52 THE INFLUENCES OF CLIMATE. 



Velocity of the Wind in Great Hurricanes. Indications of an Ap- 

 proaching Cyclone. The Great West-Indian Hurricane of October 1780. 

 Loss of a British Fleet. The Great Cyclone of 1703 in England. 

 Cyclone on the Brahmaputra in 1876, and Loss of 100,000 Lives. 

 Great Cyclone at the Mauritius in 1892. American Blizzards, or 

 Storms Attended by Intense Cold. Partial Destruction of U.S. Waggon 

 Train in a Blizzard. Buffalo Hunteis Frozen to Death. Terrible 

 Nature of Frostbite. Cause of Blizzards. The Great Blizzards of 

 March 1888. The New York Blizzard and the English Papers. An 

 English Blizzard. Possible Effects of a Great Storm in London. Dust 

 Storms. Cause of Moving Pillars of Sand in the Desert. How they 

 are Formed. Collapse of Dust Columns. The Army of Cambyses- 

 Alleged to Have Been thus Buried. Great Sand Storms in the Colorado 

 Desert, and in Algeria. The "Ascending" Form of Tornadoes. The 

 Horizontal Form. Tracks of Tornadoes through Forests. An English 

 Whirlwind. The Great Atmospheric Ocean. The Barometer. Cyclonic 

 Depressions. The Great Billows of the Atmospheric Ocean. Heavy 

 Falls of the Barometer. What They Indicate. Why Threatened 

 Storms Sometimes do not Occur. 



NOWHERE do meteorological phenomena assume 

 more immediate importance to the individual man 

 than they do to the traveller in wild countries, whose 

 life for the most part is passed in the open air, or at 

 best under the shelter of a canvas tent. Hence it 

 comes that the thoughtful traveller by land and sea 

 has his attention continually drawn to the consideration 

 of some one or other of those phenomena of Nature 

 to which we desire to call attention in this chapter. 



The influence of climate is felt, as we know, all 

 over the world. But experience shows that people 

 comfortably housed, and surrounded by all the refine- 

 ments of an ultra-civilization, have rarely either time 

 or inclination to bestow much thought upon the study 

 of the weather: and so it has come to pass, amid the 

 continual hurry and strain of the business of life, that 

 the science of meteorology has been more or less 

 neglected, even by men of science, until a comparatively 

 very recent date. The systematic observation of the 



