THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. 91 
and flashes of lightning which seemed to illuminate the 
_ whole sky, accompanied by a pouring rain, a rain so 
_ dense that one might have fancied the skies to have been 
rent in two. Finally the wind ceased, and, thank God! 
had only lasted about ten minutes, though turning all 
round the compass. ‘The rain, thunder and lightning 
still continued. Such a storm I had seldom witnessed 
even in this region of thunder and tornado. Wherever 
I turned, the bright light in the skies met my eyes: from 
the West to the North, from the North to the East, and 
from the Hast to the South. 
The flashes of lightning .were horizontal, of tre- 
mendous glare and length, and zigzag; sometimes they 
were perpendicular. For hours and hours the boom of 
thunder went on, fearful claps bursting from every 
corner of the sky -without intermission. There was 
scarcely a moment’s interval between the reports. I 
took special pains to notice this fact. 
The sound of the thunder seemed to come from all 
round the sky; the whole of the heavens seemed to be 
a sea of fire. What could be more sublime, in the 
whole domain of Nature, than this grand storm in these 
equatorial regions of Africa? It was worth coming 
from our milder climate to see it, to behold this war 
of the elements, to hear such claps of thunder, to see 
such torrents of rain pouring down. 
Though filled with awe and a dread of I did not 
know what, I looked on till my eyes were almost blind- 
ed; I listened and listened until my ears were deafened 
by the appalling noise of the thunder. I am certain that 
no country can boast of more fearful thunder than these 
equatorial and mountainous regions of Western Africa. 
