The greatest amount of rain tabled in
any year during the period of observation is eighty-five inches, which fell in
the year 1850-51, in 1889 there fell thirty-five inches. It is calculated that
the average annual fall of rain throughout the United States is about
forty-five inches. In California it averages only about twenty inches. Thus we
see that we have about one fourth more rain in Palestine than in the Atlantic
region of the United States.
We believe God is beginning to turn
the captivity of the land which has lain so many centuries in desolation. The
increase in the annual rainfall, the reclaiming of barren tracts of land, the
continual improvements in the roads, all warrant this conclusion. These facts
speak loudly to those who have ears to hear of the times in which we live.—Hebrew
Christan for Jan. 1890. (“Palestine,”
The Return 2, no. 2 [February 1890]: 239)
