AND PORTO SANTO. 133 



any sensible quantity, although I frequently tried, (soon after sun- 

 rise as well as at less favourable hours) until January, when during 

 a violent storm from the north-west, the straws of Volta's electro- 

 meter (armed with a conductor of thirteen inches), diverged 1.5 

 lines with negative electricity. Before this, I had frequently 

 tried with a small condensator adapted to the instrument, but not 

 successfully. 



The Sirocco is experienced here in a slight degree, and always 

 arrives from the eastward. From Cape Verde to Cape Palmas, 

 its direction, under the name of Harmattan, is north east ; but 

 from the latter place to Benin, E.N.E. In Egypt, it is called 

 Kamsin, and blows from the S.S.W. The dim troubled ap- 

 pearance of the sun and sky, the fine dust pervading the air, 

 the dryness of the skin (especially that of the lips and nose, 

 as if affected by a severe cold), the curling up of books, and 

 papers, and the wide gaping of the seams of all boarded floors, are 

 the attendant circumstances both of the Harmattan and Kamsin ; 

 but I never heard of people dying from the effects of the former, 

 that is, from a difficulty of respiration, attended by convulsions, 

 and the rushing of the blood to the head, followed by bleeding at 

 the mouth and nose after death, as M. Volney witnessed during 

 the Kamsin'. On the contrary, our invalids always became con- 

 valescent, and there are most extraordinary instances on record at 

 Cape Coast Castle, of Europeans who lay at the point of death, 

 being gradually resuscitated by the setting in of a Harmattan. 

 The natives look and feel very uncomfortable whilst it lasts, which 

 is generally about three days, but I do not recollect that they are 

 particularly anxious to avoid stirring out, as in Egypt, where they 

 even shelter themselves in the wells, according to Volney : neither 

 do I recollect that dead bodies swell, become blue, and are easily 

 torn, as he describes. I remember to have heard on good autho- 

 rity, that 300 slaves were inoculated for the small pox, by the 



' Etat Physique deVEgypte, p. 50. 



