THE ATMOSPHERE AND ITS CURRENTS. 453 



Loire in France and the Trent in England was the chief scene of its ravages. The 

 historians of those times give an affecting account of the dismal appearance of the district. 

 Houses unroofed steeples blown down stacks of corn scattered abroad vessels dismasted 

 or wrecked and upwards of eight thousand persons drowned. " The wind," says 

 Oldmixon, " blew west-south-west, and grumbled like thunder, accompanied with flashes 

 of lightning. It threw down several battlements and stacks of chimneys at St. James's 

 Palace ; tore to pieces tall trees in the Park ; and killed a servant in the house. The 

 Guard-house at Whitehall was much damaged, as was the Banqueting-house. A great 

 deal of lead was blown off Westminster Abbey ; and most of the lead on churches and 

 houses either rolled up in sheets or loosened. The pious and learned prelate Dr. Richard 

 Kidder, bishop of Bath and Wells, and his lady, were killed by the fall of part of the old 

 episcopal palace at Wells. The bishop of London's sister, Lady Penelope Nicholas, was 

 killed in like manner at Horsely in Sussex, and Sir John Nicholas, her husband, grievously 

 hurt." Upwards of 800 houses, 400 windmills, and 250,000 timber trees were thrown 

 down ; 100 churches unroofed ; 300 sail lost upon the coast ; 900 wherries and barges 

 destroyed on the Thames ; the Eddystone lighthouse, built by Winstanley, was overthrown ; 

 15,000 sheep, besides other cattle, were drowned by the overflowing of the Severn ; and 

 Rear Admiral Beaumont, with the crews of several ships, perished on the Goodwin 

 Sands. 



The West Indies and the vicinity of the Mauritius seem to be two principal foci of 

 hurricanes, from their frequency and tremendous violence in those localities. Of thirteen 

 hurricanes, described by Colonel Reid, in his interesting attempt to develop the law of 

 storms, eleven took place in the neighbourhood of the Mauritius and Madagascar, which 

 sanctions an opinion prevalent among seamen, that gales are commonly avoided by ships 

 steering in a course so as to keep well to the eastward of the Mauritius. To give some 

 idea of a tropical hurricane, the particulars gathered by Colonel Reid from various sources, 

 respecting that which desolated several of the West India islands in the year 1831, are 

 here introduced. It passed over Barbadoes, St. Lucia, St. Domingo, and Cuba, swept the 

 northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico, raged simultaneously at Pensacola, Mobile, and 

 New Orleans, entered the adjoining states, and seems to have been disorganised by the 

 opposition offered to its progress by the mountain region of the Alleghanies. The 

 hurricane accomplished the distance of 2000 miles in 150 hours, at an average velocity of 

 13^ miles an hour, but the rate of its progressive motion was insignificant in comparison 

 with that of its rotatory movement, a feature hereafter to be adverted to. Before its 

 arrival at St. Vincent, a cloud was observed to the north by a resident, so threatening in 

 its aspect and peculiar in its colour, that of olive green, that, impressed with a sense 

 of impending danger, he hastened home, and by nailing up his doors and windows saved 

 his house from the general calamity. In this island, the most remarkable effect of the 

 storm was the destruction of an extensive forest at its northern extremity, the trees of 

 which were killed without being blown down. In 1832, these trees were frequently 

 examined by Colonel Reid, and appeared not to have been killed by the wind, but by the 

 immense quantity of electric matter rendered active during the storm. When at its height, 

 two negroes at Barbadoes were greatly terrified by sparks of electricity passing off from 

 one of them, as they were struggling in the darkness, in the garden of Coddrington College, 

 to reach the main building, after the destruction of their hut. Such was the quantity of 

 spray carried inland from the sea by the wind, that it rained salt water over the whole 

 island, which killed the fresh-water fish in the ponds, and several ponds continued salt for 

 some days after the storm. The afternoon that ushered iu the hurricane, that of the llth 

 of August, was one of dismal gloom, but about four o'clock, there was an obscure circle of 

 imperfect light towards the zenith subtending an angle of 35 or 40. Variable squalls of 



