On the Gales and Hurricanes of the Western Atlantic. 121 



its detour to the northward, and which accords well with the general 

 course of a storm of a corresponding date, In the year 1830, on a more 

 eastern meridian, we shall then recognize it as the hurricane which 

 was encountered on the 5th of October, in the gulf of Florida, and 

 northward of the Bahama Islands, in which many vessels were wreck- 

 ed, and a squadron of H. M. ships was entirely disabled. This storm 

 appears also to have been of limited extent and duration, as compar- 

 ed with that which visited Barbadoes on the 10th, and I can find no 

 evidence of its having pursued a retrograde or eastwardly course 

 while in the tropical latitudes. 



The violent and extensive hurricane which desolated Barbadoes 

 on the 10th of the same month, appears to have commenced at St. 

 Lucia several hours later than at Barbadoes, and I also find that it 

 did not take effect at the other neighboring islands till the 11th, 

 which is sufficient proof that this storm could not have been the same 

 which ravaged the western parishes of Jamaica, on the 3d of the 

 month. In its lateral extent it covered at one and the pame time, the 

 entire distance between the islands of Antigua and Tobago, and it 

 appears to have pursued the usual course or route, towards the north- 

 west. A letter from Jamaica mentions that they had a small share 

 of this hurricane at that island on the 12th, which is in due course 

 of time, and accords with the extent and previous position of the 

 gale. It appears, in its wide spread desolations, to have dispersed 

 a Spanish fleet off Havana on the 16th, and to have visited with its 

 opposite margin, the island of Bermuda, on the 18th of the same 

 month. I have also two accounts from vessels which encountered 

 this storm at sea on the 17th, which agree with the foregoing. 



The errors in the statements last quoted from the Memoir, seem 

 to have arisen from mistaking two hurricanes of different dates, which 

 passed in a north-westerly course, for one and the same storm pass- 

 ing eastward ; or possibly, from conceiving the direction of the wind 

 from a western quarter, at some of the islands, during the first part of 

 the storm of October 10th and 11th, as directly indicating the route 

 of the gale ; a very natural conclusion, and one that is perhaps, iden- 

 tified with all our preconceived associations on this subject. It is by 

 this instinctive association that most writers appear to be governed, 

 in their accounts of violent storms, but than which, in its application 

 to the point before us, nothing can be more fallacious and unfounded, 

 as the history in detail of all such storms will certainly show. So 

 strong indeed is the influence of our established modes of thinking 



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