. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... was angered at mankind, and for three years there was a great famine over all the world; nowhere in the world was even a grain of corn produced, and what people sowed failed to come up from a drought so great that for three years there was not a drop of rain or dew. For one year more people managed to live somehow or other, thrashing up what old corn there was; the rich made money, for corn rose very high. Autumn came. Where anybody had or purchased old seed, they ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... was effected by providing the cisterns with covering and shelter; the second by making the rain-water filter through layers, several yards thick, of sand and gravel. The natural water-holes, which are found in all deserts, but which dry up in times of protracted drought, indicated the spots where it would be most practicable to construct cisterns, for such spots were naturally the lowest points. The larger of these water-holes needed only to be deepened, the evaporation of the water guarded against, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... rivers of water. The ordinary supplies of rain and dew may fail: his deep and hidden supplies cannot. He shall not be careful in the year of drought, and in the days of famine he shall be satisfied. His supply is the living water—the SPIRIT of GOD—the same yesterday, today, and forever: hence he depends on no ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor

... for raw materials and agricultural products are fueling the economy, particularly in mining states. Australia's emphasis on reforms, low inflation, a housing market boom, and growing ties with China have been key factors behind the economy's 16 solid years of expansion. Drought, robust import demand, and a strong currency have pushed the trade deficit up in recent years, while infrastructure bottlenecks and a tight labor market are constraining growth in export volumes and stoking inflation. Australia's ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... in resistance to drought. In most cases of hibernation the time-energy function seems maintained at a loss of potential by the organism, a diminished vital consumption of energy being carried on at the expense of the stored energy of the tissues. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... sanctity and leanness! Nerves always were in that vigil,—raw, rattling nerves clamoring vociferously to be repacked in their sedatives. Thirst also was in that vigil,—no mere whimpering tickle of the palate, but a drought of the tissues,—a consuming fire of the bones! Hurt pride was also there, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... always light and high, except a little fleecy spot of vapour condensed close to the summit of Paras-nath. Though the nights were clear and starlight, no dew was deposited, owing to the great dryness of the air. On one occasion, this drought was so great during the passage of a hot wind, that at night I observed the wet-bulb thermometer to stand 20.5 degrees below the temperature of the air, which was 66 degrees; this indicated a dew-point of 11.5 degrees, or 54.5 ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker



Words linked to "Drought" :   period, xerotes, dryness, period of time, time period, drouth, waterlessness



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