Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/460

 —emblem of domestic happiness—awaits but the first week of April to be once more kindled. The plough is seen again upon the fallow fields. The birds chirp, as if with fresh hope, from the reviving woodlands. Nothing is needed but a rainfall for the full happiness of man and his humbler fellow-creatures. May His mercy, so often shown at sorest need, not fail us now!

From what road-reports come across me, I gather that typhoid fever is no infrequent visitor when the water becomes scarce, when sources are polluted, and the carcases of the rotting stock lie strewed over larger areas. Medical men seem to be at odds about the generation of this dire disease. Fever germs, bacilli, bacteria, water pollution, direct contagion,—all seem to have their advocates. It seems probable that towards the end of a drought the very air, uncleansed by shower and storm, becomes charged with disease germs. As to water pollutions, sometimes the disease is at its fiercest before a heavy fall of rain, to disappear almost magically afterwards. At other times the rain seems to intensify the epidemic. The dry air of the interior, however hot, has always been thought to be antagonistic to the disease. It has not proved so of late years. Occasionally there is an outbreak of exceptional virulence in some particular locality; but nothing has hitherto been elicited as to the special conditions tending to produce or to aggravate the disease.

At and around Bourke matters seem approaching a crisis. Much of the 'made' water on the back blocks has failed of late, and the stock have been brought into the 'frontage,' there to drink their fill, doubtless, but to be utterly deprived of food as represented by the ordinary herbage. If rain does not come within a month, dire destruction, worse and more extensive than in any previous drought, must take place; and yet since 1866 I have so often heard the same prediction, and it was never fulfilled. In the meantime man can do nought but hope and pray, if faith be his in the Divine Disposer of events. In days to come, a comprehensive system of water supply may alleviate much suffering and prevent misfortune; but though water may be secured and stored, the sparse herbage of the boundless plain, the red-soiled forest, cannot be so treated. Unless the rainfall be timely in these far solitudes, no human energy or forecast can avert disaster.