170 



humboldt's cuba. 



the preceding one. It began about midnight of the 

 10th October, and increased in violence, with tor- 

 rents of rain and spray, until 10 30 A.M. of the 

 11th, when the barometer had fallen to 27.06, the 

 lowest point it has ever been known to touch in 

 Cuba. Its ravages extended over nearly the same 

 extent of country with that of 1844, but its greatest 

 violence was confined to a circle of about forty miles 

 radius round Havana. Two hundred and twenty- 

 six vessels were lost, 1,872 houses were blown down, 

 5,051 partially destroyed, and 114 persons perished. 

 During both of these hurricanes, the wind veered to 

 every point of the compass, and the salt spray was 

 carried fifteen or twenty miles inland, blackening 

 vegetation as though fire had passed over it. — 

 (Arboleya, Manual de la Isla de Cuba.) 



To the foregoing admirable view of the climate of 

 Cuba, by Baron Humboldt, we can only add the fol- 

 lowing tables and remarks from Don Eamon de la 

 Sagra's " Historia Fisica, Politica y Natural de la 

 Isla de Cuba." The indications of the rain-gauge 

 are in English inches, and the hygrometer is express- 

 ed by Deluc's scale. 



