CYCLONES m THE TEOPICS. 275 



Some days before the terrible hurricane is unchained, nature, already- 

 gloomy and as if veiled, seems to anticipate a disaster. The little 

 white clouds which float in the heights of air with the counter trade- 

 winds, are hidden under a yellowish or dirty-white vapour; the 

 heavenly bodies are surrounded by vaguely iridescent halos and heavy 

 layers of clouds, which in the evening present the most magnificent 

 shades of purple and gold stretching far over the horizon, and the 

 air is as stifling as if it came from the mouth of some great furnace. 

 The cyclone, which already whirls in the upper regions, gradually 

 approaches the surface of the ground or water. Torn fragments 

 of reddish or black clouds are carried furiously along by the storm 

 which plunges and hurries through space ; the column of mer- 

 cury is wildly agitated in the barometer, and sinks rapidly ; the 

 birds assemble, as if to take counsel, then fly swiftly away, so as to 

 escape the tempest that pursues them. Soon a dark mass shows it- 

 self in the threatening part of the sky; this mass increases, and 

 spreads itself out, gradually covering the azure with a veil of a terrible 

 darkness or a blood- coloured hue. This is the cyclone which falls 

 and takes possession of its empire, twisting its immense spirals around 

 the horizon. The roaring of the sea and skies succeeds to this awful 

 silence. 



The progress of the wind experiences much more resistance in the 

 interior of continents than on the seas; but the phenomena which 

 are produced there during hurricanes are not less terrible. Build- 

 ings which occur in the path of the storm are razed to their 

 foundations, the waters of rivers are arrested and flow back towards 

 their source, isolated trees are torn up and plough the earth with 

 their roots, the forests bend as if they formed but a single mass, 

 and give to the tempest their broken branches and torn leaves. Even 

 the grass is uprooted, and swept from the ground. Innumerable 

 fragments fly in the track of the hurricane like the waifs carried away 

 by a fluvial or marine current.* Ordinarily, the action of electricity 

 is added to the violence of the air in movement, to increase the 

 ravages of the tempest. Sometimes the flashes of lightning are so 

 numerous that they fall in sheets like cascades of fire ; the clouds, and 

 even the drops of rain, emit light ; the electric tension is so strong 

 that sparks have been seen, says Reid, to dart spontaneously from the 

 body of a negro. An entire forest in St Vincent's Isle was destroyed 

 without a single trunk having been overthrown. In the same way 

 on the shores of Lake Constance in Europe, a great number of trees 



* Audubon, Sirds of America. 

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