Yet the petty rivalry of split and riven creeds actuated not a few
even at that time of peril, and while life was allowed sacred and no man
turned a deaf ear to the cry of woman or child, with property the case was
altered and sects lifted not a finger each to help the other in the saving
of furniture and effects.
Newlyn furnished but one theater of a desolation which covered wide
regions. At Penzance, the Laregan River flooded all the lowlands as it
swept with prodigious cataracts to the sea; mighty lakes stretched between
Penzance and Gulval; the brooklets of Ponsandine and Coombe, swollen to
torrents, bore crushing destruction upon the valleys through which they
fell. Bleu Bridge with its ancient inscribed "long stone" was swept into
the bed of the Ponsandine, and here, as in other low-lying lands, many tons
of hay were torn from their foundations and set adrift. At Churchtown the
rainfall precipitated off the slopes of Castle-an-dinas begot vast torrents
which, upon their roaring way, tore the very heart out of steep and stony
lanes, flooded farmyards, plowed up miles of hillside, leaped the wall of
the cemetery below and spread twining yellow fingers among the graves.
Three hundred tons of rain fell to the acre in the immediate tract of that
terrific storm, and the world of misery, loss and suffering poured forth on
the humble dwellers of the land only came to be estimated in its bitter
magnitude during the course of the winter which followed.
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