414 Electrical Countries. 



Taking" off a second coat I did not discover a^thing 

 which could have wounded me, while the pain assumed the 

 character of a burn. Without reflecting, I fancied my woollen 

 shirt had taken fire and was going to undress myself com- 

 pletely when our attention was drawn to a noise which re- 

 minded us of the humming of wasps. It was produced by our 

 sticks which sang loudly and resembled the noise of a kettle 

 when the water is on the point of boiling ; this lasted, perhaps, 

 about twenty minutes. . . . Some moments after, I felt 

 my hair and my beard stand on end, which produced upon me a 

 similar sensation to that which results from a dry razor being 

 passed over stiff hair. A young man, who accompanied me, 

 exclaimed that he felt all the hairs of his moustache growing, 

 and that from the top of his ears there were strong currents. 



. . A clap of distant thunder towards the west warned us 

 that it was time to quit the summit, and we descended rapidly for 

 about a hundred metres. Our sticks vibrated less and less as we 

 descended, and we stopped when the sound had become suffi- 

 ciently weak, only to be heard by putting our ears close to them. 

 The pain in my back had ceased with the few first steps 

 of descent, but I still retained a slight sensation of it. A second 

 clap of thunder, ten minutes after the first was heard in the 

 west over a considerable distance, and this was the last. There 

 was not any lightning, and half an hour after we left the 

 summit the sleet had ceased and the clouds dispersed. At half- 

 past 2 o'clock p.m. we again reached the culminating point of 

 the Piz de Surley to look for the sun. The same day there 

 was a violent storm in the Bernese Alps, where an English lady 

 was struck by lightning. 



"After all, we considered that these phenomena must 

 have extended to all the high rocky points of the Grisons, even 

 to the horizon where there were several stony summits, like 

 that on which we were, enveloped by whirlwinds of sleet, 

 while the high snowy points of the Bernina seemed to 

 have been exempt, notwithstanding the scattered clouds which 



surrounded them On a previous occasion at Nevado 



de Toluca I had been present at scenes of the same kind, but 

 much more severe, on account of its tropical situation and its 

 height of 4548 metres. 



" However, in bringing together different observations, many 

 points in common can be distinguished amongst them, viz., 1st. 

 The flow of electricity from the culminating rocks is produced 

 under a stormy sky covered with low clouds, enveloping the 

 summits or passing at a very little distance above them, but 

 without there being any electrical discharges in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the place where the continual flow is manifested. 



" 2nd. In each of the cases observed the summit of the 



