278 THE ATMOSPHEEE AND METEOEOLOGY. 



little light that still remains serves only to show the gloom. The 

 winds which howl and whistle, the waves which dash against each 

 other, the masts bending and breaking, the groaning of the timbers 

 of the ship, all these numberless sounds are mixed and confused in a 

 terrible despairing wail, drowning even the peals of thunder. The 

 sea no longer rolls in large and mighty waves, but boils over like an 

 enormous cauldron, heated by the fire of submarine volcanos. The 

 low clouds creeping above the waters often emit a lurid light that 

 one would say was the reflection of some invisible Gehenna ; at the 

 zenith appears, surrounded by darkness, a whitish space which sailors 

 have named " the eye of the tempest," as if they really saw a fiierce 

 god in the hurricane who descends from the sky to seize and destroy 

 them. When, in the middle of this terrible storm, the sailors 

 accept the strife with the elements, and, defying death, seek to 

 manoeuvre and steer their dismantled ship without sails or masts, 

 they certainly furnish a sublime example of human greatness. 



Among the efiects that certain hurricanes have produced, there are 

 several which would seem quite incredible, if the genius of man could 

 not by means of powder and other fulminating matters impress on 

 the air a still greater rapidity and give it thus, though in very limited 

 spaces, a force of destruction superior to that of the tempest. On the 

 26th of July, 1825, during the hurricane of Guadeloupe a gust of 

 wind seized a plank an inch thick and sent it through the trunk of a 

 palm tree 16 inches thick. In the same way in a lesser whirlwind 

 which passed near Calcutta, a bamboo was hurled through a wall of a 

 yard and a half in thickness ; that is to say, the breath of air in move- 

 ment over this point had a force equal to that of a six-pounder.* At 

 St. Thomas, in 1837, the fortress which defends the entrance of the 

 port was demolished as if it had been bombarded. Blocks of rock 

 w^ere torn from a depth of 30 or 40 feet beneath the sea and flung 

 on shore. Elsewhere solid houses, torn from their foundations, 

 have glided over the ground as if flying before the tempest. On the 

 banks of the Ganges, on the coasts of the Antilles, and at Charleston, 

 vessels have been seen stranded far from the shore in open plains or 

 in forests. In 1681 a vessel from Antigua was carried up the rocks 

 three yards above the highest tides, and remained like a bridge 

 between two points of rock. In 1825, at the time of the great hurricane 

 of Guadeloupe, the vessels which were in the road of Basse Terre dis- 

 appeared, and one of the captains happily escaping, recounted how 

 his brig had been seized by the hurricane and lifted out of the water, 

 * India Eevieio. Dove, Loi den Tempetes. 



