1811. 
LIGHTNING. — EARTHQUAKE. — RAINS. 
369 
I noted an observation so low as 24° (4° 4 below 0. C), and saw ice 
half an inch thick. One morning in June, the ground was white 
with s7ioii), which, however, was all melted away before night. 
Thunder-storms not unfrequently bring hailstones half an inch in 
diameter. 
The lightning, in its appearance, differs from that of England : 
the luminous trace formed by it, was not straight, or broken into 
angles, but moved in a quivering manner, describing a tremulous 
line, not unlike that by which rivers are represented in maps. The 
flash was, in general, not instantaneous ; but had a duration that 
was very perceptible : sometimes it continued so long as two seconds ; 
and to the eye it seemed as if liquid fire were rapidly flowing along 
the luminous line, as along a channel. This phenomenon was more 
evident when the clouds from which it was produced were more 
distant ; and it may then be observed to take a direction more hori- 
zontal than otherwise. 
Fatal accidents from lightning, though very rarely, have yet 
sometimes occurred. A few years before, one of the Hottentot 
huts at Klaarwater was struck by it, and six men killed ; but an old 
woman and a child, who were in it, remained unhurt. Only 
eighteen months previous to this date, two men, who, during a 
heavy thunder-shower, took shelter under a tree at Wittewater, were 
struck dead. But these are the only instances that have come to 
my knowledge. 
One night in the month of January, 1806, the shock of an 
earthquake was felt at Klaarwater, and which one of the missionaries 
described as producing a movement of the ground like that of a 
ship at sea in a heavy swell ; in which the whole liouse moved. 
This motion was repeated three several times, attended with a very 
hollow deep sound. No mischief was done by it, nor was the earth 
observed to be rent in any place ; as the motion was not of that 
trembling kind already described as having damaged so many houses 
in Cape Town. 
This place, in common with all countries which I have visited 
remote from the sea, receives its rains in the summer ; whereas 
3 B 
