Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884, Volume 1 (1919).djvu/36

16 loss of time before it is in full bearing is a heavy item on the wrong side of the ledger, so that the viticulturists suffered heavily from this plague.

In December 1874 great damage was done in the eastern districts by such floods as had not been known for half a century previously. Rain fell not in drops but in sheets, which caused every river and every streamlet to overflow its banks, and rush down to the sea with terrible force. Such bridges as were not high above the water and resting on piers of great strength were washed away, many houses were wholly or partly destroyed, cultivated ground disappeared, leaving only bare rock or barren subsoil, and great numbers of sheep and horned cattle were drowned. In many places human beings narrowly escaped being carried away by a rush of water in places always before considered perfectly safe. At East London five vessels were wrecked in the great storm, and at Port Natal two, for the floods were not confined to the Cape Colony, but were general throughout South-Eastern Africa.

It is only at long intervals that disasters of this kind occur, though precaution should always be taken when building, especially near streams, to provide against sudden rushes of water. Generally such storms are confined within very narrow limits, and it sometimes happens that deep channels may be washed out along a particular line, while a few hundred paces on each side of it not a drop of rain falls. Such was the case, for instance, in December 1875, when the Doorn river, which runs through the village of Heidelberg in the Cape Colony, suddenly rose and carried away forty-five houses with all their contents, with the loss of two lives. The gardens along the course of the stream were completely destroyed, all the soil being washed away.

Cotton growing was now dying out in the eastern districts, owing mainly to the scarcity of labour in the picking season. In 1874 unginned cotton weighing