1872.] The Origin of the Great Cyclones. 421 
expanded so violently and caused such an intense cold that 
the moisture in the room was congealed “‘in a shower of 
snow, while the pipe from which the air issued became 
bearded with icicles.” 
We are now prepared to understand the assumed agency 
of the trade-winds in the production of cyclones. 
The South-East trade-wind is in many respects like its 
Northern counterpart, but decidedly fresher and stronger. 
In the vicinity of the famous island of St. Helena, and from 
that rock to the island of Ascension, it is perhaps the most 
constant wind on the globe. Here its direétion is very 
nearly fixed due S.E., and from the last-named latitude it 
blows steadily and strongly right up to the Equator, and 
crosses the line in the winter of the Southern hemisphere 
with a marked velocity. 
The South-East trades occupy a much larger area of the 
earth’s surface, and sweep a wider zone than do the North- 
East trades. The celebrated navigator, La Perouse, writing 
in the month of September, 1785, while on his way to the 
South Atlantic, says:—‘‘ We crossed the Equator on the 
29th of September in 153° west longitude. Those sailors are 
quite in error who are afraid of finding calms near the line 
at this season ;”’ and the reason for this observation is that 
the belt usually known as the equatorial calm belt is actually 
and constantly penetrated in July, August, and September 
by the South-East trades, which have come up from below 
the Equator. Coleridge, availing himself of the popular 
notions of his day, delineated this region of calms as a 
terrible one for the mariner, in which his bark was calm- 
bound under a hot and copper sky— 
‘‘ Day after day, day after day, 
We stuck ; nor breath, nor motion ; 
As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean.” 
But, unless we except certain seasons of the year, this once- 
dreaded region is not more tranquil than certain other spots 
and districts of the Atlantic to which the name of Horse 
Latitudes has in our time been given, but which was called 
by the old Spanish sailors El golfo de las yeguas, ‘‘the mare’s 
sea,” to denote its roughness. Certain it is the South-East 
trade does cross the Equator in summer, and make itself 
felt; Jatleast as: far as jthe parallel of ‘ro? N., Mrs Jaa. 
Laughton tells us “‘ The S.E. trade inthe hurricane months 
blows across the line far to the northward.” Dampier, 
Horsburgh, Dové, Capt. M. F. Maury, and I believe all 
writers without an exception, have fixed 10° or 12°N. as the 
