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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
killing and wounding many persons. One fine American skip, 500 tons, was 
driven on shore near the citadel, and in an hour nothing could he seen of her 
hut a few timbers. Several fine merchant ships and hrigs are at anchor, 
dismasted, with cargoes, and not a spar or rope for standing rigging to he had 
in the island. No place hitherto has sutfered so much from a hurricane in 
all the West Indies as St. Thomas. 
Terrible and fatal as were the great storms of 1837, whose re- 
sults we are still lamenting, they are by no means the only, 
nor are they the worst, cases recorded of destructive hurricanes 
in the West Indian Seas. The great hurricane of 1780, which 
took place on the 10th October, was much more destructive and 
very far more fatal to human life than either of these, or even 
than both put together. On that occasion, at Santa Lucia, 
Admiral Eodney speaks of 6,000 persons having perished, while 
at St. Eustatia between 4,000 and 5,000, and at Martinique 
nearly 10,000 fell victims to the storm. At Barbadoes the loss 
of life exceeded 3,000, and in several of the other islands the 
result was disastrous, though in a less degree.* The amount of 
shipping destroyed was never accurately known, but among the 
losses may be mentioned a French convoy with 5,000 troops on 
board, which disappeared altogether during the storm. Part of 
the mischief seems to have been done by an earthquake, and a 
large part by great sea-waves, which washed over the land 
carrying everything away. At St. Pierre, in Martinique, a great 
sea- wave which rose twenty feet did more damage than the 
wind-storm itself. 
All these and many other terrible storms, occurring between 
the months of July and November, have been especially destruc- 
tive in and near the G-ulf of Mexico and among the group of the 
West Indian Islands which shuts off that sea from the Atlantic, 
They have many points in common and belong to a class of 
storms happily rare in our climate, though frequent in tropical 
seas, both in the east and west. Their course in the Atlantic is 
well known. They take their start generally from the islands 
nearest the north-eastern corner of South America, and travel 
in a tolerably regular and almost parabolic curve, first to the 
N.W., then past the coast of Florida towards the north, and 
afterwards bearing more to the east, parallel to the North Ame- 
rican coast, emerge again on the Atlantic near the banks of 
Newfoundland. They travel at rates varying from two to seven 
hundred miles per day for a distance sometimes exceeding 4,000 
miles. They have a limited breadth, generally from one to four 
hundred miles, and within the limits of their path they move 
with so much system and regularity that with a few data we 
may almost tell by calculation the exact details of their course. 
* It must he remembered that at this time the West Indian Islands were 
much more densely peopled than they are now. 
