On the Gales and Hurricanes of the Western Atlantic. 121 
its detour to the northward, and which accords well with the general 
course of a storm of a corresponding date, in the year 1830, on a more 
eastern meridian, we shall then recognize it as the hurricane which 
was encountered on the 5th of October, in the gulf of Florida, and 
northward of the Bahama Islands, in which many vessels were wreck- 
ed, and a squadron of H. M. ships was entirely disabled. This storm 
appears also to have been of limited extent and duration, as compar- 
ed with that which visited Barbadoes on the 10th, and I can find no 
evidence of its having pursued a retrograde or eastwardly course 
while in the tropical Jatitudes. 
The violent and extensive hurricane which desolated Barbadoes 
on the 10th of the same month, appears to have commenced at St. 
Lucia several hours /ater than at Barbadoes, and I also find that it 
did not take effect at the other neighboring islands till the 11th, 
which is sufficient proof that this storm could not have been the same 
which ravaged the western parishes of Jamaica, on the 3d of the 
month. In its lateral extent it covered at one and the same time, the 
entire distance between the islands of Antigua and Tobago, and it 
appears to have pursued the usual course or route, towards the north- 
west. A letter from Jamaica mentions that they had a small share 
of this hurricane at that island on the 12th, which is in due course 
of time, and accords with the extent and previous position of the 
gale. It appears, in its wide spread desolations, to have dispersed 
a Spanish fleet off Havana on the 16th, and to have visited with its. 
opposite margin, the island of Bermuda, on the 18th of the same. 
month. I have also two accounts from vessels which encountered 
this storm at sea on the 17th, which agree with the foregoing. 
_ The errors in the statements last quoted from the Memoir, seem 
to have arisen from mistaking two hurricanes of different dates, which 
passed in a north-westerly course, for one and the same storm pass- 
ing eastward ; or possibly, from conceiving the direction of the wind 
from a western quarter, at some of the islands, during the first part of 
the storm of October 10th and 11th, as directly indicating the route 
of the gale ; a very natural conclusion, and one that is perhaps, iden- 
tified with all our preconceived associations on this subject. It is by 
this instinctive association that most writers appear to be governed, 
in their accounts of violent storms, but than which, in its application 
tothe point before us, nothing can be more fallacious and unfounded, 
as the history in detail of all such storms will certainly show. So 
strong indeed is the influence of our established modes of thinking 
Vou. XXXI.—No. 1. 
