VIOLENCE OF TEOPICAL STORMS. 9 



As in the equatorial regions the atmospherical precipitations 

 are far more considerable than in the temperate zones, so also 

 their storms rage with a violence unknown in our climes. In 

 the Indian and Chinese Seas these convulsions of nature gene- 

 rally take place at the change of the monsoons ; in the West 

 Indies, at the beginning and at the end of the rainy seasons. 

 The tornado which devastated the Island of G-uadeloupe on the 

 25th July, 1846, blew down buildings constructed of solid stone, 

 and tore the guns of a battery from their carriages ; another, 

 which raged some years back in the Mauritius, demolished a 

 church and drove thirty-two vessels on the strand. On the 

 Beagle's arrival in Port Louis, after her long and arduous 

 surveying voyage, a fleet of crippled vessels, the victims of a 

 recent hurricane, might have been seen making their way into 

 the harbour — some dismasted, others kept afloat with difficulty, 

 firing guns of distress or giving other signs of their helpless 

 condition. ' On the now tranquil surface of the harbour lay a 

 group of shattered vessels, presenting the appearance of floating 

 wrecks. In almost all, the bulwarks, boats, and everything on 

 deck, had been swept away ; some, that were towed in, had 

 lost all their masts ; others, more or less of their spars ; one had 

 her poop and all its cabins swept away ; many had four or five 

 feet of water in the hold, and the clank of the pumps was still 

 kept up by the weary crew.' * 



Such are the terrible effects of the tornados and cyclones of 

 ^ the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans ; but the storms of the mis- 

 called Pacific are no less furious and destructive. A hurricane, 

 which on the 15th of April, 1845, burst over Pitcairn Island, 

 washed all the fertile mould from the rocks, and, uprooting 

 300 cocoa-nut trees, cast them into the sea. Every fishing-boat 

 on the island was destroyed, and thousands of fruit-bearing 

 bananas were swept away. 



The celebrated missionary, John Williams,! describes a 

 similar catastrophe which befell the beautiful island of Earo- 

 tonga on the 23rd of December, 1831. The chapels, school- 

 houses, mission-houses, and nearly all the dwellings of the 

 natives, no less than a thousand in number, were levelled to the 

 ground. Every particle of food on the island was destroyed. 



* Captain Stokes's ' Discoveries in Australia.' 



t ' Narrative of Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea Islands/ p. 390. 



