The Star. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1889.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6647, 11 September 1889, Page 2

The Star. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1889.

The Great Gale. It is too soon to say whether the terrific North-weßt gale of Monday night is, like most great gales, simply a temporary and disagreeable episode, or whether it is to be regarded as a real, widespread calamity. At present, it must be confessed, that in this provincial district the latter seems very probable. Of course we do not count the damage to | big buildings, telegraph lines, railway stations, private dwellings, signboards, and fowlhouses at very much. Such mishaps are expensive proof of the force with which a nor'-wester can blow when it is in deadly earnest. They speak to the mathematician of velocities, pressures and foot pounds and other mysterious abracadabra of dynamics, and discount the many hard things said of Captain Edwin. He, weather prophet in ordinary to the whole Colony, has to be accurate — if he ia to satisfy every carper and criticieer who has never tried the trade — in hia forecasts for every part of New Zealand at once, a thing practically impossible. This time the lone spire of Amberley Church is a mutely eloquent witness to his trustworthiness. The miles of telegraph wires down or "-earthed " in mauy parts of the Colony make electricity, the handmaiden which delivered his foreboding message far and wide, speak in his favour too. But it is not the wreck of buildings, nor Captain Edwin, nor even the marvellous electric fluid that claims our attention and calls forth all our sympathies. Hard cash will straighten the first ; Captain Edwin's reputation will depend on his own brains ; and the strongest of Nature's forces will look after itself. It is the farmers, the victims of other of those forces in their wildest mood, that need our kindest thoughts. One of the most moving things is to read how at Sheffield, Oxford, Cusfc, Greendale, Darfield&ndßangiorathe seed and soil have been blown clean away from fields and disappeared. The cry is almost universal from North Canterbury j and though it is not absolutely too late in many cases to sow again,and though the heavy rain which has just fallen, will soften the blow immensely! there must inovitably be great loss. This is truest perhaps of North Canterbury, but the report just to hand from our Methven correspondent shows that it is also only too true of some points to the southward. It is ten years since a similar catastrophe has occurred. Losses must be immense. How bad they are we shall not know fully till the crops are up, and the damage can be estimated more accurately. In any case, considering the proportion of his yearly fortunes that is staked in grain, the Canterbury farmer is likely to have bitter cause to remember the short, destructive gale of Monday evening.