THE HURRICANE SEASON. 179 



visible a long time as a heavy cloud. I found my 

 friend putting up the " hurricane shutters " to his 

 windows, which overlooked the bay directly above the 

 sea-wall. The sea was agitated, and a dense cloud 

 of mist came hurrying up from the south-west with a 

 muffled roar. For a long time we were in suspense ; 

 the sun went down red and blinking behind a wall 

 of vapor. The storm passed us without doing damage, 

 though later intelligence reached us that it had struck 

 the island of Grenada and toppled over three hundred 

 houses. 



Immediately preceding the hurricanes, there arrive 

 off the Caribbean coast vast numbers of birds called, 

 from their cries, "Twa-oo." They are said to be the 

 harbingers of hurricanes, and only appear during the 

 calms, immediately before a storm. They cover the 

 water in large flocks, and come in from the desolate 

 sandy islands where they breed. They are the sooty 

 tern (the Sterna fuliginosa) , but are known to the 

 natives as " Hurricane-birds." When I arrived in 

 Dominica the sea was black with them, but on the 

 morning after the storm they had disappeared, to a 

 bird, as completely as though blown into another 

 sphere. 



Steaming south, past Martinique, and by the way 

 of Barbados, I found myself, one morning early in 

 October, under the Pitons of St. Lucia, two pointed 

 mountains rising out of the sea, the most beautiful and 

 curious of any in these islands. They are about six 

 hundred feet in height, wooded to their summits, and 

 dark green. St. Lucia is famous as being the home 

 of the infamous snake known as the "Iron Lance," 

 of which I speak more at length in my description of 



