38
HEAVY FALL OF RAIN.
[Chap. II.
1841
July.
July.
are laid out with the greatest taste, Dr. Hooker had an opportunity of examining many rare and curious plants, which had been collected together from various parts of the world, and naturalised by the care and skill of the proprietor and his sons, forming a botanic garden of great value, and, even now, of great interest; although at the most unfavourable period of the year, being in the depth of winter, and in the rainy season.
The quantity of rain which sometimes falls at this place is truly astonishing: during our stay of twenty-one days, it unfortunately happened for us, but happily for the country, that there were only four days on which no rain fell; and on two or three occasions it came down in perfect sheets of water, so that, on the afternoon of the 16th, during two hours and a half, more than three inches of rain fell into the rain gauge at Garden Island: and again on the 17th, between 7 a.m. and noon, nearly five inches were recorded. On mentioning these facts to Sir George Gipps, he told me that on one occasion twenty-three inches fell in the course of twenty-four hours, as measured by a rain gauge on the South Head, an amount far exceeding any thing I had ever before heard of, and equal to the quantity that falls during a whole year in some parts of Great Britain. It produced great destruction of property in its course to the ocean; and there are everywhere to be seen numerous evidences of these periodical deluges in the deeply-worn watercourses, in the soft sandstone of which the country is chiefly composed. I have since been