Wilhems Plains .] TERRA AUSTRALIS. 
hension at the Refuge. The wind was fresh, and kept increasing 
until eleven o’clock, at which time it blew very hard ; the rain fell 
jn torrents, accompanied with, loud claps of thunder and lightning, 
which at every instant imparted to one of the darkest nights the 
brightness of day. The course of the wind was from south-west to 
south, south-east, east, and north-east, where it blew hardest be- 
tween one and three in the morning, giving me an apprehension that 
the house, pavilions, and all would be blown away together. At 
four o’clock the wind had got round to north and began to mode- 
rate, as did the rain which afterwards came only in squalls ; at nine, 
the rain had nearly ceased, and the wind was no more than a common 
gale, and after passing round to N. N. W. it died away. At the time 
the wind moderated at Mauritius its fury was most exerted at Bour- 
bon, which it was said to have attacked with a degree of violence that 
any thing less solid than a mountain was scarcely able to resist. 
The lowest to which the mercury descended in the barometer at 
Vacouas, was 5^ lines below the mean level of two days before and 
two days afterward ; and this was at daybreak, when the wind and 
rain were subsiding. 
Soon after the violence of the hurricane had abated, I went to 
the cascades of the R. du Tamarin, to enjoy the magnificent prospect 
which the fall of so considerable a body of water must afford ; 
the path through the wood was strewed with the branches and 
trunks of trees, in the forest the grass and shrubs were so beaten 
down as to present the appearance of an army having passed 
that way, and the river was full up to its banks. Having seen 
the fall in the nearest of the two arms, I descended below their 
junction, to contemplate the cascade they formed when united, down 
the precipice of 120 feet ; the noise of the fall was such that my 
own voice was scarcely audible, but a thick mist which rose up to. 
the clouds from the abyss, admitted of a white foam only being 
distinguished. 
During these hurricanes in Mauritius, the wind usually makes 
443 
180 ft. 
March. 
