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 
