1 62 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



But the most remarkable point of Captain Hall's 

 account remains to be mentioned. He had gone out of 

 his course to avoid the storm, but when the wind fell to 

 a moderate gale he thought it a pity to lie so far from 

 his proper course, and made sail to the north-west. * In 

 less than two hours the barometer again began to fall 

 and the storm to rage in heavy gusts.' He bore again 

 to the south-east, and the weather rapidly improved. 

 There can be little doubt that but for Captain Hall's 

 knowledge of the law of cyclones, his ship and crew 

 would have been placed in serious jeopardy, since in the 

 heart of a Chinese typhoon a ship has been known to be 

 thrown on her beam-ends when not showing a yard of 

 canvas. 



If we consider the regions in which cyclones appear, 

 the paths they follow, and the direction in which they 

 whirl, we shall be able to form an opinion as to their 

 origin. In the open Pacific Ocean (as its name, indeed, 

 implies) storms are uncommon ; they are infrequent 

 also in the South Atlantic and South Indian Oceans. 

 Around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope heavy 

 storms prevail, but they are not cyclonic, nor are they 

 equal in fury and frequency, Maury tells us, to the true 

 tornado. Along the equator, and for several degrees 

 on either side of it, cyclones are also unknown. If we 

 turn to a map in which ocean-currents are laid down, 

 we shall see that in every ' cyclone region ' there 

 is a strongly marked current, and that each current 

 follows closely the track which I have denominated the 

 storm-C. In the North Atlantic we have the great Gulf 



