Sorrow on the Land: An Account of the Inundation Occasioned by the Bursting of the Bilberry Reservoir (1852) - Preface

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Sorrow on the Land: An Account of the Inundation Occasioned by the Bursting of the Bilberry Reservoir (1852)

• Preface
• The Valley of the Holme (page 7)
• The Holme Reservoirs (page 12)
• The Bursting of the Reservoir (page 17)
• First Sunday After the Flood (page 59)
• Providential Escapes (page 69)
• Public Sympathy (page 88)
• Concluding Reflections (page 92)
• Postscript (page 106)

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PREFACE.

The author of the following narrative of a most serious local calamity is not singular in the opinion that it deserves a record more durable than its startling details secured for it in the periodical press of the day. To the young especially of the present age, and even of future times, its facts can scarcely ever be destitute of painful interest ; and these, in correct and consecutive order, have been carefully supplied. The moral lessons which the whole so clearly suggests, it is hoped may be of permanent benefit to the youth of the Wesleyan congregations, for whom this narrative is especially designed. That God may bless to them this record of a most solemn and mysterious visitation, is the sincere prayer of

THE AUTHOR

April, 1852.

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"A vision of the deluge. Lo! behold,
The waters dark through every valley roll'd.
Wide, fruitful fields are buried 'neath the wave,
The peasant's hearth encroaching billows lave.
Towards each mountain-height, each hilly waste,
Young, old, rich, poor, in wild disorder haste ;
Rank, beauty, wisdom, wealth have lost their place,
Whilst death glares horribly in every face !"

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Continue to The Valley of the Holme...

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