292 Voyage of the No car a. 



winter, and in consequence of the heat inherent in the volcanic 

 soil, never lies long on it. On the other hand, hail is a 

 tolerably frequent visitant. Rain is of constant occurrence, and 

 sometimes falls in immense quantities. Viot was never weary 

 of expressing his astonishment at the enormous size of the 

 drops of rain which for many a year he had seen fall at St. 

 Paul. The cold is often pretty severe ; while the almost 

 entire want of firing on the island (for the dung of animals is 

 not obtainable in sufficient quantities to make its storing worth 

 the requisite labour), deprives the poor residents of the comfort 

 of a fireside. " If the last storm had not blown down our hut, 

 we should for long have had to do without fuel," was the naive 

 remark on one occasion of the old Frenchman, as he lay 

 stretched out on a dirty bed, carefully roiled up in his rough 

 woollen blanket. Winter begins in May and ends in Sep- 

 tember. During this period the Northerly winds are often very 

 strong. On 27th June, 1857, there blew for six or eight 

 hours here so terrific a tempest that the inhabitants of St. 

 Paul did not venture outside of their huts for fear of beinor 

 rapt away by the wind. These storms of winter occasionally 

 rage to such a degree that they drive before them into the 

 basin of the crater huge masses of water, which they whirl in 

 wild confusion to an enormous height, showing that the tract 

 in the Southern Ocean traversed by the hurricanes which 

 occasionally do such damage about Mauritius and Rodriguez, 

 occasionally embraces the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam. 

 In November, at the commencement of the fine season, the 



