V10LE^TE OF TROPICAL STORMS 11 



nearly as much as the annual supply of our west coast. The 

 hollow trunk of an enormous tree in an exposed situation gave 

 the French traveller the means of accurate measurement. 



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. 

 Tlie tornado which devastated the Island of Guadeloupe on the 

 2.3 th 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 dif- 

 ficulty, 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 every- 

 thing on deck, had been swept away; some, that were towed 

 ill, 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. Four months of famine followed 

 upon this terrific storm, to which the pious islanders meekly 

 submitted as to the will of God. 



The celebrated missionary, John Williams f, describes a 



* Captain Stokes's " Discoveries in Australia." 



+ "Narrative of Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea Islands," p. 390. 



