PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 515 



of all tlic other sounds, for some minutes before the clouds came into con- 

 tact^ and when they did meet they shot instantly upward with great velocity 

 like an arrow shot from a bow. The forests, a few rods distant, became so 

 dark that nothing could be seen. 



The rain now began to fall in torrents. In a few minutes the small spring 

 branch at Mr. Martin's, having its rise a mile or so farther up the mountain 

 was swollen into a river. In an hour the rain was over and the sun again 

 appeared as bright as ever, 



Tlic gentlemen named then commenced an examination of results. About 

 three hundred feet above the head of the spring branch, a water spout had 

 fallen excavating a canal ten feet deep, and seventy-five feet wide at its 

 head. The side-walls at this point were perpendicular, while farther down 

 it varied both as to depth and width; the vast body of water, of course, 

 obeying the general laws controlling the descent of that fluid down a steep 

 inclination. This torrent in rushing down toward the spring branch at an 

 angle with the line of that stream, could not make a sudden turn but dashed 

 across, rising on the opposite side to the top of a spur of the hill thirty 

 feet high, when from the farther side it naturally fell into the channel of 

 the branch, swelling it into the proportions of a river. 



Upon more extensive examination, the water-spouts, if these rain-falls 

 may be so called, were found to be very numerous; nearly a hundred canals 

 existing within a regular area, not exceeding three miles in length. The 

 largest one was eighty feet in width, and others not more than eight or ten 

 feet. 



But these excavations were not the only effects produced during this 

 Lour of awful sublimity. Many forest trees had been struck by the light- 

 ning and explosions of electricity from the earth, had thrown out large 

 masses of clay and rock, in many places, producing excavations of suffi- 

 cient depth and width often, to bury a common hogshead; the vegetation 

 all around these spots being scorched and withered by the electric fluid. 



The seat of these water-spouts lay about four miles from the Tusquitta 

 Ball. Two gentlemen were upon the top of the ball when the cloud reached 

 that point. One of them, Mr. William R. Martin, described the rainfall as 

 so dense as to almost suffocate him. The sensation was such as is expe- 

 rienced when under water; and the only remedy was to lean the body over 

 so as to have a little space of air to breathe from beneath the breast. 



The volume of water discharged froni these combined clouds was such 

 as to raise the Hiwassce River very much higher than it had ever been 

 before or has been since. Here, too, the contest between cold water and 

 alcohol was repeated, a little mill and distillery having been swept away, 

 and the mill-stones forever lost in the depths of the Hiwassce. 



On the twenty-third of May 1859, I commenced a personal examination 

 of the area, upon which the so-called water-spouts had fallen. I was 

 accompanied by Dr. G. G. McCoy, of Fort Hembre. 



In ascending the mountain we could see at one time, more than a dozen 

 of the excavations. The first one measured was about twenty-five feet 

 wide at its head, and must have been some six or eight feet deep. It was 

 only about twenty yards from the top of the mountain-spur, upon which 

 the water had fallen. The torrent bad passed down into a trough-like 



