1849.] Seventeenth Memoir on the Law of Storms. 257 



weather with calms, the high peaks of the Natunas having a peculiarly shar- 

 pened clear appearance, and all the other land that we passed appeared to be 

 much more elevated, and was visible to a greater distance than usual. On the 

 change of the moon the appearances altered, and indistinct flashes of lightning- 

 were visible, without any dark clouds, but on the next day a very heavy 

 squall came on suddenly and disappeared as quickly again, leaving the air as 

 calm and clear as before ; but the most remarkable circumstance of the voyage 

 was the remarkably clear and well defined appearance of the horizon at night. 

 Although at the period when the moon shews least light, it seemed as if some 

 artificial or phosphoric light were present relieving, the natural dimness which 

 more or Jess prevails about the horizon line at night; and in all quarters the 

 stars were as distinctly seen rising and setting as the sun at sunrise, or as the 

 moon when she sets. When I told the Singapore, people of this on my return 

 they said that it is a general precursor of a tyfoon in the China Sea, and my 

 own experience in the Arabian sea, where I saw the same thing, confirms me in 

 thinking that it deserves to be noted. 



On clearing the reefs, and arriving on the coast of Lucdnia the weather became 

 thick and drizzly, and we had hardly time to get ready by sending down the upper 

 spars before it came on most furiously, first at N. W. then veered to West, and 

 finally to S, W., at which point about daylight on the morning it fell a calm, but 

 it was a calm of a different description from occurrences of the same kind after 

 ordinary gales. The whole atmosphere appeared as one thick curtain (without a 

 break any where) of thick fog-bank, if I may use the expression, blending the 

 water and sky in one continued mass, and accompanied by that dull, melancholy 

 sound described in the Horn Book. It remained this way for half an hour, and 

 then freshened up rapidly, and commenced to whistle and roar as it had previously 

 done, and brought a succession of dreadful squalls rendering it impossible to look 

 to windward a moment. It lasted altogether about 36 hours, veered to S. E. 

 and died away as we ran out of it : as the log book shews. We fell in with 

 another in four or five days afterwards, which commenced from the North and 

 N. W. also, but with clear weather, the only angry looking clouds were those 

 collected on the top of the range of mountains which run North and South on 

 Luconia, at the same time that the lower parts were distinctly visible. Another 

 sign which I have noticed in the Arabian sea ; and in the Bay of Bengal 

 also, is a very thin transparent cloud that flies generally high up, but with 

 much greater velocity than any other clouds present, and as if it was torn from 

 some larger fragment of the same kind as itself. The Barometer gives but 

 very little warning there, and only falls apparently as the gale increases. 



When it veered to South, again put the vessel away before it and scudded her 

 until she broached to, and we could scud her no longer ; we then lay to and were 

 driven, whether we would or not, in the direction of the Vele Rete rocks. It 



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