1848.] Sixteenth Memoir on the Law of Storms. 531 



At first sight these appear too capricious to be entitled to much 

 confidence, but we are fortunately able to corroborate them by our former 

 knowledge of this peculiarity of the hurricanes of this tract. It will 

 be seen by reference to the eleventh of these Memoirs, Journal, Vol. 

 XV. p. 69, that the hurricane of November 1843, in this same latitude, 

 and in from 82° to 88° East, and which has been traced by a sufficient 

 number of Logs to entitle us to consider its track and rates of travel- 

 ling as nearly correct, moved as follows : — 



Hurricane of Nov. 1843. 



for the 24 hours. Per hour. 



1st day 60 miles 2.5 



2nd ditto 32 1.3 



3rd ditto 135 ...., 5.6 



4th ditto ' 47 2.0 



5th ditto 57 2.4 



Evidently showing that tendency in all the storms in this dangerous 

 locality which Colonel Reid so sagaciously conjectured from a considera- 

 tion of the Albion's hurricane of 1809. 



" Not to be moving onward with the regular progression of those which have been 

 traced on the charts, but more to resemble the commencement of a whirlwind floating 

 with an irregular motion, as waterspouts do in calm weather." 



I have slightly altered this quotation from Col. Reid's Law of Storms 

 2d Edition, p. 241. It will be recollected that the Albion's was a 

 hurricane of terrific violence, in which three East Indiamen, out of a fleet 

 of nine, foundered. Did they meet with a whirlwind like the Duncan's ? 



Be this as it may, the singular occurrence of three hurricanes toge- 

 her within so confined a space, and the danger of one storm so heightened 

 by the awful phenomenon above alluded to,* shows clearly that our 

 cautions for the last seven years to mariners in crossing this tract are by 

 no means superfluous. It was however so far providential that they did 

 occur at the same time that, for the Maria Somes, Loo Choo and Grand 

 Dusqtcesne, it might have been destruction to have fallen in with a second 



* The position of which I have marked on the Duncan's track, close to Noon of the 

 29th. It may have been the joint effect of the Maria Somes' hurricane which was the 

 nearest, and that of the Duncan's, and this whether an electrical or dynamical pheno- 

 menon. Mr. Redfield in his recent memoir on the Cuba Hurricane of 1846 p. 94 

 mentions an instance of a local tornado of resistless violence occurring- in the midst of it, 

 and he states that in America and the West Indies they are not unfrequent. 



4 c 



