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gale exploring and enlarging on the fatal legacies of that which 
went before—and at its close one felt—I know I did—as though 
one was upon a weather-beaten ship putting into port to repair and 
refit one’s dismantled gear, and rejoiced as when to Ulysses of 
old— 
Kind Athene poured upon him sleep, 
Rest to his eyelids, surcease from his toils. * 
There was first a severe gale on the r2th of December, 1883, 
described in the journals of the day as the most violent experienced 
for many years. Then on the 23rd of the succeeding month the 
winds were again let loose, and on the 26th the storm reached its 
greatest height, the reading of the barometer corrected and reduced 
at ten o’clock at night on Saturday being one of the lowest ever 
recorded—27'759. On Monday not a single telegraph wire was 
left in working order between Edinburgh and London. There 
were in Tuesday’s journals no news from foreign parts, and 
no weather forecast. Editors were left to their own devices. The 
wind was as variable in its changes as it was sudden in its coming. 
On Saturday down to six p.m. it raged from the east, then suddenly 
shifted to the N.W. as the centre of the depression passed on, and 
raged with equal violence from that quarter—the direction of its 
onset distinctly marked by the trees as they lay prostrate on the 
ground. It was a storm of which no certain forecast had been 
made—a conspicuous instance of how far we still are from that 
period of accurate prediction to which meteorologists look forward. 
Of other such visitations I may recall the storm of November 29th, 
1874, when the Za lata foundered in the Bay of Biscay, the 
barometer here being 29'005; that of January 24th, 1875, with a 
reading of 28°850, very destructive in Carlisle, and recalling to its 
older inhabitants recollections of that of January, 1838; and finally, 
that in which the Tay Bridge went down on the 28th of December, 
1879, the barometer falling to 29'486—not in itself a low reading, 
but low when compared with 30°103, the reading of the preceding 
day. A window of my own was blown in almost at the very time 
that—as we learned the next day—the terrible disaster had 
* Homer's ‘‘ Odyssy,” Bk. V., adfin, Lord Carnarvon’s Translation, 
