STORM CONTINUES. 139 



heights delighted to show their mighty strength, while they vied 

 with each other in throwing their spray over them and into the 

 sea beyond. Now all the rocks and points of land, of which there 

 are many jutting out into the sea on either side, are in turn covered 

 with a mass of foam and white-capped spray, while the water 

 rebounds high into the air fifty or a hundred feet at least ; some- 

 times it breaks over the rocks with a report like thunder, sending 

 long sheets of glistening spray vertically forwards. All these varied 

 scenes we beheld in one moment, and almost at a single glance, 

 and more beside. The wind, the rain, the blinding sleet or snow ; the 

 dark heavens, and still darker horizon ; the foaming, seething, and 

 hurrying, the turning and twisting masses of mad, white, frothy, 

 granular (for I can think of no other word to express the peculiar 

 effects of light spray upon a darker ground of water) watery crests 

 that rise and fall, or cover the whole surface of the water as far as 

 the eye can reach, are all seen in a moment. No pen can do 

 justice to the terrific grandeur of the scene ; no picture can give a 

 real impression of its awfulness. My memory can scarcely retain 

 the thoughts that the moment or moments (for the storm thus 

 continued without respite all day) inspired. And yet I have not 

 told all. 



To have simply witnessed a storm of this description, and known 

 that it could do damage to any of our property, would in 

 itself have been a sight to have recalled continually in after life. 

 Remembering the care and pains taken to save everything useful 

 in this out-of-the-world region, the expense of transportation, and 

 the real value of any little improvement when once made, you 

 can go with me to another part of the island, not far distant, and 

 look with renewed awe upon the destruction going on there. 

 Struggling fiercely against the wind, just before the additional dusk 

 of evening set in, we hurry down the little hill at the west to the 

 stage-head and wharf, to see if all is safe there. Three weeks ago 

 to-day the Edward Cardwell was wrecked, as I have before des- 

 cribed, and the cargo of huge oak, pine, and other varieties of 

 wood logs, beside deal boards, scattered far and wide along the 



