278 THE STORMS OF JUNE AND JULY, 1877. 



The reader must now be qualified to comprehend the singular actioo of 

 a tornado. This one like all similar tornadoes passed through a calm air. 

 At the railroad depot during its passage the air was perfectly calm and 

 still, followed a few moments after by a sudden strong wind from the oppo- 

 site quarter. Its passage was too rapid for. the surrounding air to be put m 

 motion. Had time been given for the air to rush in, no houses, trees nor 

 other matter would have thrown themselves into the vortex. In other 

 words no effects would have manifested themselves otherwise than a strong 

 whirlwind. Persons in the track of the cyclone were astonished to find 

 such instant and terrible effects occur with .so little wind in the front of the 

 storm. Trees showing scarcely any agitation were seized as by a herculean 

 hand and instantly jerked into the approaching storm center. The bell on 

 the court house was instantly thrown 100 feet across Main street directly in 

 the teeth of the storm. A frame house near where the bell fell leaped five 

 feet back from the street and also in the face of the storm. Eoofs and the 

 west walls of houses jumped into the approaching vortex. On its south 

 flank the south walls did the same. East walls and roofs and sections of 

 roofs, threw themselves into the retreating vortex. West of town there 

 stands a pecan tree about. 20 inches in diameter; from appearances it stood 

 very near if not quite in the center of the vortex. The bark, except two 

 fsmall strips, one of which, however, is completely detached from the trunk 

 — shot into the passing vortex. The evidence of electric action here is un- 

 ipistakable. The way that the bark was wrenched off shows that the force 

 •came from the tree as a center. On the west side, the tree split into a thin 

 slat not one fourth of an inch thick. A section of this slat, about three 

 •quarters of an inch long, is cut out as though a bullet came from the center 

 •of the tree. Mr. Landers, who accompanied me, probed the depth of the 

 -orifice. A small twig could be run in without difficulty to a depth, of 2\ 

 inches. The tree stood in a grassy plot. All around the tree the sod was 

 thrown out three inches in depth, exposing the roots, showing an electric 

 cbarge coming from the roots. Philip Stein's blocks on which his stable 

 stood that went up in the vortex, show the same fact. The blocks were 

 buried to within an inch of the top. The soil is also shot away around 

 them to a depth of three inches. They were double blocks about 14 inches 

 in depth. At one corner both blocks were shot out; the upper one I left 

 on the ground, but the lower one went no one knows whither, because it has 

 not been found. 



Into the overhanging vortex, houses, roofs and everything free on the 

 earth below leaped perpendicularly. Mr. Lewis Gott, who was a square 

 north from where his new and unj^ainted house stood, and in which he lived, 

 hearing the roaring sound in the direction of the new house, saw it go up 

 bodily and plunge into the cloud ; that is the last seen or heard of it, for 

 not a fragment of it nor of anything that it contained has yet been found. 

 Mr. Solomon Iveneipp saw the store building, a strongly built brick, two 

 stories high, and 43 by 20 feet, lifted up trom the floor so that he could see 



