424 PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



"On Tuesday, May 4th, 1697, (at Hitchin, in Hartford- 

 shire,) about nine o'clock in the morning, it began to lighten 

 and thunder extremely, some great showers intervening; it 

 continued till about two o'clock in the afternoon, when on 

 a sudden a black cloud arose south west of us, the wind 

 being east, and blew hard ; then fell a sharp shower, with 

 some hailstones. I measured some of them, seven or eight 

 inches about; but the extremity of the storm fell about 

 Offley, where a young man was killed, one of his eyes 

 struck out of his head, and his body all over black with 

 bruises. The tempest was such when it fell, that in four 

 poles of land, from the hills near us, it carried away all the 

 staple of the land, leaving nothing but chalk ; the flood 

 came down, spreading over four or five acres of land, rolling 

 like the bay of Biscay ; and, which is very strange, all this 

 within the compass of one English mile. I was walking 

 in. my garden, which is very small, perhaps about thirty 

 yards square, and before I could get out it took me to my 

 knees, and was through my house before I could get in, 

 which I can modestly speak was in the space of a minute, 

 and went through all like a sea, carrying all wooden things 

 like boats on the water. The greatest part of the town being 

 under this misfortune ; the surprise was so great, that we 

 had scarce time enough to save our wives and children. 

 There fell some thousand cartloads ; I saw them four days 

 after, and if the beds of hail had not been broke by peo- 

 ple's coming, and trampling of horses, it might have lain till 

 Michaelmas. They have been measured from one to thir- 

 teen or fourteen inches, certain ; some people talk largely of 

 it, seventeen and eighteen inches; but the other is certain 

 truth. The figures of them are various, some oval, others 

 round, others picked, and some flat." 



There can be no doubt that the force which held up these 

 hail stones until they became so numerous as to form " a 

 river of hail from the clouds," which " rolled like the bay of 



