214 



Meteorological Phenomena in connection with the Climate 

 of Berlin. Translated by Mrs Anne Ramsden Bennett 

 from the German of Professor Dove. 



(Continued from vol. liv. page 162.) 



On the nights of the 30th April and 1st May, an explosion was 

 heard at Barbadoes, so like the discharge of artillery, that the sol- 

 diers in the garrison of St Anna remained under arms. On the 

 1st of May, when day dawned, the eastern edge of the horizon was 

 clearly visible, but the whole upper portion of the heavens was over- 

 cast by a thick cloud which soon extended itself and concealed the 

 horizon from view. At last it became so dark that it was impossible 

 for the people in the houses to distinguish the situation of the win- 

 dows in their chambers, whilst the branches of the trees were 

 weighed down and broken under the pressure of a mass of ashes 

 which fell like rain. Whence came these ashes ? According to 

 the direction of the prevailing trade-winds during April and May, 

 they would have come from the Peak of the Azores, and yet these 

 ashes came from the volcano of Morne Carou on the Island of St 

 Vincent, which lies twenty miles to the west, and is so completely 

 separated from Barbadoes at this season by the trade-winds, that it 

 is only possible to sail there by making a very wide circuit. The 

 volcano had therefore ejected its ashes through the under into the 

 upper trade-wind. To this hitherto solitary example of the carrying 

 away of volcanic ashes in the direction of the upper instead of the 

 under current, modern times has added a more striking example. 

 On the 20th January 1835, the whole of the Isthmus of Central 

 America was shaken by an earthquake, accompanied by an eruption 

 of Coseguina. On the 24th and 25th, the sun was darkened at King- 

 ston in Jamaica, distant 800 miles, by a shower of fine ashes, and 

 this was the first indication which the inhabitants received that the 

 explosion which had already been heard had not been the report of 

 cannon. These ashes could only have been carried there by the 

 upper trade-wind, for Jamaica lies to the north-east of Nicaragua. 

 Besides this, the exception is a striking illustration of how the as- 

 cending air divides in the region of calms and flows towards both 

 poles, since some ashes also fell on board the ship Conway as it was 

 pursuing its course over the Pacific Ocean at a distance of 700 Eng- 

 lish miles from Coseguina. 



Even on the highest point of the Andes, the upper current of air 

 has never been reached by travellers. In that neighbourhood, there- 

 fore, the region of calms must be situated at the height of more than 

 20,000 feet above the level of the sea. Thus, in order that ashes 

 out of lower volcanoes, such as those of Morne Carou and Coseguina, 



