The Great Drought

We are passing through a season of exeeesive heat, and a long continued and most disastrous drought. This record we have been called to make for three successive summere, a fact which is unpreoedented in the history of our state. Heretofore a dry season has uniformly been suoceeded by a wet one. A scanty harvest has been followed by a an abundant iogathering. Bat now we have a different state of things, and for the third season we are experiencing a drought which is spreading over a wide section of our country, and is most disastrous m its consequences. Around our county and the adjoining districts the report is uniform, and the complaint is general that all kinds of vegetation is not merely suffering for the want of rain, but is actually burning up. A ride into the country a few days since confirmed the report which had reached us, that everything looked most discouraging, and unless rain carne Boon the entire fall erop woulJ be ruined. The picture is sad in the extreme. Gardens are dried up as if scorched by fire. The dust lies heavily upon the earth. Vegetation has lost its normal color. The moisture has gone out of the earth. Streams, springs, wells are drying up. Leaves are falling frotn the trees as in autumn. Fruits are wilting on sapless boughs. Cattle are turning away from the parched herbage. And for weeks together we have had overhead an unbroken reign of vivid sunsbine. Never has there been a season within the memory of man when the sun has poured down his rays all day long from such cloudless skies as we have experienced during the progresa of this disastrous sumaaer. The strain upon us from this intense and long continued heat has not been paralleled, and it is not a surprieing thing to learn, that in some sections it has resulted in much sickness, which has grown alarming. But eveñ with a picture that is so doleful as this, we have some offsets. While it has been very dry here and around us, in other localities there has been rain, if not in abundance, yet sufficient to keep nature alive and in good heart. Reporta come to ub irom districts not tar off, that showers have been frequent and there has been no great gufferinjj. Indeed, at the east and south, and beyond the Mississippi ' the rain-íall has reached the average, and the food eupply will be equal to the wants of our population. In this broad land there can be no alarm of famine, even though it may look unpromising in certain districts. Even here, the early crops were an average yield, and we shall not be greatly troubled. Our people are full of courage, and we are beginning to say, that fall pasturage will undoubtedly be good, and with the rain that is looked for everything will again revive and flourish. But this season will go down in history as the summer of the great drought.