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автор Allen Howard Godbey

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GREAT DISASTERS

AND

Horrors in the World’s History.

A GRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF THE NOTABLE CALAMITIES
WHICH HAVE BEFALLEN MANKIND

IN ALL AGES, BOTH UPON LAND AND SEA.

EMBRACING

THE LOUISVILLE TORNADO, FLOODS IN THE SOUTH, CHARLESTON EARTHQUAKE,
JOHNSTOWN FLOOD, STORM ON THE COAST OF SAMOA, NOTED SHIPWRECKS,
GREAT FLOODS IN CHINA, HOLLAND AND JAPAN, AND OTHER NOTABLE
DISASTERS CAUSED BY STORM, FLOOD AND VOLCANIC ACTION,

AND OF THE LAWS OF THE

NATURAL PHENOMENA THAT PRODUCE THEM.

COMPRISING

THRILLING TALES OF HEROISM, GREAT DESTRUCTION OF TOWNS, CITIES, HOMES
AND LIVES, HEART-RENDING SCENES OF AGONY, DREADFUL SUFFERINGS,
MIRACULOUS ESCAPES, DARING ADVENTURES, ETC., ETC.,

TOGETHER WITH

NOBLE RESPONSES OF AID.

TO WHICH IS ADDED

AN ACCOUNT OF METHODS OF PREDICTION.

By   A.   H.   GODBEY,   A.M.,

Author of “Stanley in Africa,” “Light in Darkness,” “Missions and Missionary Heroes,” etc.
———
SUPERBLY ILLUSTRATED WITH 150 ENGRAVINGS.
———
PUBLISHED BY
ROYAL  PUBLISHING CO.,
ST. LOUIS, MO.

Copyright.
1890,
W. L. HOLLOWAY.

PREFACE.

Whatever be the ideas of the public upon a glance at the title page of this work, it is not intended to pander to the morbid desire for the sensational or horrible, characteristic of weak minds. This volume is not a literary morgue.

Mankind is constantly astonished by reports of mishaps and disasters of manifold character, when there is seldom room for astonishment. A large proportion of the calamities reported from day to day are directly due to the haste, greed, and heedlessness of man himself, and need no comment.

But there is a large class of disasters, due solely to meteorological or geological conditions, which surpass all others in magnitude and appalling destruction. In such cases men insist on prating about “mysterious visitations,” as though these occurrences were subject to the dominion of no law. To an examination of such is this book devoted.

When in school, the writer was often struck by the persistence with which even the most diligent students would call upon the teachers of physics and chemistry to suspend the recitation and devote the time to illustrative experiments. Physical Geography was constantly pronounced “very dry,” because of the scarcity of opportunities for illustration.

The writer has endeavored to present in a form acceptable to the popular palate the general principles of the storm and earthquake so far as they are understood: and numerous narratives of great disturbances have been inserted that a clearer conception of the magnitude of these agencies and their relative importance may be attained by the reader.

Much care has been spent in “steering between Scylla and Charybdis.” While it has been designed to avoid merely scientific data, there has been the equally delicate task of avoiding prolix narration and mere sensational tales. It is hoped that the result will be useful and interesting.

If the book shall lead the reader to higher views of the reign of inexorable law in nature, and to a profounder reverence for the Author of Law and his works, the labor of its compilation will not have been spent in vain.

A. H. Godbey.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

MYTHS OF THE WINDS.

  PAGE.

Old Greek fancies—Their modern traces—Man seeking mysteries—Personifications—The “air-mothers”

17 CHAPTER II.

CONSTANT WINDS.

Comparative climate—Expansive force of heat—Illustrations—The trade-winds—Effect of the earth’s rotation—Return currents and calms

26 CHAPTER III.

PERIODIC WINDS.

Modified trade winds—The monsoons—Local winds—Sea and land breezes—The simoom: its terrible effects—The khamsin, and similar winds—Moisture in the air: its effects—Rain and hail—Clouds: their varieties—Mountain winds

34 CHAPTER IV.

TORNADOES AND CYCLONES.

Unheeded law—Peculiarities of storms—Cyclonic storms—Theoretical Illustrations—A “cyclone hot-bed"—Traveling of a cyclone—Its curves in accordance with law—Features of the cyclone’s path—Great cyclone of August, 1888—The planetary equinox theory—Objections to it—Safe predictions—Sun-spots—Mysterious providences

48 CHAPTER V.

THE LOUISVILLE TORNADO.

Perspective of news—Amusing conceits—Distress at the door—The tornado—Warning of the Signal Service—The storm strikes Louisville—Its course—Wreck of Falls City Hall—Rescuing the victims—Fire breaks out—Personal narratives—At the Union Depot

65 CHAPTER VI.

INCIDENTS OF THE TORNADO.

The poor to be remembered—Peddlers, publicans and sinners—The freaks of “Providence"—Deaths in the storm remarkably few—Wonderful escapes—Explosive effects of confined air—Strange pranks of the wind—The storm at Parkland—At Jeffersonville—The mammon worshiper—Generosity and independence

87 CHAPTER VII.

OTHER TORNADOES.

The tornado in East Kansas—In Southeast Missouri—Great damage in Illinois—Water-spout at Metropolis—Many distinct whirlwinds—Effect of forest and prairie fires—Tornado of Charleston, 1761—Tornadoes at Natchez, 1840 and 1842—The Marshfield storm, 1880—Remarkably small loss of life in tornadoes—Tornadoes in foreign lands

114 CHAPTER VIII.

TROPICAL CYCLONES.

Cyclones on our eastern borders—The Nova Scotia cyclone—St. Thomas cyclone and earthquake, 1837—Cyclone of 1867—Barbadoes storm, 1831—Great storm of 1780—Terrible cyclones and storm waves of India—Typhoons in the China seas

141 CHAPTER IX.

PERILS OF THE SEA.

Songs of the sea—The ocean always admired—Its treasures and dangers—Man’s greed a source of disaster—Criminal disregard of life—Terrible fatalities in leaky ships—The Arctic seas—The ship

Rufus 159 CHAPTER X.

LIFE-SAVING MEASURES.

Great storm of 1703—Humaneness and inhumanity—Diabolical wreckers—Hovellers—Desperate struggles without a life-boat illustrated by Dickens—The life-boat invented—Its usefulness—Lighthouses and fog-bells

179 CHAPTER XI.

GREAT SAMOAN HURRICANE.

Germany and Samoa—Naboth’s vineyard—War breaks out—The assembled navy—Situation of the harbor—The hurricane—Fears of the natives—Vessels dragging anchors—Sudden wreck of the

Eber

—Magnanimous natives—The

Adler

overturned—Struggle of the

Nipsic

—Fouled by the

Olga

, and run ashore—Crew rescued by the natives—The

Vandalia

helpless—Bold feat of the

Calliope

cheered—

Vandalia

stranded—Many Drowned—At the last gasp—The

Trenton

drifts upon them—Defiance of the storm—The flag triumphant

195 CHAPTER XII.

ELECTRIC STORMS.

Byron’s fire—Myths of the lightning—Causes of thunder storms—Strange freaks of the lightning—Numerous fatalities—Some curious cases—A lightning stroke a Divine favor—Thunder—Peculiar incidents—Lightning little to be feared—Foolish precautions—A “dysentery conductor” wanted—St. Elmo’s fire—Electric halos—Their part in history—The aurora—Popular myths—Aurora described

220 CHAPTER XIII.

RAIN, HAIL AND SNOW.

Clouds and cloud shapes—The storm changes national destinies—Cloud halos—Specter of the Brocken—The “beautiful rain"—Amount of rainfall—Snow—Its ravages—Remarkable showers of hail—Prodigies

246 CHAPTER XIV.

FLOODS IN THE SOUTH.

Rivers a universal problem—Character of the Mississippi—Failure of the levee system—The building of levees—Three great sections—Damage of overflows—Fighting for the levee—Storm on the river—Scene at a crevasse—The flood in the rural districts—In the city—Closing a crevasse—Refugees on the levee—Crooked streams

261 CHAPTER XV.

THE FLOOD OF 1890.

Floods of other years—Warning of the Signal Service—The water rising—At Greenville, Mississippi—The fight for the Morganza line—The waters win—Other crevasses—Extent of the damage—Objections to levees—Levees versus outlets—Terrible floods in China—A proposed outlet—Reflection on present policy

296 CHAPTER XVI.

THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD.

The dam system of India—American “cheap goods and haste"—The Little Conemaugh Valley—Heavy rains—Johnstown flooded—The artificial lake—A poor dam—No uneasiness—How the water would move—The dam breaks—Terrible rush of the flood—An engine chased—A warning whistle—Locomotives hurled about like toys—Flying for life—Escapes and losses

324 CHAPTER XVII.

INCIDENTS AT JOHNSTOWN.

Suddenness of the flood—It divides—A chaotic scene—Fire breaks out—Faith of the perishing—Narratives: the Hulbert House; Rev. D. M. Miller’s story; Mr. Calliver’s escape; Dr. Beale and family—Morning: the stricken multitude; Mr. Rose’s narrative; Talmage’s letter; the grief of the survivors

343 CHAPTER XVIII.

RELIEF MEASURES.

The people in want—Johnstown after the flood—Human ghouls—Relic hunters—Temporary government—A dictatorship—Hospitals and morgues—Prompt response of the public—Aid from various cities—Losses by the flood

367 CHAPTER XIX.

FAMINE AND PESTILENCE.

Signs and omens—Natural causes—Bengal famine of 1866—Relief Measures—Results—Pestilence and contagion—Black death—Its frequent ravages—Fright—A romance of Florence

384 CHAPTER XX.

THE VOLCANO.

Erroneous views—Myths—Active principle in volcanoes—Atmospheric pressure—Rain at eruptions—Lava, pumice, ashes and tufa—Different phases of action—Stromboli, the “lighthouse"—Lava bubbles—Thrilling adventure—Lost!—Theory of a molten earth—Objections to it—The earth cools slowly—Subsidence and chemical action—Distribution of volcanoes—Their work and forms

394 CHAPTER XXI.

GREAT ERUPTIONS OF VESUVIUS.

Pompeii long buried—Excavations begun—A hermetically sealed city—Scenes in the town—Pliny’s story—Hundreds stifled—Finding the bodies—Subsequent eruptions—Notable convulsion of 1538—The eruption of 1531, 1737 and 1793—Recent observations

421 CHAPTER XXII.

OTHER GREAT ERUPTIONS.

Destruction of Sodom—Arguments—The pitch lake of Trinidad—Ætna: eruption of 1669—Thousands perish—Catania destroyed—Other outbreaks—Iceland: Mt. Hecla—Tremendous eruption of Skaptar Jokul—One-fifth of the people perish—Millions of cubic yards of lava—Disturbances in the sea—Jorullo: a mountain made in a night—Fearful outburst of Sumbawa—Twenty-six people out of twelve thousand escape—Explosions heard nine hundred miles—Other Malaysian volcanoes—Geysers—Terrible eruption of Cosequina—Heard one thousand miles—Eruptions in South America—Force required to send out lava—In the Sandwich Islands—Krakatoa: the greatest eruption in history—A chorus of volcanoes—Awful destruction—Perceived around the world—Unparalleled sea wave

440 CHAPTER XXIII.

EARTHQUAKES.

Myths of the earthquake—Ancient theories—Modern research—Earthquakes and volcanic agency—Speed of a shock—The atmospheric theory—Earthquakes at particular seasons—The “planetary influence” theory—Character of motions

481 CHAPTER XXIV.

EUROPEAN EARTHQUAKES.

Legends of the flood—Sparta Destroyed—Bura and Helice engulfed—Numerous convulsions in Asia Minor—Antioch repeatedly destroyed—North Africa suffers—Calabrian earthquake of 1693—A tremendous convulsion in 1783—Immense chasms—People swallowed up—Great landslides—Terrible catastrophe at Scylla—Ruffians amid the wreck—The great Lisbon earthquake—Its vast extent—Awful destruction—Earthquake at Chio—In Switzerland—In Ischia—Distressing scenes in the ruins—Disastrous shocks in Spain

496 CHAPTER XXV.

EARTHQUAKES IN THE UNITED STATES AND ENGLAND.

All nature uneasy—The terrifying character of an earthquake—Signs and wonders—“El Gran Ruido,” of Guanajuato—Frequency of earthquakes—Earthquake in New England, 1638—A second in 1663—Shock of 1727—Great convulsions of 1755—Damage and great alarm at Boston—“The end of the world!"—Great disturbance in the Mississippi Valley, 1811—Strange feats—The Charleston earthquake—Numerous English earthquakes—Comparatively small loss of life

535 CHAPTER XXVI.

EARTHQUAKES IN TROPICAL AMERICA.

Shocks in Asia: lack of reliable information—The Andes region—Great earthquake of Riobamba—Humboldt’s description—Numerous shocks in Venezuela—Catastrophe of Caracas—Effect on the survivors—Frequent convulsions at San Salvador—Total destruction in 1854—Ruffians on the scene—Sudden disaster of Mendoza—Touching incidents—Faithful dogs—Shocks in Peru and gigantic sea wave—Numerous great shocks—The end of all things—The last man

563 CHAPTER XXVII.

PREDICTION AND PREVENTION.

Futile efforts to control the future—Law neglected for superstition—Pretentious prophets—Humbugs—Laws of weather changes—Actions of animals—Methods for producing rain suggested—Earthquake indicators—A force beyond control—Possibilities

589 CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE REIGN OF LAW.

Knowledge only from experience—Partial mastery by faith—Natural law the ruling force—Good and bad results of faith in the Supernatural—Sin punished—Ignorance punished—Examples—Man slow to learn—Eternal wisdom and goodness—Progress, past, present and future

600

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

  PAGE.

Cave of the Winds

18

The Simoom

40

Forms of Clouds

45

Path of Cyclones

54

Rotation of Storms

56

Water-spouts at Sea

60

Where the Storm entered Louisville

68

Baxter Park, Louisville

71

Falls City Hall

75

At Work in the Wreck

78

Main Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth, Louisville

82

Union Depot, Louisville

85

Eighth and Main, Louisville

90

Corner Main and Clinton, Louisville

94

Looking East from Tenth and Main, Louisville

96

Corner Jefferson and Twelfth, Louisville

99

On Ninth Street, Louisville

102

Ruined Tobacco Warehouses

104

View of Jeffersonville

108

Wall and Front Streets, Jeffersonville

109

Wreck at Jeffersonville

110

Tenth and Main, Louisville

112

Looking West from Tenth and Main, Louisville

115

View of the Residence District, Louisville

118

Ruined Dwellings

121

Path of Tornado, Olney, Ill.

124

Scene at Olney, Ill.

126

Whirlwind from Burnt Prairie

127

Tornado followed by Rain Storm

129

Instantaneous View of Tornado

130

Tornado at Monville

132

Water-spout at Sea

135

Minnesota Tornado

137

Sand-spouts in the Desert

139

Cyclone, Fire and Earthquake, St. Thomas

145

“Drowning with its Terrible Roar”

147

Hurricane in the Tropics

151

Coast of India Submerged by a Storm

156

“He Sinks into Thy Depths”

160

Cast Ashore

163

Wreck of the

Minotaur 167

Wrecked on a Rock

171

Castaways on a Raft

173

Sinking of the

London 177

Storm on the Shoals, 1703

180

On a Lee Shore

184

Hovellers Relieving a Vessel

187

The Life-boat

190

The Life-boat at Work

193

Bow of the

Eber

Cast Ashore

201

The

Adler

on the Reef

204

Samoans Rescuing American Sailors

207

The

Calliope

Putting to Sea

210

Bow of the Sunken

Vandalia 214

After the Storm

218

The Lyse Fiord

221

Ideal Subterranean Storm

225

Harvesters Killed by Lightning

232

Land of the Aurora

243

Field of Waterloo

249

Specter of the Brocken

252

Tropical Flood

264

Making Mats for Levee Fronts

266

Struggle to Hold the Levee

269

A Mountain Torrent

271

“No Time for Prayin’!”

273

Funeral During the Flood

275

Breaking of the Levee

277

Surprised by the Water

279

Not so Romantic as it Looks

282

Telegraphing Under Difficulties

285

Rescuing People

288

Camps on the Levee

290

Waiting for a Steamer

292

The Search Light

293

Scene at High Water

297

Negroes Moving Out

301

Stock Raft

303

Picking Up Refugees

306

Deserted Farmhouse

308

Flood in China

312

Dykes of Holland

316

Relief of Leyden

318

Breaking of the Dykes, Holland

322

Map of Conemaugh Valley

325

The Broken Dam

334

Fleeing Engine

337

Wreck of the Trains

340

Mill Creek

345

At the Stone Bridge

349

Desperate Struggle

354

The Gorge at the Bridge

358

Battle with the Waters

362

Johnstown After the Flood

371

At the Morgue

376

Conemaugh Viaduct

381

At the Summit of Popocatepetl

397

View in Active Crater

401

Crater of Orizaba

405

Eruption of Vesuvius

411

Coral Reefs

418

Destruction of Pompeii

424

Vesuvius in 1737

435

Destruction of Sodom

441

Destruction of Catania

446

Mt. Hecla

450

Jorullo

455

Geyser

457

The Yellowstone Park

462

Cattle in Volcanic Mud

473

Convulsion on the Coast of Sumatra

478

Effect of Earthquake on Masonry

484

The Deluge

497

Ruined Roman Colonnade

500

Antioch

502

Massive Architecture Wrecked, Asia Minor

504

Ruins Near Cairo

506

Ruins Near Nineveh

507

Remains of Ancient Hebrew Masonry

509

Great Earthquake in Calabria

511

Destruction of Messina

513

Disaster of Scylla

515

Lisbon

517

Earthquake at Lisbon

520

Ruined Cathedral

522

Scene at Chio

524

Panic at Casamicciola

529

Earthquake in Andalusia

532

Wreck of the Charleston Earthquake

538

Houses Thrown into Ravine

542

Wreck on King Street, Charleston

544

Scene at Charleston

548

Old State House, Charleston

551

Charleston

554

Wreck of Factory

557

Ruined Dwelling

560

Earthquake in China

564

After the Shock

568

Scene at Caracas

571

Ruins of San Salvador

573

Fright at San Salvador

575

Shock at Lake in Honduras

577

Wreck at Mendoza

579

Great Sea Wave

583

Earthquake in Spain

586

GREAT DISASTERS

AND
HORRORS IN THE WORLD’S HISTORY.

CHAPTER I.

MYTHS OF THE WINDS.

“Gray in his mossy cave Æolus stood Gazing in reverie at the distant sails, That skimmed the surface of the glassy deep, Unvexed by blasts of Eurus’ boisterous whims. The restless winds in leash about their lord Full often murmuring, plucked his floating robe, Or stirred his tangled tresses with their breath, Impatient at the lack of wilder liberty.”

O sang the bard of the fabled cave of the winds. Thus the old Romans and Greeks have taught us to think and to speak of the spirits of the air. Thus the very name of “spirit” was originally identical with “breath” or “wind.” Those poetic old Hellenes! They contrived to find something delightfully human in all the phenomena of nature. The woods were peopled with fauns and dryads. Around the bend of yonder rushy stream, a wary woodsman found a bathing nymph. Beyond that rock Actæon saw the chaste Diana sporting in the crystal pool. Here is the spot where baffled Phœbus found his Daphne changed into a laurel tree.

See you those stately poplars by the side of Italy’s stream? There Phaëthon’s mourning sisters changed their fleshly robes for those green spires. From their waving boughs the cry of the kingfisher Alcyone reminds us that

CAVE OF THE WINDS.

halcyon days may yet be in store for the most unfortunate. The response hurled back from yonder cliff warns us to drop a tear for the poor nymph Echo, whose unrequited love caused her to pine away till only a voice was left. To this day she answers every call, hoping to yet meet her love. That flaunting yellow flower is sprung from that very Narcissus who was so handsome he fell in love with himself. Ten thousand egotistic beauties of later days have not met so happy a fate.

Hark! was that the sea-shell of Triton? Neptune approaches with his Naiad train. You may see the plunge of his dolphin steeds. And see! what vision of incomparable loveliness is that? It is Aphrodite, goddess of love—sprung from the foam of the sea—as fragile as the fleecy mass from whence she came; as inconstant as the tossing wave on which she dances. How can love be otherwise, since she is its queen? In the sky above you see the beautiful Andromeda with the radiant Perseus. There Hercules yet wields his club and wears his lion-skin. And there—

It is vanished. The disenchantment is complete. Modern civilization has replaced the nymph with the peasant, and the faun with the brigand. The pipe of Pan is forever silent. Marsyas is revenged, for Apollo is no more. Jupiter dethroned Saturn; Jupiter has long since been dethroned. Where are the hands that penned those beauteous fancies; the bards that sung the deeds of the gods? Dust and ashes these two thousand years.

Their works live after them. Passing centuries have not improved upon their lovely phantasies: it may be because they could not. Rome has named the months of our year: Norway has aided to name the days of our week. Easter preserves the name of Œstara, Teuton goddess of springtime, of new life, new light. So the names of the winds remain. Auster, the south wind, has his memorial in Australia. Zephyr, the gentle west wind, is still a theme for poet’s song. Rude Boreas, “blustering railer,” will always find a home in the north. Civilization has not driven him from his domain. Æolus, the master spirit, most powerful because most delicate and beautiful, still stirs our wind-harps with his breath. The spirits of the air are as boisterous and untamed as in the days of Æneas.

And what figures would appeal more strongly to the imagination than these simple personifications? How can too great importance be attached to the part the winds perform in the economy of nature? Without them the land would become a Sahara; the seas would be covered with a London fog. In the rustle of the breeze, as well as in the roar of hurricane, there is purpose and energy. The hand that guides one, controls the other. “He holdeth the wind in his fists.”

In every age man’s imagination has been strongly influenced by the mysterious or unknown. There is little play for poetic sentiment in the cold practicality of science. That which is clearly comprehended, loses half its charm. The botanist carefully plucks to pieces a flower; it is analyzed, and all its mechanism understood—but it is no longer a flower. The alchemist has produced the wonderful science of chemistry; but the philosopher’s stone and the secret of producing gold are forever numbered among the shadowy myths of the past. The explorer has roamed in countless climes amid a myriad perils: a thousand treasures has he given to the world: but his El Dorado and the Fountain of Perpetual Youth have become as a dream in the night. And thus for aye will phantoms vanish as we grasp. Truth bears a magic wand at whose touch the unreal dies as a snowflake in a flame. All time has borne its legends of the risen departed, whose spirits roam the earth by night; but we have not proved that the dead have done in six thousand years so much evil as the living in a single day.

So one by one our cherished fables disappear. The steam-engine seems a thing of life; but we do not find a hidden geni therein. Electricity, one of the youngest of man’s practical discoveries, has become the most easily controlled. The bolts of Jove are the prisoners of man. The river is harnessed to the mill and factory. But the winds roam as free as in the day of creation “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” Of all the forces of nature the wind and sea are least beneath control of man. The command “Subdue and have dominion” has not yet been fully obeyed.

Small wonder, then, that a glamour of mysticism remains about the storm and its birth. Man finds himself in the presence of a power beyond his comprehension. Of the various elements of nature, the wind, the sea and the storm are more than ever the realm of fancy and awe. One often wonders at many other ancient myths; but there seems nothing surprising in the Grecian fancy that the winds were the spirit slaves of Æolus; or in the Arabian thought, that storms were but the battles of wonderful genii, whose weapons were fire, water, and their own powerful breath. In the crash of the thunder the Arab heard their terrible strokes. The Northman beheld giants, contending now with each other, now with the giants of frost or of fire; now resting a moment in their cavern home—now chasing the clouds like frightened sheep from their realm of Mistheim. Some day all these powers would be arrayed in battle with the gods themselves, and Ragnarok, or universal chaos would follow. God made man in his own image; man has ever since endeavored to make all things in his own. So have the winds become personified in every age and land.

Charles Kingsley has given us a beautiful picture of the “air mothers,” and the part they play in the realm of nature. Compare the ancient with the modern. We now know the laws and the work of the winds; but we have not found a better manner of picturing them. They are still the beautiful spirits of the air; the Peris of the upper deep, thoughtless in life, weeping repentant tears in the hour of their death.

“Who are these who follow us softly over the moor in the autumn evening? Their wings brush and rustle in the fir boughs, and they whisper before and behind us, as if they called gently to each other, like birds flocking homeward to their nests.

“The woodpecker on the pine stems knows them, and laughs aloud for joy as they pass. The rooks above the pasture know them, and wheel around and tumble in their play.

“The brown leaves on the oak-tree know them, and flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass. In the chattering of the dry leaves there is a meaning, and a cry of weary things longing for rest.

“ ‘Take us home, take us home, you soft air-mothers, now our fathers, the sunbeams, are grown dull. Our green summer beauty is all draggled, and our faces are grown wan and thin; and the buds, the ungrateful children whom we nourished, thrust us off from our seats. Waft us down, you soft air-mothers, upon your wings, to the quiet earth, that we may go to our home, as all things go, and become air and sunlight once again!’

“The bold young fir seeds know them, and rattle impatiently in their cones. ‘Blow more strongly, blow more fiercely, slow air-mothers, and shake us from our prisons of dead wood, that we may fly and spur away northeastward, each on his horny wing. We will dive like arrows through the heather, and drive our sharp beaks into the soil, and rise again, as green trees, toward the sunlight, and spread out lusty boughs.’

“They never think, bold fools, of what is coming to bring them low in the midst of their pride—of the reckless axe which will fell them, and saws which will shape them into logs, and the trains which will roar and rattle over them as they lie buried in the gravel of the way, till they are ground and rattled into powder, and dug up and flung upon the fire, that they too may return home, like all things, and become air and sunlight once again.

“The air-mothers hear their prayers, and do their bidding: but faintly, for they themselves are tired and sad, and their garments rent and worn. Ah! how different were those soft air-mothers, when, invisible to mortal eyes, they started on their long sky journey, five thousand miles across the sea.

“Out of the blazing caldron which lies between the two New Worlds, they leaped up, when the great sun called them, in whirls and spouts of clear hot steam, and rushed to the northward, while the whirling earthball whirled them east.

“So northeastward they rushed aloft, across the gay West Indian Isles, having below the glitter of the flying-fish, and the sidelong eyes of cruel sharks: above the canefields and the plantain gardens, and the cocoanut groves which fringe the shores: above the rocks which throbbed with earthquakes, and the peaks of old volcanoes, cinder-strewn: while far beneath, the ghosts of their dead sisters hurried homeward on the northeast breeze.

“Wild deeds they did, as they rushed onward, and struggled and fought among themselves, up and down, and round and backward in the fury of their blind hot youth. They tired themselves by struggling with each other, and by tearing the heavy water into waves; and their wings grew clogged with sea-spray, and soaked more and more with steam.

“At last, the sea grew cold beneath them, and their clear steam sank to mist; and they saw themselves and each other wrapped in dull, rain-laden clouds. Then they drew their white cloud garments around them, and veiled themselves for very shame: and they said, ‘We have been wild and wayward: and alas, our pure youth is gone. But we will do one good deed, yet, before we die, and so we shall not have lived in vain. We will glide onward to the land and weep there, and refresh all things with warm, soft rain, and make the grass grow, and the buds burst; we will quench the thirst of man and beast, and wash the soiled world clean.’

“So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to weep the leaves into their graves: to weep the seeds into their seed-beds, and to weep the soil into the plains: to get the rich earth ready for the winter, and then creep northward and die there. But will they live again, those chilled air-mothers? Yes; they must live again. For all things move forever: and not even ghosts can rest.

“The corpses of their sisters piling on them from above, press them onward, press them southward toward the sun once more, across the floes, and round the icebergs—weeping tears of snow and sleet—while men hate their wild, harsh voices, and shrink before their bitter breath. They know not that the cold bleak snow-storms, as they hurtle from the black northeast, bear back the ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to their father, the great sun.

“But as they fly southward warm life thrills them, and they drop their loads of sleet and snow, and meet their young live sisters from the south, and greet them with flash and thunderpeal. Men call them the southwest wind, those air-mothers: and their ghosts, the northeast trade; and value them, and rightly; because they bear the traders out and back across the sea.”

So they live, and so they die, those beautiful air-mothers—for life is evermore fed by death. And in their wayward course they bring the early and the latter rain: that so long as time shall be, seed-time and harvest and summer and winter shall not fail. And men love them, and welcome each in their turn, whether laden with the pure white snow, or the cooling moisture of the distant sea; for man is a fickle creature, and remains constant to none. In summer he sings of the Arctic winds; and in winter, he longs for the breath of the south; for like the air-mothers, his course is ever onward, seeking that which he has not. Yet, sometimes in his discontent, he would curse the soft air-mothers: but without them he could not live. But the bard knows them all, and will sing of their deeds till the sun waxes cold with the weight of years.

CHAPTER II.

CONSTANT WINDS.

“Up from the sea I sprang, O voyager, Ere Aphrodite rose from out its foam. I am a banned, unresting wanderer, Doomed o’er the surface of the deep to roam. Without being aged, o’erwhelmed with days, The end of being is my only dream. I trod the earth ere man’s ephemeral race, And onward flee long as yon sun shall beam, Ever, forever, Here, and wherever, Turneth the earth, must I course forever!”

HE phenomena of climate and seasons are too familiar to need especial comment or description. They are dependent, in the first place, upon the annual journey of the earth about the sun, the inclination of the earth’s axis to its orbit, and the distance of any particular region in question, from the equator.

But the changes thus constantly made are greatly modified by other factors. Chief among these agencies are the form and extent of the continents, their position relative to each other and the water areas, and the currents of the air and sea.

Men usually identify climate with atmospheric conditions. A warm atmosphere is for them the whole of a warm climate: it is really but one of its factors, at most: it is often to be considered as a result, rather than a cause. On lofty plateaus, or in mountainous regions, the heat is not oppressive, even in the tropics; but here the moderate temperature is due to the elevation. France is as far north as Labrador; but there is no similarity whatever in climatic conditions, as there should be, were climate dependent only on the heating of the local atmosphere by the rays of the sun. Who would think of instituting a comparison of sunny Rome or Madrid with the city of New York? Yet the three are nearly on the same parallel: Rome furthest north. So there is little resemblance between the warmth of sunny Florida and the scorching heat of the Sahara: or between the climates in those portions of our own Pacific and Atlantic coasts that lie between the same parallels. So we find that though there is a general relation between the climate of a region and its distance from the equator, there are many other conditions to be considered. First, let us note atmospheric currents and disturbances.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and no man knoweth whence it cometh, or whither it goeth.”

“The world do move.” The illustration so full of meaning two thousand years since has lost much of its force. The truth of yesterday is the error of to-day. The fact of to-day may be the phantasy of to-morrow. So it has come to pass that in our day the origin and laws of air currents are believed to be as well understood as those of any other forces in nature. Yet scientific theorists are, after all, divided on not a few points.

Two general classes of winds are recognized: the constant, and variable. Constant winds are those that blow all the year in the same direction. The beautiful concept of Kingsley, in the preceding chapter, contains the leading points of our knowledge concerning them.

All the various phenomena of air currents are dependent upon one unchanging law: that gaseous bodies—and all but two others—always greatly expand under the influence of heat. There are two noted partial exceptions: one of these prevents our globe from becoming a complete iceberg, and is as important as the law itself. Iron expands, till its melting point; but in its liquid state it occupies less space than when solid. Water contracts under the influence of cold, until the temperature of 39° is reached; after that it expands: and when frozen occupies about one-eighth more space than before. This wise provision of the Creator is second to none in importance, as regards its influence upon the climate of the earth at large. Had it been otherwise—did ice sink instead of float, our rivers and seas would in time become solid masses of ice; for water is so poor a conductor of heat, that its under-currents warm very slowly. Any one who plunges into a lake in mid-summer may often find the water warm at the surface, and of almost icy coldness a short distance beneath. The great Polar current comes down from Baffin’s Bay, and off the coast of Newfoundland it plunges beneath the warm, lighter current of the Gulf Stream; but it is not warmed by it. Registering thermometers detect its icy coldness almost unchanged in the realms of the tropics, far beneath the surface.

Note some simple illustrations of the expansive force of freezing water. Every housewife knows that a bottle left full of water will burst when the water freezes. The same power is shown in the gradual disintegration of rocks by alternate freezing and thawing. Water freezing in the crevices bursts off small particles, or even large fragments; so that rocks long exposed to the weather, crumble more or less. Every one is familiar with the appearance presented by steep clay-banks, in late winter and early spring, of ragged masses and fragments ready to fall at any time. Still another instance of this destructive power is shown in the killing of vegetation by freezing. Plants are built of myriads of tiny cells. The moisture within freezes and bursts the cell-walls, destroying the plant life. Certain plants have cells more elastic than others, which in consequence are not destroyed by freezing. But as an expanded cell does not readily shrink to its former size, subsequent freezings, when the cell contains more water than before, may finally destroy it. So wheat is “winter-killed,” by too frequent freezing. So globes of steel may be burst by this force.

To show the poor qualities of water as a conductor of heat, take a long glass tube and fill with water. Then put a piece of ice in one end. The water at the other end may now be brought to the boiling point by means of the flame of a lamp, ere the ice at the other end is melted.

Every one is familiar with the fact that heated air rises; but not all inquire why it does so. Take a foot-ball or bladder and partially inflate it; then hold it near a hot fire, and it may be swollen almost to bursting. Now, there is no more air in it than before; and if it be laid in a cold place, it will shrink to its first inflation. This shows how great is the expansive power of heat on the atmosphere. The same weight occupying a much larger bulk, we perceive that heated air is much lighter, and must rise. This, then, is the cause of what are known as constant winds.

As the earth revolves on its axis, the air is unequally heated, that nearest the equator becoming the warmest, in consequence of its receiving the most direct rays. Here, then, the air rises most rapidly; while the cooler air to the north or south must flow southward or northward to fill the vacuum. Now, the earth turning on its axis from west to east, whirls the northward and southward currents to the westward, so that they appear to blow from the northeast and southeast. The result of this loss of direction is gradual; so that when first perceptible, they are almost from a due northerly or southerly direction. As they near the equator, they are more rapid, and turn more decidedly to the west, never becoming violent, however; rarely exceeding fifteen to eighteen miles per hour.

It would appear that at the point where these meet each other, or come in contact with the ascending warm current, there must be a region of calms or light, variable winds, and occasional tempests. Such, in fact, is the case. This belt is from two hundred and eighty to four hundred miles in width, and lies along the thermal equator, or line of greatest average heat. This is not the same at the earth’s equator, properly so called; for, as the land has greater capacity for absorbing and retaining heat than the sea, and as most of the land lies in the northern hemisphere, it is evident the highest mean temperature must be north of the equator. So this belt of calms must lie in the same region; and, in fact, in the Atlantic ocean it lies between 3 and 9° north latitude, and in the Pacific, between 4 and 8°. As the sun travels northward during the first half of the year, this region of calms shifts slightly, also, so as to always nearly coincide with belt of the greatest mean heat.

At first sight, it appears curious that the motion of the earth should deflect these winds to the west. It would appear that the earth, atmosphere and all, must revolve as a unit about its axis; else, if the atmosphere lose time, its speed to the westward should be constantly accelerated, and long ago should have reached a velocity that would shake the mountains themselves; while, in fact, there is no variation perceptible.

It should be remembered that at the equator the earth is about twenty-four thousand miles in circumference; and as one complete revolution is made every twenty-four hours, a point on the equator is carried eastward at the rate of one thousand miles an hour. But if a circle be drawn around the earth parallel to the equator, at some distance from it, it is at once seen that any object in this circle, having a shorter distance to traverse, is carried eastward at a slower rate; so that a point only a few yards from either pole must necessarily advance but a few feet per hour. So then, a body of air moving from either pole toward the equator, must needs advance very slowly if the friction of the upper reverse currents and of the surface of the globe are to have opportunity to overcome its relative inertia and give it the same velocity as that of any point over which it may pass.

Now, in the case of these constant winds, the inertia is very nearly overcome, as they start from a circle in which the velocity to the eastward is about 750 miles per hour. If the inertia were fully overcome, there would be no perceptible wind; as the velocity is actually but fifteen to eighteen miles per hour, it appears that the friction encountered actually destroys from thirteen-fourteenths to fifteen-sixteenths of the inertia. Hence, we find these constant air currents toward the west are, in reality, the result of the earth carrying any object on its surface a little more rapidly than the atmosphere moves; so that these winds are precisely the same in principle as the well-known fact that when you run rapidly in still air (so-called), it seems that the wind is blowing directly in your face.

In like manner, it appears that a wind from west to east is merely an air-current moving a little more rapidly than the earth revolves at that point. The relative difference between the velocity of air-currents must vary greatly; for a violent easterly or westerly wind very near the poles may equal or even exceed the speed of the rotation of that point; while the most violent tropical storms average between one-twentieth and one-eighth of the local rotation. The latter is not often exceeded. But whatever the relation of the respective velocities, it is clear that the velocity of the wind in general must depend largely on the amount of air abnormally heated, and upon the rapidity with which it is heated. So men have come to recognize that a period of unusually oppressive heat forebodes a storm of some sort. But few regard the unusual warmth as a reason of the storm. They are linked, in the popular mind, as antecedent and consequent, rather than as cause and effect.

These constant winds near the equator have been named trade-winds, because of their importance to commerce. Unknown before the first voyage of Columbus, they filled the minds of his crew with fear that they could never return home, if the wind blew always in one direction. The same gentle wind bore Magellan in his voyage around the world, and caused him to give the name of “Pacific,” or “peaceful,” to the great ocean on our west; and the same steady breezes made the fortune of many a noble galleon in the days when Peru was an Ophir, Mexico an El Dorado, and the Philippine Isles a Tarshish where they took shipping for the distant land of gold.

Owing to the fact that the continents intercept the regular trades by reason of their elevation and irregular conformation, and also because of their much greater specific heat, whereby they set in motion many other local currents, the trades are found to begin only a considerable distance to the west of the continents. Yet the influence of the trades is sufficient to make easterly winds the prevailing ones on the great inland plains: as in the Sahara, Arabia, Southern Siberia, and portions of North and South America.

It is clear that other nearly constant currents must exist to supply the vacuum that would be otherwise caused by the trades. These are found to the south and north of the trade belts, and, as might be expected, blow nearly in the opposite direction, being descending currents; while the trades, as before stated, are ascending. The column of hot air from the equator starts toward the poles above the trades, while a polar current sets in toward the equator; but as the amount of air displaced at the equator is by far the greatest, much of it can, of course, never reach the poles. On meeting the polar current, the two partially mingle and descend, forming what is called the return trade. This blows, most of the year, to the southeast, the equatorial current prevailing and coming from a region whose easterly rotation is more rapid. At certain seasons of the year, however, the polar current prevails to some extent, though not sufficiently to overcome the eastward trend; so the wind in this belt blows alternately to the southeast and the northeast.

Between the region of trades and alternating winds is a belt, on either side of the equator, of calms and variable winds, which shift northward or southward, parallel to the belt of calms between the trades. These two zones, however, are much less clearly defined than the great central one, and are not liable to such extraordinary disturbances.

Such is the great constant wind, with its dependents. So long as the sun has warmed the earth, it has hurried on its course, subject to unceasing law, and destined to cease only when the heavens and the earth shall pass away, and chaos or annihilation shall end the things that be. A Wandering Jew of the atmosphere, it flies ever onward, bearing the merchant to his port, and the rain-cloud to the land; ever and anon desolating the isles with its bursts of fury; then resuming its restless course, like the remorseful Salathiel.

CHAPTER III.

PERIODIC WINDS.

“Earth has each year her resurrection hours When the spring stirs within her, and the powers Of life revive; the sleeping zephyrs rouse, The blushing orchards clothe their naked boughs, The swallow skims above the lakelet’s verge. Swift summer speeds with fire in every vein, And autumn’s glories crimson hill and plain. Then warmth and life from Nature take their flight, And winter robes her in a shroud of white, While mournful Boreas chants her funeral dirge.”

O the seasons tread their ceaseless round in the temperate zones, and to a certain degree in the colder regions of the earth. But when we examine the change of seasons in the tropical world, we find a state of things so different that we are at once led to inquire the reason: and it will be found primarily in certain periodical winds.

When the sun is north of the equator: that is, while our northern summer is in progress, India enjoys a steady sea wind from the southwest, which brings a rainy season to the corresponding coasts of Hindostan and Farther India. When the sun returns to the south, the winds set in from the opposite direction, coming down across the great upland plateau of Central Asia, sometimes called, from its immense height and extent, the “Roof of the World.” These periodic winds are called monsoons: a corruption of the Arabic word Moussin, season. They are in reality a modification of the trade-winds.

A glance at a map will show that the northern half of the great Indian Ocean is enclosed by land masses as no other large body of water is. Consequently, while in the southern section the southeast trade is present, the northeast trade of the northern part is so modified by the surrounding land areas as to almost entirely lose its distinctive character. Hence, most tropical regions have, properly speaking, but two seasons: the rainy, and the dry. As the clouds swept in meet with an intensely heated region, the trade never chills them sufficiently to produce snow, except in extremely elevated regions.

This is the direct cause of the monsoons: During the northern summer, southern Asia, being under the rays of the vertical sun, becomes intensely heated; and the cooler and denser air of the adjacent ocean, and of southern Africa, flows towards it, producing the southwest monsoon, which lasts from April or May to September or October. The time of its beginning and its close varies in different latitudes, according to the time at which the sun is vertical in each.

During the southern summer, southern Africa being under the vertical sun and intensely heated, the cooler air of the surrounding seas, and of southern Asia, flows towards it. This produces the northeast monsoon, which lasts from October or November to April. This monsoon is, in fact, only the regular northeast trade-wind somewhat intensified.

A similar exchange takes place between Asia and Australia, but it is less marked, owing, perhaps, to the great islands lying between these continents.

The period of transition of the monsoons, in spring and autumn, is marked by sudden and violent gales, and terrific thunder storms. Destructive hurricanes, also, are of frequent occurrence. This corresponds with the period of equinoctial storms in higher latitudes.

There are narrow monsoon belts in the Atlantic, along the coast of Africa and of Brazil, also on the Pacific coasts of North and South America; but the phenomena they exhibit are of a much less striking character. On the African coast, in general, the winds blow from sea to land in summer, from land to sea in winter; on the Brazilian, the wind is from the northeast in summer, while in winter the southeast trade resumes its sway. The monsoons of the Pacific coast of America blow from the northwest and north during the southern summer; from the southwest and south during the northern. The regular trade-wind makes itself so strongly felt in northern Brazil, which is unusually level, that a boat can sail almost as rapidly up the swift current of the Amazon as it can row down: and Humboldt records that he found it of great strength at the foot of the eastern slope of the Andes.

Another modification of the northeast trade is found in the Etesian winds of Greece and the adjacent archipelago. This is a true intermittent trade, blowing only in the daytime, however, and lasting from July to September. The cool air of the peninsula rushes toward the extremely heated regions of the Mediterranean and north Africa.

Somewhat similar are the northers, or blizzards, of our Western States. By the laws already given, it is seen that northerly winds can prevail in any region only when some region further south is unusually heated. Now, the northern portion of America may be roughly compared to a trough. The cold polar current sets to the southward across the continent, and is turned to the east by the Rocky Mountain range, giving it a general southeast course. Hence, when the southern summer is in progress, our prevailing winds are from the northwest; and when the heated portion of the world is north of the equator, we have the return trade, giving us as our prevailing wind that from the southwest. When our return trade is unusually prolonged, we have a late fall; and if the southern summer is unusually warm, we have the polar current longer than usual, and a late spring in consequence. The polar current seldom makes its presence felt beyond the Texan plains; though occasionally it reaches the Mexican plateau, or sweeps across the Gulf to the Antilles.

A similar cold wind from Central France toward the Riviera is locally known as the Mistral. The cold winds from the south, which in crossing the plains of Patagonia, are turned eastward by the Andes, are called in Uruguay the pamperos, as their direction causes the popular belief that they originate in the pampas, or grassy plains. In Malta the cold wind becomes known as the gregale—in the Adriatic sea it is the tramontana; in Trieste and Dalmatia it is the bora. In New Zealand the corresponding cold blast comes from the south, and is known as the buster. When loaded with drifting snow, as in the blizzard of the United States, the cold wind of the Yenisei Valley, in Asia, is locally called the purga; in the steppes of Central Asia it is the bura.

Eastern Asia receives its prevailing cold current from the northwest; while western Asia and Europe receive their cold wave from the northeast, there being no range of mountains, as in America, to deflect the current, as the polar currents are disposed to follow the continents, having their origin in arctic lands; while for a similar reason the return trades reach their extremes on the ocean. Hence, lines drawn through the places which possess the same mean annual temperature reach a higher latitude at sea than on land.

These are the chief periodical winds of long periods. There is one other class to be noted: the diurnal land and sea breezes. These occur along all coasts, whether in the zone of trades or of variable winds; but the phenomenon is more strongly marked in the tropical regions, and in the summer of the temperate latitudes, because of the greater difference in the temperature of land and sea by day and by night.

During the hottest part of the day the air over the land frequently reaches a temperature of 100° Fahr., and even more, while that over the sea rarely rises above 80°. During the night the land radiates its heat with such rapidity that, towards morning, its atmosphere may be from 10° to 15° colder than that of the sea.

Soon after sunrise, the land being warmer than the sea, a sea breeze sets in, which increases in force until about three o’clock, when the difference of temperature is greatest. It then gradually diminishes until about sunset, when, the temperature of the land and sea having become equal, the atmosphere is at rest, the calm continuing for an hour or more.

Soon the land becomes cooler than the sea, and a gentle breeze from the former sets in. It increases in force as the night advances, becoming strongest a little before morning, when the temperature of the land is lowest; after which it rapidly dies away, and is succeeded by a calm, to be soon replaced by the sea breeze.

One other species of variable wind is to be noticed: the hot, dry, dust-laden blast from desert regions. Such occur more or less periodically, and are known by different names in different localities.

Tom Moore has told us that “love’s witchery” on the heart is

“Like the wind of the south o’er the summer lute blowing, That hushed all its music, and withered its frame.”

The reference is to the simoom of Syria and Arabia. One who has not experienced this wind can have little idea of its oppressiveness. Apt to come at any hour during the hottest months of the year, with a temperature so great that a piece of silver exposed to it becomes hot enough to blister the flesh, and laden with the impalpable dust of the desert, vegetation is scorched and withered by it, and animals flee from it as from the pestilence. It may last but a short time: it may endure several days.

At the first indication of its approach, people flee to their houses; doors and windows are shut and every crevice that could allow any dust to enter is tightly stuffed: while the wind lasts no one ventures out. Such unfortunate animals as happen to be overtaken by it have literally to struggle for their lives. The wind is not steady, but comes in fitful gusts, sometimes differing as much as 20° in temperature. The streets are deserted; and were they otherwise, a person could hardly be seen at a few yards distance. Hours pass: that implacable enemy, the dust, sifts in at unknown chinks. By degrees it covers everything. Valuable lace and tapestry are nearly ruined. You put on a skull-cap; yet it penetrates your hair. It finds its way beneath the garments to the skin, producing distressing dryness and roughness. The lips parch and crack. The eyes are red and inflamed. You drink as if famished, and gasp for breath. You are excessively irritable; you reach the verge of complete nervous prostration. At length the ordeal is over. You creep into the street, to find your neighbors looking like corpses; some, it may be, actually dead from nervous exhaustion. Dead birds and animals lie on the earth. It is a case of the survival of the fittest. You pluck a leaf from a neighboring tree; it crumbles to dust in your grasp.

Such are the effects of an unusually protracted wind, even when most favorably situated to encounter it. But if a caravan be overtaken by such in the desert, happy are they who escape. The camels kneel and thrust their

THE SIMOOM.

noses into the sand, against each other, into a pack of goods—anywhere to avoid breathing that poisonous blast. The men throw themselves upon the ground behind the camels, and muffle their heads in their garments. The storm is at hand; perchance attended by whirling columns of sand. You raise your head: a thick, dun-colored cloud flies at you; a heat as of red-hot iron, it seems, holds you in its choking grasp. You find your way to your water bottle, and drink deeply. The lurid sun turns the sweeping columns of sand to pillars of fire. Superstitious fear seizes your Arab comrades. Gradually the storm passes on: the men pick themselves up and endeavor to shake the irritating dust and sand from out the folds of their clothing, and the party resumes its way, happy that they are not numbered among the dead whose bones are bleaching by the way. Tales are not wanting of great caravans completely overwhelmed by the sandstorms of the desert.

These storms are met with in their greatest severity in Egypt and Arabia. In Egypt, this wind is called the Khamsin, or fifty, referring to the period of fifty days—the latter part of April, May, and early June—when they may be expected. They never blow through the entire season: rarely so long as fifteen days at a time. In Arabia the simoom may travel from the center of the peninsula toward any point of the compass; the Khamsin of Egypt blows from the southwest. Winds of the same character cross the Mediterranean. In Spain the wind is known as the Solano, or Levanter, or Leveche: in Sicily and Italy it is the Sirocco. The distressing dryness is somewhat modified by the journey across the Mediterranean. The same wind in Syria is called Samiel; and a similar wind which blows from the Sahara southwest to the Guinea coast is called the Harmattan. In California a similar dry hot wind blows from the interior toward the coast, during the hot season, and is called the desert wind. Such occasional hot blasts are experienced in southeastern Dakota, coming from the “bad lands,” or sandy and rocky wastes along the upper Missouri river.

All these periodical or varying winds may be very properly, from their time and character, be called the season winds of the earth, as another means of distinction from the constant trades: as they in part bring changes of season, and in part are brought that way.

Into the question of climate and seasons one other element enters, of especial importance in regard to those disturbances of the regular winds, which we call storms. That factor is the quantity of moisture in the atmosphere, and the consequent rainfall or snowfall of a region. Without this element, the phenomenal disturbances known as tornadoes would hardly occur: or if they did, there would be greater difficulty in ascertaining their approach.

Water, in its vapor state, is but three-fifths the weight of the air, and in consequence rapidly rises. This evaporation, as it is called, goes on at all times: even when the water is frozen. A very thin sheet of ice, hung in the open air, will finally disappear, even though the temperature be always below freezing.

Now, all the phenomena of rain, snow, and hail, that are brought by different seasons, in different climes, depend upon a single simple law: that warm air can hold a much greater quantity of vapor than cold air. The amount of moisture that may be held in suspension at different temperatures is as follows:

Temperature

of Air.

Weight of vapor

in a cubic foot

of saturated air.

Temperature

of Air.

Weight of vapor

in a cubic foot

of saturated air.

20

deg.

Fahr.

1.30

grains

Troy.

70

deg.

Fahr.

8.00 grains

Troy.

32

“

“

2.13

“

“

80

“

“

10.95

“

“

50

“

“

4.09

“

“

90

“

“

14.81

“

“

62

“

“

6.15

“

“

100

“

“

19.79

“

“

This gives a second reason why storms of wind and rain closely follow extremely hot weather.

Now, as the vapor is so much lighter than the air, their mixture must also be lighter. So any unusual amount of moisture is at once detected by the barometer, an instrument for measuring the pressure of the atmosphere. If the air grow moister, and therefore lighter, the barometer falls; a storm is approaching.

Since cold air can retain but little moisture, if a warm moist current be chilled, it must lose a part of its vapor, which at once falls to the earth as rain. If the cold be somewhat greater, the moisture is crystallized into snow. Greely’s observations at Fort Conger show that, varied as are the forms of snow crystals, those that fall during any particular storm are invariably of the same types, even though they may be collected from localities widely removed from each other. All crystals of snow are hexagonal in plan, but there is much variety in detail. The laws that produce one variety at one time, and a second at another, are not yet known.

The subject of hail is a peculiarly perplexing one to the meteorologist. Hailstones are more or less spherical in form, and are made of alternate layers of soft opaque ice, and hard clear ice. It is evident that they must acquire this structure by being whirled about between clouds of different temperature and density. Some have supposed that they are formed in a whirlwind, whose axis is horizontal, but for the present we must be content with Lord Dundreary’s explanation, for “it ith one of thothe thingth which no fellah can underthtand.”

Raindrops from a great height are larger than those from below, for they increase as they pass through the vapor-masses. As the warmest currents are also the highest, it will at once be understood why warm and tropical rains fall in large drops, while drizzling rains, mists, and fogs are characteristic of cold regions and cold seasons.

The masses of more or less condensed vapor in the upper air currents are what are known as clouds. Their various forms and appearance are shown in the cut on the —— page.

The cirrus and cirro-cumulus clouds are the highest, are mostly in the altitudes of perpetual frost, and are supposed often to consist of minute ice crystals. In temperate latitudes they are usually formed in, and move with, the upper air current, or return-trade from the tropical regions.

The cumulus clouds are characteristic of the tropics, and of the summer days in middle latitudes, their height depending upon the relative humidity of the air. They are formed by local ascending currents, which carry a large amount of vapor into the cooler upper air. There the vapors are condensed, and are gradually heaped up into those heavy masses of sharply defined clouds, which look like vast snowy mountains. Their base is horizontal, and marks the height at which the dew point is reached and condensation begins.

The accumulation of vapors is often so great that these clouds form a column several thousand feet high. In this case the difference in the temperature and the electrical conditions of the upper and lower portions is such that electrical discharges take place, accompanied by condensation of a portion of the cloud, forming a thunderstorm.

Stratus clouds are most frequently seen in the morning or evening, and are always low. They are formed by the descent of the higher clouds and vapors of midday into the lower air as the temperature decreases. They are more frequent in winter and summer than in the intermediate seasons.

The nimbus cloud is more dense and heavy than the others, which may all be transformed into the nimbus by

FORMS OF CLOUDS.

a diminution of temperature. It is of a dark-leaden hue, changing into grey. This is the most common form of cloud in polar latitudes; and, during the cold season, it is the most frequent of the temperate zones.

If a moist current cross a mountain range, it loses its moisture in the cold region, and growing narrower as it descends the other slope, presents the phenomena of a warm dry wind from the mountains. Thus the wind that brings rain to Norway, gives warm fair weather to Sweden. Of the same character are the hot winds of Switzerland, called Foëhn winds, and the Chinook winds which blow from the eastward into Idaho, Washington, and western Montana. Similar winds occur occasionally in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Peru. These hot winds must not be confounded with the hot and poisonous winds from desert regions described before.

Such, in fine, are the noted varying intermittent, or periodic winds. However uncertain they may appear at first thought, they are obedient to the same unchanging laws that bind the universe into one harmonious whole. No doubt the ancients, if they had been acquainted with their office, would have personified them as the nymphs of the seasons. But, knowing naught of the wonderful immutable laws that bind them, they could only say to each,

“We know not whence thou com’st, or whither goest, When round our homes thy wizard blast thou blowest.”

In eternal law and harmony they found only endless confusion and wild caprice. Man interpreted nature by man.

Yet they are the angels of the seasons, these air-spirits, sent by an allwise Providence to bring the rain and the snow, and the sunshine and storm in their season, to give seed to the sower and bread to the eater; that while man shall dwell on earth, seedtime and harvest and summer and winter may not cease. So they wander, clothing the tropics with emerald cloaks of strangest beauty, and robing the poles with ermine and crystal: painting with rainbow-tints the autumn leaves, and touching with virgin blush the orchards in spring; in all things obeying the decree of Him who hath set the seasons in order and made everything beautiful in its time.

CHAPTER IV.

TORNADOES AND CYCLONES.

“O sad and mournful wind! From what wild depths of human pain and sorrow Could’st thou those tones of restless anguish borrow As of a soul that dreams of no to-morrow, O sad and mournful wind!

O, thou art fierce and wild! Thy mighty chariot through the black skies lashing, The cloud-shapes round the mountain-summits dashing, The waves of ocean round the wrecked bark crashing— O, thou art fierce and wild!”

EN find no difficulty in recognizing law and system in the phenomena that are of constant or frequent recurrence. That which is most difficult to explain, may pass without a serious thought so long as it manifests no stupendous or sudden power. The water may wear away the stone for centuries and its progress be unheeded by those who daily visit the pool.

So all observe and admire the beauty and order that prevails in the system of winds hitherto described. Their movements seem so simple and natural, that people take them as a matter of course. Rather, we should say, they may be depended upon with such certainty that the laws which they followed were unheeded for more than six thousand years. Relying on result, men gave themselves no concern about principle.

But in the sudden storm, the cyclone or tempest that comes sweeping the land with hardly any warning, flooding and destroying, men find mystery.

And who is not justly awed thereby? What other power so easily and frequently wrecks and ravages? Who may point out its course or stay its progress?

And indeed it would seem difficult at first to find any law or system that controls the motion of the storm. If a rain storm always came from the same direction; if unusually high winds always blew from the same quarters, just as the moderate breezes of spring and summer can always be expected from the same general direction, it would appear that there was much greater subordination to definite law. But what can be more perplexing than to have a storm blow violently from one quarter for a time, and after a brief calm to blow with equal violence the other way? Can such phenomena be explained by any principles hitherto discovered?

What is a storm? Strictly speaking, it is any marked or unusual disturbance of the normal atmospheric conditions. There may be excessive wind: there may be cessation of the customary winds. Two great classes are found: cyclonic, or low area storms, and anti-cyclonic, or high area storms. The former may be accompanied by heavy rainfall or snow; the latter is usually noted for absence of either. It is with the low area storm that we must deal at present.

This term is used to designate all storms which are marked by low barometer, and therefore it is clear that such are accompanied and partially occasioned by an unusual amount of moisture in the atmosphere. The resultant commotion is usually extensive, the storm centre traveling across the country; but occasionally the effects are perceptible only for a short distance, the storm centre either breaking up or ascending to the upper atmosphere.

By a cyclonic storm is signified a storm characterized by unusually low barometer, and a wind system blowing spirally inward, as in a genuine cyclone. They usually affect only the lower strata of the air. Quite frequently they are broken up by striking low mountain ranges, such as the Alleghany system: and often pass Mount Washington without making their presence felt at the signal station on its summit. To what extent they are influenced by or are due to the upper air currents is therefore unknown, though not a few of the attendant phenomena indicate that the latter are of no little importance.

Any one who has observed the waters at the junction of two streams, is familiar with the appearance of numerous tiny eddies or whirlpools formed at the point of junction. Such are perceptible also in every rapid stream, when the current, sheering sharply from a projecting point, is made in a measure to collide with itself. This is also the principle of the many tiny whirlwinds seen during the warm summer days: and such are also observable in winter, if there be snow enough to render their presence in the air clearly visible. Their results are most readily recognized in snow-drifts, where the wind meets some special obstruction. It does not often occur that a high fence is covered with a snow-drift: a great drift will be thrown up by it, but not against it: and the side next the fence will be curved inward, or concave. The wind strikes the fence and partially recoils, curving upward to pass over the fence. The drift is then built up between the wind and the current recoiling from the fence, and its inner curve shows the direction pursued by the rebounding current.

Now, when opposing air-currents meet each other on a large scale, the immense whirlwind that is produced is called a cyclone or tornado. It follows then, that if we would find any regularity or law in these unusual disturbances, we must know if there exists any permanent condition of atmospheric currents that is favorable to their generation.

That such a state exists, we have already learned. The great belts of calms that we have found between the trade-winds and the return trades and polar currents, are more appropriately called the zones of equinoctial storms. We have in them districts of general calms, with winds infringing upon either side. It is evident then that, as in the case of the fence, whose recoil-current curves the snow-drift, a whirling current of considerable magnitude may arise here at any time: hence, violent storms do arise in these regions more or less at all periods of the year. But we have seen that these zones of calms move slightly to the north or south with the course of the sun. It would then appear that at the equinoctial period, when they return from the mean position toward the extreme northern or southern limit, there would be opportunity for unusual disturbances, especially since the heavy rainfall of those periods would unusually affect the temperature of the atmosphere.

That is precisely what occurs. The equinoxes are marked by storms of unusual severity, and the influence of the sudden falls of rain is so great that some eminent men believe them to be nearly the sole factor in the formation of these storms. In one case they doubtless are. If a very heavy rain be decidedly local, there is low barometer at that place. Now, if on either side there be areas of high barometer, the opposing currents flowing toward the center of low area are sufficient to meet all the conditions necessary for a cyclonic storm. As the zone of calms is comparatively narrow, it is apparent that the diameter of the area of any storm, owing to the pressure exerted by the incoming currents of wind, must be still less. Hence, the cyclone center, at its time of formation, seldom exceeds one hundred miles in diameter. As it travels away from the compressing currents that formed it, it is clear that its centrifugal force must increase; hence, its area increases, and its violence correspondingly diminishes.

These facts refer to the unusually violent cyclonic storms, properly known as cyclones. But all low area storms are characterized by the upward spiral motion, though not strong enough in the case of ordinary summer rains and thunderstorms to be especially noticed. We shall see, by and by, how this spiral motion may result without the intervention of any strong opposing currents.

Why and how a cyclone travels, is a question that at once propounds itself. Its motion is in accordance with a fixed law, whose operation varies only as it may be affected by unusual peculiarities in the configuration of the surface over which it travels. The reason of the motion is not so easy to explain; neither is it easy to explain why heat expands objects: but its operation is none the less certain. And so the route pursued by any storm can be readily indicated in advance. It is not a matter of mere conjecture.

The motion of a cyclone or tornado is in accordance with the same law that governs the motion of planets around the sun. It can be illustrated in a very simple manner by the spinning of a top.

Spin a top on a perfectly smooth and level surface. It will be better if the peg of the top be blunt or round, so that there will be no tendency to settle steadily into some possible hole or depression.

Now, the instant any degree of steadiness is attained, the top begins to move in small curves. If it be spun on a marble slab smoothly coated with fine flour or sand, it can be made to record its motions, which may then be carefully studied. It will be found that the form of the curve is nearly the same with every start. It will describe a parabola, pause a moment, then describe a second, and so on.

The chief peculiarity of this separate curvilinear motion is that its direction is always in an opposite direction to that of the rotation of the top. If the top turn from left to right, it will move from right to left, and vice versa. The same tendency will manifest itself even if the peg of the top be placed in a slight depression or socket, so that the curve cannot be made. Then the upper portion of the top will incline to one side, and begin describing a curve: but, as before, in a direction contrary to the direction of rotation.

The common toy known as a gyroscope illustrates the last peculiarity also. It consists of a wheel within a metal frame, which has a peg like a top. If the wheel be made to revolve rapidly, the whole may be balanced on the peg: when the frame will begin to slowly revolve in the opposite direction: and if placed upon a smooth level surface, like the top it will tend to describe the same course.

Still other illustrations of this principle are even more familiar than the spinning of a top. Any one who has seen the game of soldiers in a bowling alley knows that in order to make the ball turn to the left as it moves forward, it must spin the other way; that is, with the hands of a watch. To travel or curve to the right, it must spin in the contrary direction. So in our “great national game,” base-ball, the pitcher curves the ball any way he pleases merely by following this law. It is not necessary to take into account, as many do, the return trades, as occasioning the travel of a whirling storm; and the fact is, that the cyclone frequently travels more rapidly than the ordinary wind moving in the same direction.

Now, the motion of the planets is similar: rotating in one direction, they travel in the other. So we find the general law is,

All revolving bodies, left free as to direction, travel in a curve in a direction opposite to that of their rotation. This curve is usually some form of conic section: an ellipse, parabola or hyperbola. The planets, and some comets, move in ellipses. Some comets travel parabolas or hyperbolas. And the parabola is the customary path of the cyclonic storm. As the cyclone in the northern hemisphere rotates from right to left, and in the southern from left to right, their paths must necessarily be in opposite directions, as may be seen by the accompanying diagram. So in either case, the direction of the path is always away from the equator.

As far as the United States are concerned, most non-cyclonic storms originate in the Saskatchewan country, or along the southeastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. By far the greater number pass over the St. Lawrence valley. A small number are developed in the Gulf, or in the Pacific: but these are much affected, often broken up, in crossing the Rocky or Appalachian systems. The usual course is somewhat north of east; but there are a few notable exceptions. The immense amount of vapor wafted up the Mississippi valley induces some low area storms to move southward from Manitoba into the upper Mississippi valley. In like manner, the excessive moisture along our north Pacific coast causes occasional storms to move southward from Alaska to Oregon.

But the course of a cyclonic storm, we have seen, must be different.

The accompanying diagram illustrates the fact that the wind blows from all directions toward the center of the storm. As the storm revolves, the wind would come apparently from the south for any one on the eastern edge of the cyclone of the northern hemisphere. Hence, in the case of a storm of large diameter, people in Richmond or Washington may often be surprised by an apparent northeast gale, which reaches them before it strikes New York or Boston. At the center of the storm is absolute calm. So if a cyclone pass centrally over any point in the northern hemisphere, a person at that place will find the wind blowing violently from the southeast: then after an interval of calm, it will blow with equal violence from the northwest. This will be the case if the path of the storm has already turned to the northeast, so that its northeast quarter may be called its front. If on the northwest course, however, the apparently alternate winds would be from the northeast and southwest. So one in the path of a southern cyclone would find the winds proceeding from the same quarters; for though it revolves in the opposite direction, its front or path is also in the opposite direction; so in either hemisphere, the southeast or the northeast wind will be the first felt by one directly in the track of the storm.

ROTATION OF STORMS.

Another result of the path of a cyclone is that the direction of its center from the stand-point of any observer is readily known. A glance at the diagram shows at once that if any one within the storm area of a cyclone of the northern hemisphere stands with his back to the wind, the storm center, where the barometer is lowest, is invariably on his left: but if he stand with his back to the wind of a southern cyclone, the storm center is always on his right. Hence, if a vessel be overtaken by a cyclone, the captain at once may know how to pass beyond its range, by shaping his course at right angles to that of the wind. Thus, if in a northern cyclone, he must sail to the right, supposing his back is to the wind: in the southern hemisphere, he would sail to the left.

As an example of the expansion of the storm area in its journey, may be mentioned the West India hurricane of 1839, which had, in the Antilles, a diameter of three hundred miles, which increased to five hundred at the Bermudas, and eight hundred on the parallel of 50° north latitude.

To draw again upon the illustration of the spinning top, it will be observed that the curvilinear motion is extremely slow in comparison with that of rotation, but increases as the rotation decreases. The same law applies to the movement of cyclones. The slowest motion forward is usually near the apex of the curve: and the progress on the ocean is much slower than on the land. Traveling over the latter, the irregularities of surface act in the case of the storm just as a rough surface does in the case of the top. The motion may be accelerated, but its regularity is lessened. So while at sea the parabolic path of the storm is almost absolutely perfect, but on reaching the land its motion is more rapid, and less regular, conforming somewhat to the configuration of the surface.

To illustrate, take the great cyclone of August 16th to 22nd, 1888. This started off Point Jupiter, Florida, with a rainfall of 2.2 inches in twelve hours, while the rotary velocity of the wind was sixty miles per hour. Its path across the Gulf of Mexico was a perfect semi-parabola, curving northward into western Louisiana; but rapid as was the rotary velocity, three and a half days were required for the journey across the gulf. Meanwhile, it was rapidly widening: for within a few hours of its reaching land, its eastern edge was assailing Mobile, Alabama, with a south wind of fifty-five miles an hour. Almost at the same time the western half was flooding Memphis and Vicksburg with an enormous rainfall—almost four inches in twelve hours, at Memphis. By the morning of August 21st, thirty-six hours after reaching land, it was central over middle Tennessee and Kentucky; heavy rains fell over the entire region. But by this time its eastern edge was in collision with the Appalachian chain; while a heavy local rain at the northern extremity of that chain created an additional diversion in a new area of low barometer. So it left the hitherto parabolic route, and shot away nearly at a tangent along the western Appalachian slope, passing from Tennessee to Newfoundland in thirty-six hours, thus moving nearly three times as rapidly as in the Gulf: while its violence, or rotary speed, was vastly lessened.

This storm was one of the most destructive of the recent cyclones that have swept our country, doing immense damage to crops, bridges, houses, herds—in short, everything that can be seriously damaged by wind or flood.

The damage in Louisiana alone was estimated at $500,000. But it was by no means the most destructive of the West India storms.

An examination of the areas of calms, which are the hot-beds of cyclones and hurricanes, shows that the region which produces the great cyclones of the United States lies in the Antilles and Caribbean Sea. In the Pacific the portion of the calm belt of the Tropic of Cancer causes the ravages of cyclones or hurricanes originating there to be felt chiefly in Japan and China. The storms of the Pacific arising in the equatorial calm belt, are most violent in the East Indies, and the southern peninsulas of Asia. As these regions are much warmer, and consequently the atmosphere may hold a much greater quantity of vapor, it follows that cyclones in that quarter much exceed in violence those of our own land.

Such are the general laws of these terrible disturbances of nature, as ascertained by years of careful observation. In the United States, our Signal Service, with well-equipped observatories at important localities, is able to make these principles of practical use: to detect the incipient storm and mark out its path, ere it strikes its fiercest blow.

It should be observed, ere leaving this topic, that a few would-be prophets have maintained that not only great storms, but also earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, etc., are due to planetary influences. Observing that the most violent hurricanes occur near the equinoctial period, they argue that the equinoxes of the planets ought to also disturb the earth. They ignore the fact that as to our own equinoctial disturbances, the change in the relative position of the earth and sun is sufficient to produce change in the location of heated air-currents and consequent storms. They seek to find in the Equinox Absolute, some strange mysterious magic, some inexplicable power or Deus ex machina, whose business it is to get up a disturbance here on earth at every possible opportunity, no matter in what planet he may be for the nonce located.

But it is difficult to rid any man of his hobby. In the question of the equinoxes of other planets, their recurrence is of sufficient frequency to allow the weather-crank full play for his imagination. Two of the major planets lie within the earth’s orbit, and their more rapid course about

WATER SPOUTS AT SEA.

the sun results in there being an equinox in one or the other of them about once in each month. So no matter in what month a great storm may occur, the enthusiast can point out that a neighboring planet is at or near an equinox.

A careful examination of the equinoxes of the inner planets for a period of fifteen years shows that the number occurring in the month of April was 22 per cent. above the average occurrence for any month: whence, it would appear that the disturbances at that period ought to be equally in excess. But as a matter of fact, storms on the earth are most numerous and violent at the time of the autumnal equinox—September and October—when no such departure from the average of equinoxes of the other planets appears.

If planetary influence were the cause of our storms, it would be reasonable to suppose that disturbances would be greatest when the planets are nearest to the earth: but the advocates of the theory do not seem to consider this a factor at all. Nor could the planetary equinox theory account for the fact that storms of peculiar character always originate in the same regions. For instance, why do cyclones always originate near the tropics and move away from the equator? If the planetary equinoxes produce violent earthquakes, why are they so partial to North America as never in our whole history to have given us a very serious shaking up? Why is it that of the hundreds of recorded tornadoes of the past century in the United States, only one has ever occurred west of Dodge City, Kansas? Clearly the adherents of the equinoctial theory will have to admit local terrestrial conditions that modify all their theories: and to make such an admission will be, in the end, to give up the fight.

The writer knew of a boy who wasted a pound and a half of bird-shot in trying to kill a small owl. The game was finally secured, and the young Nimrod discovered a hatful of feathers with the body of a robin—and of no earthly use.

Attacking the planetary theory is of little more use. But the theory is the resort of many would-be weather prophets, who needlessly alarm the ignorant with their gloomy forebodings.

In a country as large as our own, any sort of weather is a very safe prediction to make for any day in the century, as minor rains and cloudy seasons and small storms are merely local. Any sort of prediction would be nearly sure to hit some portion of the country; and one who is so disposed can easily win a cheap notoriety and gain scores of testimonials as to the correctness of his predictions. Every unusual catastrophe produces a brood of these gentry who are eager to make the trial. But those who endeavor to indicate the exact locality where any great disturbance is to take place, meet discomfiture with a uniformity that ought to be discouraging. The work of the Signal Service is as carefully done as may well be: yet its best men assert that an average of 90 per cent. of correctness in their prognostications is unusual, because of the extremely small areas covered by local disturbances. Rainy weather announced for western Missouri may be correct every time for Kansas City, but be 10 per cent. in error for Nevada, Missouri. When those whose time is devoted to the weather can not always be correct, it is useless to listen to charlatans.

A careful study of sun-spots with relation to storms has been made of late years. The fact is elicited that the spots seem to have a definite connection with electrical disturbances: but while there are numbers of coincidences between unusual sun-spots and great storms, the number of striking exceptions seems equally great. Hence, it can not be fairly inferred that there is any definite relation between them. And so far as electrical phenomena on the earth are connected with storms, they always appear as dependent upon rather than productive of atmospheric currents. Indeed, the most remarkable electrical disturbances occur at times when no atmospheric current is prevalent. The most beautiful electrical display, the aurora, appears when the air is abnormally still and unusually dry. The necessity of the latter condition accounts for the fact that it is usually observable only in cold weather and occurs with great frequency and in remarkable brilliancy in the polar regions. It results from electric currents passing through extremely rarefied and dry air, and may be produced on a small scale artificially.

Poe was right when he held that many things remain long secrets by reason of their very simplicity. Six thousand years steam hissed and fumed in men’s faces, and tilted the kettle lid, before they learned its expansive power. Six thousand years the lightning flamed and roared before man realized it could be made one of his most obedient servants. Six thousand years he cudgeled his wits to discover the secret of the wind: yet when he made a fire within his house, he closed the door to prevent unpleasant draughts of air. And so he continues, constantly endeavoring to find some strange mystery in the things that are dependent on simplest laws.

There was a time when men stood aghast at small-pox, cholera, yellow fever, and many similar calamities, and spoke with bated breath of the “mysterious visitations of providence,” the “scourge of God,” and so on. When the Turks once besieged a plague-stricken city, a comet appeared in the sky. The pious inhabitants prayed “O Lord, deliver us from the devil, the Turk and the comet,” and usually such people believed such plagues were the judgment of God on them for their sins. Modern science holds that about the only sin the Lord punishes in that way is the sin of filthy streets, or back-door cess-pools. When man has once learned the means of control and prevention, evils lose their mysterious witchery.

On the other hand, let the laws of any force in nature be every so well understood: yet, so long as they are beyond the control of man, they will retain for him an eerie uncanny fascination. The pigmy has harnessed the steam and chained the lightning: but when the storm clouds lower and the forests moan, the sea roars and the lightning glows, he stands in fear and awe before a power whose might he but vaguely comprehends. He may know of the winds, whence and whither bound; but when the Stygian darkness has passed on, leaving wreck and ruin, want and woe, desolation and despair, shattered homes and hopes, and bleeding hearts, this knowledge of law is, for the nonce, forgotten, and the hurricane is transformed, in his disordered vision, into a demon of wrath, or caprice; or he speaks, hesitatingly it may be, of the mysterious dispensation of an inscrutable providence. But in the mighty wind, as in the soughing breeze, there is only obedience to universal law. But when the Author of law displays his power, man’s instinct, however unwilling his reason, acknowledges a God.

CHAPTER V.

THE LOUISVILLE TORNADO.

“At eve along the calm resplendent west I marked a cloud alive with fairy light, So warmly pure, so sweetly, richly bright, It seemed a spirit of ether, floating blest, In its own happy empire! While possest With admiration of the marvelous light, Slowly its hues, opal and chrysolite, Waned on the shadowy gloaming’s phantom breast. The cloud became a terror, whose dark womb, Throbbed with keen lightnings, by destruction hurled, Red bolt on bolt, while a drear ominous gloom Enveloped Nature: o’er the startled world— A deep alarum—burst the thunder boom And the swift Storm his coal-black wings unfurled!”

HERE is a perspective of news as well as of art, which requires that such features in a view as are supposed to be nearest to the observer must be given larger detail. It is a natural consequence of the fact that a small object near by may conceal from view a mountain in the distance.

So in the news world a dog run over on Washington avenue takes rank with a wreck in the Indian Ocean. A fight in a neighboring saloon gets ten inches: a strike in Germany ten lines. Your neighbor’s new barn is a good item for the county paper whose editor cares nothing for the new bank in Boston. The Widow Jones gets a puff for whitewashing her fence; the refitting of the White House gets a line. A million of people who have heard of George Washington, never heard of Alfred the Great.

Now, not a few will think that there is injustice in this. Doubtless the tendency of the time is to exaggerate perspective to obtain startling effects. Caricature is characteristic of the age. And yet, there was never before a time when so many people took interest in things that lay beyond their own narrow circle; even if that interest be from mere curiosity.

Sometimes this self-centered condition of humanity has an amusing aspect: as if one should imagine the earth terminated with his own apparent horizon. Some South Sea Islanders called the first white men who visited them, “sky-breakers.” The reason is simple. Dwelling on their little islets, mere specks in the deep, and in all their myths and legends having no account of any other race, they supposed themselves to be the only people in the world. Their sky was a vast wall of blue stones raised by one of their mythical heroes. It shut in the world and could not be far away, though none of them had endeavored to reach it. So these strange white creatures were not of this world; neither were they of the race of the gods; they came from no one knew where, and had somehow broken through the blue wall that bounded the world. And white men are in some islands called “sky-breakers” to this day.

Something of the same spirit is manifested by the Chinese. The devil of their mythology is white. So our occidental sensibilities received quite a shock when we learned that we were “foreign devils.” The Japanese more considerately called us “foreign beasts,” as though uncertain of our status in the animal kingdom. And to this day our magnificent vessels are gravely styled “devil ships” by the Chinese.

Such are what might be appropriately styled ludicrous exaggerations of perspective. And we of the west are similarly so wrapped up in our self-sufficiency that it hardly occurs to us that we may appear as amusing to foreigners as they to us. In this respect our charity begins at home. It is the way of the world.

But there are a thousand occurrences that make us feel that the principle is just, no matter to what extremes we may foolishly carry it. It comes home to each with peculiar emphasis in the hour of distress. The famine in Asia does not weigh upon you so heavily as the death of the woman who starved in the garret across the street. A fire that burns Chicago is easier forgotten that the one which destroys the little home that represents the savings of years of your life. The cholera in India has no such terrors for you as the diphtheria or scarlet fever in your own village. The Czar of Russia is blown to pieces in his carriage; but he has no remembrance at the bedside of your sick friend. Ten thousand dead victims of a distant earthquake are hidden by the coffin in your own home.

Since the same law applies to the interests of nations, it is not necessary, in reviewing the work of destructive tempests, to apologize for giving chief place to the recent Louisville tornado, however insignificant it may appear in comparison with scores of others that have desolated the earth in days gone by. The latter shall be noticed in due time.

In the foregoing chapter we have seen that the great cyclones that occasionally visit us originate in the neighborhood of the Antilles. Of course, similar conditions may produce smaller storms of the same class in numerous localities. These small storms whose paths are but a few yards, or sometimes as much as a mile in diameter, are called, to distinguish them from the great cyclone of twenty to two hundred miles in diameter, by the Portuguese title of tornados, or “turning-storms.” Often the broken character of the country will cause a large gathering storm to break

WHERE THE STORM ENTERED LOUISVILLE.

up into half a dozen or more of the smaller ones, which, in their narrow paths are as destructive as the cyclone.

It is the unexpected that happens. No one experiences so many surprises, or has more pet beliefs upset than that oracle of the chimney-corner, the oldest inhabitant. It was long believed that tornadoes never passed over an old Indian camp ground. Whatever the popular opinion of savage intellect, there is marvelous confidence in his instinct. Again, it was thought a tornado never would pass over a large city. The storm in question demolished both these “olde wyves’ tales.”

During March 27th, 1890, the Signal Service Department observed a threatening storm center gather in the southwestern portion of Wyoming, and start eastward with great rapidity. Notice was promptly given. Railway, telegraph and electric light officials were warned that on Thursday night a hurricane would blow with a speed of at least fifty miles an hour. Signal Service predictions had sometimes failed, and this last one excited no particular concern. The destroyer came and was gone in two minutes; and blocks on blocks of Louisville were a ghastly ruin.

The tornado was accompanied by a cloud and tremendous rain. To an observer at the Falls, the cloud was seen to come up the gap between the hills which guard the banks of the beautiful Ohio. He described it as “balloon-shaped, twisting an attenuated tail to the earth. It emitted a constant fusillade of lightning, and seemed to be composed of a lurid, snake-like mass of electric currents, whose light would sometimes be extinguished for a few moments, making an almost intolerable darkness. It was accompanied by a fearful roar, like that of a thousand trains crossing the big bridge at once. It could be seen to strike Louisville, and then with incredible rapidity it leaped the river, churning it into white foam as it went toward the Indiana shore.”

The streets of Louisville parallel to the river are named; those at right angles are numbered from east to west. The section visited may be described as a rectangle a mile square, bounded on the west by Eighteenth street, on the east by Seventh, on the south by Broadway, and on the north by the Ohio river. It comprehends the business portion of the city. Through this district the cyclone swept diagonally from southwest to northeast, crossing the river and leaving the city at the foot of Seventh street. The business houses or residences of perhaps 10,000 people lay in its path.

Two days after the storm, when there had been time for a calm survey, its track is thus described by a correspondent of the Associated Press:

“It first descended upon the beautiful little suburb of Parkland, southwest of the city, destroying many private residences. The loss of life was inconsiderable at this initial point, however. Rushing onward toward the northwest it lifted for a moment above the trees and housetops, and descended again a mile further on at Maple and Eighteenth streets. From this on its pathway is clearly marked. At no time did the base of the funnel touch the ground, and one hundred feet higher in the air, it would have passed by without doing comparatively much damage.

“The ruins as they now are often show the first, and even the second and third stories of buildings still intact, with the roofs and higher stories swept away except in places where the debris from the upper floors crushed in the lower, and brought the walls down to the ground in total collapse. From Maple and Eighteenth streets it went northward one block, then west at an angle another block; and then curving to the northeast as far as Magazine and

BAXTER PARK, LOUISVILLE.

Thirteenth streets. A quick change to the north is perceptible here, and after traveling in that direction two blocks, another turn to the west. An acute angle was then made, the line turning from Fifteenth street northeast to Thirteenth street again; thence, due east to Tenth street, and north a block to Market street. At Thirteenth and Jefferson streets it swept through Baxter Park, doing great damage, and a block eastward destroyed St. John’s Episcopal Church, in the rectory of which the Rev. S. E. Barnwell and his little son were crushed and burned to death, the rest of the family escaping.

“St. John’s Church is in the street immediately in the rear of the ill-fated Falls City Hall. The eccentric monster went on eastward past the Falls City Hall without touching it, and then, as if suddenly recollecting, it swept around the block and started westward on the south side of Market street. Had the change of direction been made a trifle sooner or later Falls City Hall would have escaped, and the dead been numbered within thirty or forty at the most.

“As if satisfied with the work accomplished, it turned north again and struck Main street. This thoroughfare is the principal business street in the city. It runs parallel with the river from east to west, and but a block south of it. It is lined with wholesale houses, and was the solidest part of the city in point of architecture.

“The tornado reached Main street at Twelfth, and then shaped its course directly east down the middle of the broad street, sweeping away the solid stores and warehouses on both sides. From Twelfth to Seventh streets on Main it is a wholesaling district, and it was practically untenanted at that hour. Had the storm come in the daytime and taken the same direction, hundreds who were at their houses and escaped unhurt would have been killed.

“At Seventh street and Main the buildings change in their character. The big Louisville Hotel is on Main between Sixth and Seventh, and east of the hotel are restaurants, saloons and other hotels which contained thousands of people at that hour. The tornado chased down Main street, carrying everything before it, passing Eleventh street, Tenth, Ninth, Eighth, and Seventh. A block further and the Louisville Hotel, with its hundreds of tenants, would have been reached. The escape of the hotel is the strangest incident of all. Adjoining it on the west, from whence the storm came, was a three-story building used as a saloon on the first floor, and occupied in the upper stories as sleeping apartments for the hotel servants. This three-story building, right under the east wall of the hotel, was totally demolished and not a timber left a dozen feet higher than the ground. Its inmates were killed. The great hotel shook from roof to cellar with the force of the shock, but it was spared.

“The storm veered at the sharpest kind of an angle to the north again, crossed Main street, and struck for the river, taking in the Union Depot on the way. Strange to say, although the depot was totally demolished, only one person was killed there. At the point where the tornado crossed the river, between New Albany and Jeffersonville, it is supposed several small crafts were sunk.

“Reaching the opposite bank of the river, the storm turned to the east again and took off a bite from Jeffersonville. It went along Front street for a few blocks, damaging buildings, but causing no loss of life. Then it took to the river and struck the Kentucky shore about four miles east of where it left it, and outside of the city of Louisville. At this exact spot is located the Louisville pumping works, which supplies the whole city with water.

“The pumping works were destroyed, and the city is now threatened with a water famine in consequence. The next heard of the peculiar course taken by the tornado is from Eminence, Ky., about forty miles east of Louisville, which was badly damaged by the storm. The intervening country may have suffered somewhat, but no other towns were visited, and from Eminence the destroyer probably took a final leave of the earth’s surface and passed on to the Atlantic Coast at a higher and less dangerous altitude.”

This outline seems to show how easily the course of a storm is modified by the irregularities of surface, even when the obstacles are such as it can overcome. It is seen that the course of a small storm over broken country, little resembles the steady curve of the storm in the open sea. Ever and anon, the obstacles below momentarily break the regular current, which is as often renewed in a moment by the powerful upward suction in the upper air. This is the phenomenon known as “jumping,” which may be repeated till the widening of the center leaves the storm too weak to promptly restore the current at the ground, and the danger from the tornado is over. Some of the apparent eccentricities in the city, are doubtless due to the fact that occasional buildings were strong enough to resist; and leaving such at slight variations in its course, made it present the appearance of doubling on its track.

So many blocks of buildings, great and small, in an instant violently hurled to pieces, would seem to infer with certainty the death of nearly all the occupants. That only about a hundred should have been killed outright, was therefore a matter of astonishment no less than of gratitude. The terror and anguish of the first moments or hours could not, however, be measured by the actual calamity to human life. Members of households suddenly separated from each other in the darkness, could only fear the worst.

LOUISVILLE TORNADO—FALLS CITY HALL.

Their startled imagination saw the missing one dead or dying under the huge piles of fallen buildings. There were excited cries and calls and wailing of the living; a mad rush and frantic tugging at the ruins, from beneath which were sometimes heard shrieks for help or groans of the dying. To add to the universal terror, fires broke out in many places, threatening imprisoned wretches with a fate more horrible than the crush of falling walls, or timbers, bricks or iron, hurtling through the air. Before help could reach them the flames took hold on some and hushed their cries forever. Fortunately, the fire-alarm connections were left intact, and as alarm after alarm was sent, there was a dashing of the engines to the rescue, and the whole fire-department was presently engaged in extinguishing the flames, or recovering the living and the dead. Hospitals and morgues were suddenly improvised in sheds or shops, where the wounded were cared for, or the dead were deposited to await the recognition or claim of the living.

Falls City Hall was the theatre of the principal loss of life. It was a brick building fronting on Market between Eleventh and Twelfth. The ground-floor had long been used as a market, and contained forty or fifty stalls of gardeners and butchers. These stalls were closed and the keepers were absent at the hour of the disaster. In front on the second floor were three small rooms, one of them utilized as an office, the other two as toilet rooms. Behind these was a large hall, and in the rear of this still another hall, in which a young lady, her father, brother and sister being present, was teaching a dancing school. There might have been sixty-five persons in this room, though one witness says twenty-eight. In one of the small rooms seven men, constituting the Executive Committee of the Roman Knights, was holding a business meeting. In another room a band of musicians, fifteen in number, were going through a rehearsal. Some decorators were at work in the large hall, preparing it for some coming occasion. On the third floor were assembled the Jewel Lodge No. 2 of the Knights and Ladies of Honor, with an attendance of a hundred or more. In an adjoining hall the Humboldt Lodge No. 146 of I. O. O. F. with seventeen members was in session. The whole number of people in the building must have been nearly or quite two hundred. In an instant the fearful wrench of the cyclone had twisted the building into fragments, and tumbled it in shapeless ruin upon the inmates.

Ten minutes after the collapse might have been seen a frantic multitude hastily gathering from all quarters, among them many women clutching vainly with their fingers at the slate roof, and madly tearing at the wreck beneath which the imprisoned and wounded were crying for help. Presently, fire broke out, but it was happily extinguished. The work of rescue was now organized and speedily set in motion, but an hour elapsed before the first victim was extricated. This was a lady, found sitting upright with bruised head and broken arm. She told of her vain effort to escape, and of the position in which she had last seen her companions. Meanwhile, some were digging in the center of the debris in answer to a voice which grew fainter and fainter until it was hushed forever. The work of rescue was now shifted to the other end of the pile.

James Hassen was foremost among the workers, and on reaching the hall room of the Knights and Ladies, he took from the ruins the first body, which proved to be that of his wife, and who expired in his arms. He gently laid his dead wife aside, and hurried again to aid in recovering the rest. Presently, ten women were reached, clasped in each others arms—all dead but one. The dancing room was

AT WORK IN THE WRECK.

reached. One lady was taken out fatally hurt, and one after another her three children, unconscious, but destined to recover. While her husband was urging the rescue of his fourth child, still somewhere beneath the ruins, an under-current of air having been admitted, the fire again broke out with startling fierceness, and the furious heat compelled a suspension of the work. The groans of the imprisoned were now changed to fearful shrieks, while the watchers, helpless to render aid, screamed and ran wildly about with anxiety and horror. Three or four lines of hose were turned upon the flames, and they were subdued; but an hour, in which probably many a life went out, had been lost from the work. By twelve o’clock many dead and wounded had been removed from the ruins. The dead were largely in the majority. Many of these exhibited no outward wounds, and had been apparently suffocated by gas escaping from broken pipes.

But the reader may be spared further details of the recovery at Falls City Hall. Suffice it to say, that two days were required to remove the wreck and demonstrate the precise extent of the calamity. On this spot, about eighty persons had lost their lives.

The narratives of some of the survivors will serve to show that while the tornado comes without warning, the heaviest wind is not just at first: and a cool head may sometimes profit by the interval to escape. Sailors have a saying that the “tail” of a gale is strongest. A young man who was taken from the wreck of the hall says:

“I was dancing when a flash of lightning, followed by a crash, made me think that the lightning had struck some part of the rear of the building. The next moment, the big doors that enter into the big hall in front flew open. I continued dancing, and cried to some of the boys to close the doors. They did so, and were bolting them, when they were again forced open with such force as to knock down everybody around them. Then the window sashes were blown in, and the building commenced rocking. I saw that the house was about to fall, and I hallooed: ‘The walls will go next.’ I ran to the dressing-room, and I think most of the girls followed me. I got under a table and held fast to the legs, thinking that I might be saved in that way. Then the walls began crumbling, and the lights went out, and the floor descended like an elevator. The crash stunned me for a moment, but finally a flash of lightning showed me a hole in the debris, through which I might have crawled had not my leg been pinioned between some timbers. There were people all around me, and they were crying for help; but there was no one to aid us. I tugged and strained, but I could not get loose. Finally, I heard my father’s voice, and answered him; and directly he crawled down the hole. It took him three-quarters of an hour to extricate me, and then we both crawled out. If there had been help at once, we might have saved others, as I knew about where they all were, but they were more or less hurt.”

That less than half of those in the building should have been killed is a matter of wonder. The manner of individual escapes can only be inferred from one or two more which we subjoin.

One of the lady members of the lodge of the Knights and Ladies of Honor relates:

“I went to attend the lodge meeting and when all were present the calamity came. There must have been about seventy-five people in the room at the time of the tornado. Hone of them were able to get out before the building fell in. The first intimation we had of what was coming was the flash of lightning and the beating of hail against the windows. The wind howled, and I heard a fearful roaring noise. The people became frightened, and hurriedly gathered their wraps together. All were fearful of impending danger.

“Just at this moment I saw a round hole blown through the wall, immediately above one of the windows. The gas went out and then I saw another large round hole appear in the roof. Through this I saw the lightning play with awful grandeur. This natural light was all that relieved the gloom and darkness. I heard one of the trustees of the lodge call out to all the people to go out quickly and in a body. He cried out not to rush, as some one would be killed if they did. Then I knew no more until I became conscious, and found that I was partially imbedded in bricks and timbers. I felt blood running down my neck and became aware that I had been struck on the head by a brick or timber. I extricated myself, and by the flashes of lightning made my way over the terrible mass of debris and dead bodies toward the front. I saw a man making his way down the pile of bricks to the street, and I followed. When I reached the sidewalk I was aided to a neighboring store by a lodge trustee. I don’t know how he made his way out. I heard cries for help as I came out, but I had barely strength to move, and could not help the others.”

A thrilling experience was that of another member of the same lodge. His estimate of the attendance, larger than the foregoing, is yet materially exceeded by others. He says:

“The first intimations of danger we had were two distinct rockings of the building, about which time a dormer window in the lodge room was blown from its casings, and immediately after the plastering began to drop from the ceiling. A wild rush was made for the ante-room, which carried me with it, and I had just reached the door when

MAIN STREET, BETWEEN ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH, LOUISVILLE.

the entire floor gave way, and we were precipitated to the basement, blinded and almost suffocated by a cloud of dust, and crushed and jammed by falling timbers. In some way the doorframe fell with me and maintained an upright position when it stopped, and I was enabled to extricate myself from the debris and make an exit to the street through an adjoining house, whose doors I kicked in. Meanwhile, the shrieks and groans of those still imprisoned by the wreck formed a chorus that, in connection with the howling of the storm, made my very heart sick. I was, so far as hasty examination went, comparatively uninjured, and at once returned over the ruins with several men to the rear of the place and extinguished a fire that had begun to blaze fiercely. By this time the rain was falling in torrents, and it was difficult for those who had gathered from the neighborhood, or who had been as lucky as I was to escape with life, to tell where to begin the work of rescue.

“The vivid lightning flashes only gave momentary views of the position of the ruins, and blinded everybody. Among those whom I saw and recognized as having escaped from Jewel lodge I can name only the treasurer, who was covered with dust, drenched with rain and well-nigh distracted by the probable fate of her aged father, who had attended the lodge meeting with her and who was still in the ruins. The entire building collapsed in front and rear, and of the east and west side walls nothing was standing above the second story.

“So far as I could judge when I had succeeded in escaping, there were less than a dozen, all told, who got out unhurt; and the cries for help and groans that issued from the broken and twisted heap was proof that scores were still there, unable to escape.”

The Union Depot was utterly demolished. An officer of the Louisville Southern Road relates the story:

“Quite a crowd of people were present waiting for trains. Mr. Woodard, of the Monon Railroad, was near me, and I had been talking to him. The wind was blowing strong, and seemed to increase in power. We heard a dull moaning in the distance, and the glass in the windows of the depot was shattered, although the first puff was merely the advance guard of the tornado. The people became alarmed. One man started to rush into the ticket office, but the ticket-seller pushed him back. Mr. Woodard and I also started for the ticket office. Just at this moment the tornado, like a clap of thunder, struck the depot.

“The building gave way and tumbled in upon us. I was just at the door of the ticket office when it went down. I fell, and a man standing near me fell across me. A heavy girder fell on top of him. Mr. Woodard was only a few feet away. I never lost consciousness. I spoke to Mr. Woodard and he replied. We both thought we could get out alive if the depot did not catch fire. I knew that there had been stoves with fire burning in them in the depot before the tornado struck it, and I expected the flames to break out at every moment.

“I spoke to the man who was lying across me and told him that he must manage to squeeze from under the girder. I thought that if he was off me I could manage to get out. After many desperate efforts he managed to get from under the girder, but in doing so his bowels were torn so terribly that the doctors do not think he can recover. He was a brakeman, who had come here to be a witness in some case. I do not remember his name.

“After the brakeman got off me, I was able to use my strength. Then I got out, and so did Mr. Woodard. I was under the wreck just thirty-five minutes. I was slightly bruised in the arm and leg, but that amounts to nothing.”

UNION DEPOT, LOUISVILLE.

Though forty or fifty persons were in the depot at the time, only one, a restaurant boy, was killed; Twenty-one passenger coaches were more or less wrecked. On following days the impression of the ruins upon the beholder was peculiarly gloomy. Instead of the stir of life, the brilliancy of electric lights, the scream of whistles and the rumbling of trains, there was a scattered wreck, and comparative silence. A few chickens, liberated from their coop, crept at dusk to roost on a timber, and in subdued tones seemed to be discussing with each other the mournful situation.

CHAPTER VI

INCIDENTS OF THE TORNADO.

“O cold and savage wind! It racks my soul to hear the wild lamenting Of wounded hearts whose grief knows no relenting, Can not their woe e’er sway thee to repenting? O cold and savage wind!

O melancholy wind! Hast thou no requiem for the dead and dying? Art thou some fierce despairing spirit sighing O’er a lost Paradise behind thee lying? O melancholy wind!”

OO frequently in the confusion of great disasters the woes of the poorer classes are forgotten in the attention given to their more opulent neighbors. There is only too often good cause given for a slight modification of Shylock’s speech, “Hath not a Jew eyes?” etc. There is no sadder record than that so frequently given in a single line: “Dead—a woman, name unknown.” What fearful heart-aches often end in the Potter’s field!

Adjoining the Louisville Hotel was a saloon and cigar store, the rooms over which were occupied by the hotel laundry girls. These were hurled into the cellar, and so tightly wedged that death could not have been long delayed. One was found sitting upright, the pallor of death on her face, and agony in every feature. Another lay upon her back, with hands outstretched above her head, as though she tried to thrust destruction back. A third was sitting, dead; while near by another lay upon her face, as though refusing to behold that which she could not shun.

“Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.”

Poor laundry girls! Let their dead dust be mentioned with reverence. Had they been spoiled daughters of wealth and fashion, press reporters would have waxed eloquent of their birth, their history, their beauty, their accomplishments, their heritage. We should have heard in detail the names of their wealthy and mourning friends, and of their impressive obsequies. Magnificent monuments would have risen to mark their sleeping dust. These five laundry girls were taken up tenderly, and two or three days later, together borne without pomp to humble graves. But is not honest industry in useful avocation toiling for bread a more royal thing than silks and diamonds, bedizzening frivolity and idleness? Is there not in America many a haughty heiress, less worthy of our tears, than these?

“Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure;”

and when we say, Peace to their ashes! will not the reader add a fervent Amen!

On Seventeenth street was a pathetic sight. One blackened and charred wall stood swaying in the wind. Just over the door was a sign—“Plain Sewing.” An old woman had been the sole tenant. Here, any day for years past, it may be,

“With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread:— Stitch—Stitch—Stitch, In poverty, hunger and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, She sang the song of the shirt.”

Her charred body was dug from beneath the ruins. Tragic end of a life of poverty and toil! But when we reflect on the lot of many another sewing woman, who still survives, we may, with Solomon, feel inclined to “praise the dead who are already dead, more than the living who are yet alive.”

About Thirteenth and Walnut dwelt a peddler with wife and child. He knocked a hole in the side wall of his wrecked home, and dragged out his little family over a seemingly impassable pile of debris. Then he thought of another woman and two helpless children imprisoned up stairs. He rushed to their rescue, and dragged them out just in time to save them from the flames, which two minutes later were licking up all that would burn.

Society must think more of its lonely toilers; even of its peddlers and publicans and sinners. It was the keeper of a brothel in Memphis, who, during the awful yellow-fever visitation, turned her house into a hospital, and ministered to the suffering till she fell a victim herself. Jesus was looking at some very nice people when he said, “The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” To those good people, such a thing would be one of the “mysteries of Providence.”

“Mysteries of Providence” are continually ferreted out on such occasions. Reporters, to whom everything that can be written is news, gather up a hundred items and give them to the public; often grouping items in a manner that is strikingly grotesque. There is no grimmer humor than the apparently matter-of-fact statement that during a great Italian earthquake, wherein lofty cathedrals were shaken to pieces and hundreds of people killed, statues of the Virgin escaped uninjured. Sober-minded people are prone to wonder what is the relative value of a human life and a graven image. One might, if such things were of constant occurrence, consider them as meant by Providence as a very sarcastic punishment for the violation of the second commandment.

EIGHTH AND MAIN STREETS, LOUISVILLE.

It is related that at the time of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, a Romish captain secured a number of fugitives, among whom he felt satisfied there were some good Catholics. Not being able to distinguish them readily, he referred the perplexing case to a fanatical priest. The response came promptly: “Kill all; the Lord will know his own!”

Interpreters of the inscrutable ways of Providence might find such the only solution for many particulars of the storm. The pious but superstitious folk who believe that all such visitations are for the sins of a people, instead of the result of laws that send the rain alike upon the just and the unjust, might find some perplexity in conning the following cases.

On the next street back of Falls City Hall stood the St. John’s Episcopal Church. The rector, with his little four-year-old boy, was in the study. The rectory and the church were completely destroyed, and the rector and his child were killed. In an adjoining building, ten or eleven men were playing cards. The house was demolished, but not one of the players was seriously hurt. The preacher perished; the idlers were saved—herein is food for reflection.

Tierney’s saloon was on Eleventh, between Main and Market. The ice-box saved him and four other men from being crushed. They crowded beside it, and crawled out uninjured. The pastor and the useful laundry girls perished; the saloon-keeper and his patrons survived.

The Catholic buildings at Seventeenth and Broadway were Father Desney’s residence, the Sisters’ Home, the Church of the Sacred Heart, and the parochial school. All these were wrecked by the wind, and Sister Pius was killed. There is a story that, amid utter ruin, the image of the Virgin was left standing, untouched by harm. Let the devout remember that a saloon-keeper obtained an equal deliverance.

Elmer Barnes and several others ran into Eckerle’s saloon, 1001 West Market, and securely closed the door. The building fell with a crash, and the men were buried in the ruins. Barnes and Eckerle were overwhelmed by the falling bricks and timber. Eckerle was fearfully injured; Barnes was drawn from the ruins, and died a few hours afterward. The other men were only slightly hurt. If we have had occasion to mention the destruction of one church and of several saloons, it is probably only because saloons are more numerous than churches.

At a grocery store at the corner of Sixteenth and Magazine streets the owner and five others were standing at the bar in the back part of the store. A dreadful roaring sound was heard, and the house rocked back and forth. The owner’s wife and children screamed and ran out the back way. Almost instantly the rear wall of the building fell. The six men rushed to escape by the front door, but the wind closed it with such force that it could not be opened. The floor beneath gave way, and three men were dropped into the cellar and pinned among the ruins. The other three escaped through a side window. Instantly a fire kindled and took hold on the imprisoned men. Their cries were awful, while their escaped companions witnesssed the horrible cremation and were powerless to render aid.

We record but a few of the multitude of deaths, experiences, incidents and escapes. Doubtless, there is many an untold tale—something of personal interest connected with almost every one of the hundreds of buildings partially or wholly wrecked. The press at first exaggerated, and perhaps finally minimized the loss of life. There is reason to think that not all the names of the dead were given to the public, while subsequently several died of their wounds. To the list of those who were killed outright, or died in a few hours, better information might have added several names, and possibly subtracted or corrected others.

The public may find in the press reports lists of the dead and numerous records of persons injured or killed by the fallings of walls, or by flying missiles; but these, after all, must be regarded as exceptions. There can be no very correct estimate of the number of people who were in the down-town district at the time of the accident. Yet, it would be safe to say only a very small portion of those in the path of the storm suffered any injury.

That a storm of such magnitude and fury should have swept through the heart of a city of 200,000 people, to destroy outright no more than five or six score lives, may excite our wonder. The most obvious reason of the low mortality will be found in the hour and place of the principal visitation. The place was the business part of the city, and the hour between eight and nine P.M., when the wholesale houses and the streets in their vicinity were comparatively deserted. Another fact is also to be noted. The cyclone seems to have reached the ground scarcely at any point at all. Its principal fury was probably expended in the region above the housetops. The roofs and tops of walls were removed; the damage below resulted principally from their fall. Humbler buildings sheltering human lives were sometimes crushed by the fall of the upper portion of the wall of some contiguous building; as notably, in the case of the house occupied by the laundry girls, and which was smashed by the fall of the wall from the top story of the Louisville Hotel; or the case of a colored family whose house was crushed by the wall of the Falls City Hall. But in any case of cyclonic visitation

CORNER MAIN AND CLINTON STREETS, LOUISVILLE.

the escapes will probably amaze us more than the deaths; for when it will seem that nothing living could have escaped, the majority will not only probably be found alive, but absolutely unhurt. Of numerous cases, a few specimens will suffice:

Peter Speth and family were seated in the parlor when the cyclone arrived. The family huddled together in the hall, doubtless to avail themselves of the protection of the side walls not far apart. The walls of the second story fell in with a crash. The building and furniture were destroyed, but the family escaped without injury.

Eleven men were in a barber shop at 1803 Broadway. The roof was blown off; the walls fell in, but all the men escaped through the windows without a scratch.

At 329 Eleventh street, on the upper floor of a two-story brick, a lady lay at the point of death; watched by her son and daughter. She begged them to flee for their lives, but they refused to forsake her. The roof was stripped clean off, but the devoted children with their mother escaped injury.

In one cottage on Chapel street dwelt a family of five. At once all were in the house, when the storm demolished it, and four escaped unhurt.

Major Galt, of the Louisville and Nashville Road, lived in a two-story brick. He apprehended no danger till the walls fell. His wife was buried under a pile of bricks. Her husband with difficulty extricated her, and carried her unconscious to the house of a neighbor. Save for the shock, she was not seriously hurt.

Now, were such cases the exception—had not such instances happened in a hundred other places similarly visited—there would certainly be cause for perplexity. But the phenomena of the Louisville storm tend only to establish the truth of a fact long suspected: that the most

LOOKING EAST FROM TENTH AND MAIN, LOUISVILLE.

destructive effects of a tornado are not always attributable to the direct force of the wind. A number of interesting incidents of the Louisville storm will serve to illustrate a now clearly established fact.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick and her family were in a two-story brick, 1433 Seventeenth street. They were all in an upper room and could not get out. The walls fell outward, while the floor still remained in its place. They climbed down unhurt.

James Smith (colored) lived with his wife and seven children in Congress Alley, in the rear of Falls City Hall. Himself, his wife and three children were crushed beneath the mass of bricks and timbers; the remaining four children were taken out more dead than alive. Yet, the house was not in the least moved from its place. The building was crushed by the wall of the hall, which fell outward. Similar was the fate of the laundry girls. The house in which they were was crushed by the top of the wall of the Louisville Hotel, which fell outward, toward the wind.

The colored Odd Fellows were holding a meeting in their hall at Thirteenth and Walnut. The two upper stories were blown entirely down. Several large circular holes were blown through the brick walls; one of these in the side away from the storm. Several received more or less injury, but not one was fatally hurt.

At 1315 Eighteenth street, was a magnificent new brick cottage. The roof remained, but in the west wall were made “six holes, round as a dollar, and large enough to admit a flour barrel.” It is added that the missing bricks were nowhere to be found.

Finally, take the experience of a grocer on West Market street:

“I was inside of my store, and my clerk was there, too. Standing on the pavement outside were policeman Harlow, a man named Charles Taylor, who said he lived in Jeffersonville, a negro whose name I do not know, and Carl Rice, an eight-year-old boy who lived with his parents in the rooms above my store. When the wind grew high and the hail began to pelt, Mr. Harlow attempted to open the front door of the store, which was closed, to come inside for shelter. At that moment the tornado came in all its fury. No one who was not in it can conceive of its terrific force. The suction from without, as the full force came, was so great that it was impossible to get the front door open. My clerk at work on it on the inside and Mr. Harlow on the outside, were as powerless against the wind as babies would have been in attempting to move a stone wall.

“But their efforts were not of long duration. The tornado forced its way in the rear of the upper stories of my building, and with impetuosity unequaled forged through the apartments against the front wall. This wall popped out and fell to the pavement below, upon those standing there, burying them in the debris. The front is entirely gone, as you see. Mr. Harlow and the little boy Carl Rice, were close up to the front door, and only a small portion of the wall struck them. Taylor and the negro were out on the pavement further, and they fared worse. Taylor’s leg was broken at the ankle, and he was internally injured. The negro had a hole knocked in his skull larger than a silver dollar, and was used up generally. Mr. Harlow was bruised, but fortunately has no bones broken, and is not dangerously hurt. The little boy’s head was pretty badly cut and bruised, but he is not in a serious condition.”

Now, in all of these cases is noticeable the same peculiar feature of walls falling outward, sometimes even against the wind: or of holes being burst in walls, the bricks being

CORNER JEFFERSON AND TWELFTH STREETS, LOUISVILLE.

thrown so far that they could not be found, or distinguished from those of other houses. This might seem inexplicable—that the windward walls often fall outward. But it must be remembered that all storms with a wind system blowing spirally upward and inward are characterized by low barometer, signifying a diminution in atmospheric pressure at the storm center; and the lower the barometer, the more violent the storm. Now, it is clear that if a storm advance slowly, and be widely diffused, the air in the regions through which it moves has time to accommodate itself gradually to the change, and expanding slowly to equalize the pressure in all directions, its rarefaction is not perceptible to the ordinary observer: and the denser air within a dwelling expands so gradually that all the surplus can escape through chinks and crevices, if the doors and windows be closed.

But the narrow-path tornado comes so rapidly as to produce little atmospheric change beforehand; while directly at its center the barometer may stand as much as two inches lower than in the surrounding region. Now, a fall of two inches means, in round numbers, a lessening of pressure of one pound to every square inch, or one hundred and forty-four pounds to the square foot. As the air normally presses equally in all directions, the passage of a storm of this sort may mean a sudden change from fifteen pounds pressure to the inch on each side of a wall, to fifteen pounds on the inside and fourteen only on the outside. When such a sudden change is brought to bear on every square inch of the interior of a house, it necessarily amounts to an explosion.

Suppose that in the case of the door which the men were unable to open, that the pressure had been as great as one pound to the inch. Then an ordinary seven-by-three door would be held in place by a force of a ton and a half. This same power has been observed to burst the weather-boarding from frame houses, leaving the frame and inner surfaces intact.

The reader will wonder why, in such cases, the windows do not burst out, leaving the walls unhurt. This often occurs. But very great pressure would evidently act just as does powder in a blast: the rock is rent ere the tamping is torn out, though the latter has far less resistive power; while very violent explosives do not even need any tamping in order to utilize their force.

It would seem, then, that a house with open doors and windows has a better chance of weathering a tornado, whether in respect to direct impact of wind, or to the expansive force of air within, than a house which is shut up. Here, again, quite a number of instances can be adduced of houses caught suddenly thus by tornadoes and escaping unhurt, while houses upon either side were demolished.

But that the direct force of the wind on the Louisville occasion was very great is abundantly evidenced. Numerous are the apparently curious freaks that were noticed. A city paper, four days after the storm, contained the following:

“There are hundreds of the most interesting and miraculous incidents connected with the tornado, showing the queerest sort of freaks of the wind. A block of iron casting, weighing over one hundred and fifty pounds, was blown into the second story of the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southern Railway building, near the Union Depot. Nobody knows where it came from, and the nearest building from which it could have come is nearly one hundred yards away. Great sheets of tin roofing were dropped upon Dr. Barry’s farm near Turner’s Station, forty miles from the city, on the Short Line. In the ruins of a house on West Main street a clock was found clinging to the wall. It was a large

ON NINTH STREET, LOUISVILLE.

s

office clock, but no one in the vicinity had ever seen it before, and no one knows where it came from. It was badly broken, but the hands still pointed to 8:20 P.M. A large slab of marble was found in a residence on West Madison street which was never there before. It will weigh over one hundred pounds. At Baird’s drug store on Market above Ninth, two bird cages with the birds were blown in through the skylight. The cages were not injured, and the birds are as full of song as ever. When the building occupied by Brand & Bethel, the tobacco men of Green street, went to pieces, a portion of the frame-work dropped through the roof of a little cottage just east of the factory. It consisted of a heavy timber, to which were mortised four upright pieces of timber. When this came through the cottage the family were sitting around the table in the dining-room, and the four uprights simply pinned them in but did not hurt them in the least. It was one of the most wonderful escapes yet heard of.”

To the unexperienced reader some of these items seem almost apocryphal. But when it is remembered that a tallow candle may be shot through a deal board, or that an ox may be killed by a putty-ball fired from a gun, or that a revolver loaded with water instead of ball is a deadly weapon, it will not seem preposterous that a cage may be hurled through a skylight without seriously discommoding the birds. The writer has seen soft pine shingles driven endwise through oak boards an inch thick by a Missouri tornado. Other similar cases might be given.

The carrying of objects to a distance depends as much on the upward current as the horizontal motion. One of the simplest illustrations of the inevitable spiral course that an upward or downward current pursues may be seen in the ordinary wash-bowl with hole in the bottom. As soon as the plug is drawn and the water commences to

RUINED TOBACCO WAREHOUSES.

pour out, it begins to assume a spiral course; and, long before the water is out, there is a circular hole in the fluid, reaching to the bottom of the basin. This last illustrates also that the air is rarest at the center of the storm. Pouring liquids through a funnel will show the same spiral tendency. So an object borne away by a tornado rises in curves much like those of a hawk or eagle in flying.

Other peculiar feats of the wind were noticed. Some persons caught by the storm, had no especial trouble in keeping on their feet; while others were knocked about severely. One man was killed by having his throat cut by a piece of flying glass. A frame house, standing near the corner of Eighteenth and Maple, was shot full of holes by flying bricks from another house a hundred yards away. A lady standing in the doorway was picked up by the wind and hurled against a telegraph pole at a distance of sixty feet. Another lady and her nephew, at the first shock rushed into the street. They were caught up by the wind and hurled some distance against a fence. They were found unconscious and both badly hurt.

A frame house on Sixteenth street looked as if it had suffered bombardment. Holes were cut in the weather-boarding by planks evidently driven through the air endwise, and pieces several feet long had penetrated and stuck hard and fast.

The building of the Louisville City Railway at Twelfth and Jefferson streets was scooped through the middle, while the ends were left standing. This was, perhaps, due to the explosive force of the air within, which burst out the weaker portions. In a building of any considerable length, the points most easily overthrown by lateral pressure would naturally be found in the middle portions of the longer walls.

At a stone-yard on Walnut, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth, the immense iron “traveler,” with its locomotive—the whole weighing many tons—mounted on an elevated track and used for transferring immense blocks of stone from one side of the yard to the other, was blown into the street and smashed to pieces, while close by, three small brick buildings and one frame were left unharmed. Such cases show how the larger obstacles cause the storm to somewhat overleap the smaller ones, producing the “jumping” motion mentioned before. The narrow path of the storm may be judged from the fact that no small portion of the good people of Louisville were not aware of the ruinous tempest till they read of its deeds in the morning papers.

The total damage done to property is estimated at $2,000,000. Much the heaviest loss was among the great tobacco warehouses.

There has been some discussion as to whether any sort of buildings are safe in a storm: but so long as the most violent tropical cyclones leave many houses unhurt after a protracted gale, there is little fear that the walls of our large buildings may not readily be made massive enough to withstand any atmospheric storms.

The chief damage done to business houses was along Main, Jefferson and Walnut streets; the damage to dwellings being greatest along Broadway. The havoc on all the crossings in the limits of the tornado was remarkable.

It was observed that the buildings on the north sides of the streets parallel to the river suffered most. These more nearly faced the advancing storm, while the open street in front of them gave the wind an increased advantage. This will be better comprehended if the reader will recollect that the tornado of the northern hemisphere rotates in a direction contrary to the hands of a watch. So in the case of one moving eastward or northeastward, the wind on the front edge is blowing directly northward or northwestward. So the current, slightly broken in passing through a block, regains its strength somewhat in slanting across the next street, and assaults the next block with renewed force.

Louisville, though the principal sufferer by the storm, was not the first. The tornado formed some distance to the southwest of the city, and on its devastating march toward Louisville mowed clean a wide swath through the woods, and fell upon the beautiful suburb of Parkland. The Mayor’s two-story brick residence parted with its roof at the first shock. The Mayor’s wife was up-stairs in bed, ill of pneumonia. Her husband and another man seized the bed and carried her into the yard. Scarcely was this accomplished when the full force of the storm prostrated the building.

It may be noticed in this connection, that the most destructive wind is never in the first shock, the parting gust being usually the most damaging. Doubtless this is because the expansion of the atmosphere within the house at the moment the center of calm passes over it weakens the building to such an extent that the rear of the tornado, striking the house from the opposite direction, readily overthrows it. No such peculiarity is observable in a forest. The trees, containing no vast quantities of air, are usually felled by the first stroke, if at all.

The track of the storm through Parkland was one-eighth of a mile wide. From the rate at which it spread, it is clear it could be but short-lived. Within its path, it was more destructive in Parkland than in Louisville. The frame school-house was lifted from its foundation, carried a few feet away, and then torn to fragments. The Daisy Line depot was totally demolished. The Masonic Temple parted with its upper story. Thirteen houses in the village were completely wrecked, and several others more or less damaged. It will be remembered that in Louisville the upper stories suffered most: but here the storm was fresh, and almost every building struck was razed to the ground. The total damage was about $20,000.

VIEW AT JEFFERSONVILLE.

Passing through Louisville and crossing the river, the cyclone struck Jeffersonville, on the Indiana side. Here, upwards of eighty houses were seriously damaged, and quite a number totally destroyed. Two days later, the press gave the loss at $500,000—probably a great exaggeration, as the particulars given did not tally at all with the general statement. Singularly enough, not a life was lost, and only one or two persons were materially injured.

CORNER WALL AND FRONT STREETS, JEFFERSONVILLE.

The damage was mostly to roofs and top-stories, and the people were doubtless indoors and below. This, however, does not account for the deliverance of a number of persons in buildings which were completely destroyed. Possibly some of these may be accounted for by sudden explosions of buildings, such as has been noticed heretofore. The fragments would be much more apt to injure persons just outside than those within. The largely increased percentage of damage done to roofs and upper stories only shows how rapidly the storm was weakening. It could not go very much farther with its devastation. The old Orphans’ Home was wrecked; one old lady injured; a pastor’s house demolished, while two men in the upper story in some mysterious way escaped unhurt. At the foot of Front street, a shanty occupied by a man with wife and three children was lifted bodily and thrown into the river. The family would have been drowned had not some car-works employes rescued them, at the peril of their own lives. A number of guests, and some who came for shelter, were in a house at the corner of First and Spring streets. The shock of the tornado was followed by a hail of bricks and tumbling walls, but no one of the entire assembly was seriously hurt.

WRECK AT JEFFERSONVILLE.

The average American worships no god but Mammon. He may go to church and bow his head to Jehovah, but it is Mammon who keeps his heart. Between his devout amens he is thinking of the main chance. He can be converted and made religious; it is a great deal harder to make him honest. He is willing to sing the praises of the Lord, but he doesn’t like to foot the bills. Amid the sorrow and bereavement of a stricken city, the American was true to himself. Those who had lost house and friends, were asked to pay ten dollars for a carriage in which to follow the corpse to the grave. As about thirty victims of the storm were buried on Sunday, it may be inferred that the carriages in each procession were none too numerous. A sad sight was that of the four laundry girls, and the chamber-maid, all being borne together to their long home. Hardly less impressive was the burial at half-hour intervals of ten members of the I. O. O. F., killed in Falls City Hall. It was a profitable day for undertakers.

Nor did the officers of the Louisville and Southern Railroad forget their interests. They had for some time been desirous of regaining possession of their property controlled by the Monon Route. This they did in the confusion, dismay and darkness, immediately following the storm.

The writer does not wish to do any injustice to his people. Such items present but one side of the American’s character. He is a strange mixture of grasping greed and warm-hearted generosity. The latter is an inborn trait; the former in-drilled. We live in a rushing age. We are no more in a hurry about being rich than we are about a score of other things. Haste is a national characteristic.

Further, our people are brought up with peculiar ideas of success in life. Everything is reduced to a basis of cold cash. A man may be learned, talented, industrious; but all these things are counted for naught if he is not also wealthy. So our young people are brought up to think that money-making is the one business of life; and as a result the business world is full of those who resort to sharp practice and questionable methods, merely because they have been taught to subordinate honor and equity to gain-getting. Yet, the warm sympathies and native generosity of our people are continually coming to the front, in a way that, in view of the other traits, is sometimes amusingly inconsistent. Men who will haggle almost

LOUISVILLE TORNADO—CORNER TENTH AND MAIN STREETS.

about the price of a pin, or make their living by wild or fraudulent speculation; nay, even professional gamblers, or worse characters, are prompt in responding to the wail of a distressed city or state. After all, we are brethren. Yet, our good and bad qualities are so thoroughly mingled that we must continually rob Peter to pay Paul.

The American has another prominent trait—independence. He does not accept aid, as such, when he feels he can do without it: nor does he wait for demands of help, when he hears of great misfortunes that have befallen his fellow countrymen. Leigh Hunt once asked a very ragged and forlorn Irishman, “Why don’t you ask for alms?” “Alms, is it? Sure and isn’t it begging I am with every bone of my body?” The average American is generally quick to recognize a case that speaks for itself. To Louisville, in the hour of her calamity, came tenders of help from many quarters, and these offers would have been greatly multiplied, had not the citizens declined the proffered assistance. They felt that the resources of the city were equal to the necessity. They were grateful, but self-reliant.

CHAPTER VII.

OTHER TORNADOES.

“From the dark earth impervious vapors rise, Increase the darkness and involve the skies. At once the rushing winds, with roaring sound, Burst from th’ Æolian caves and rend the ground; With equal rage their airy quarrel try, And win by turns the kingdom of the sky. But with a thicker night black Auster shrouds The heavens, and drives on heaps the rolling clouds, From whose dark womb a rattling tempest pours, Which the cold north congeals to haily showers. From pole to pole the thunder roars aloud, And broken lightnings flash from every cloud. Now smokes with showers the misty mountain ground, And floated fields lie undistinguished ’round. Where late was dust, now rapid torrents play— Rush through the mounds, and bear the dams away. Old limbs of trees, from crackling forests torn, Are whirled in air, and on the winds are borne.”

casual glance at the papers during the last days of March would have satisfied any one that the storm which passed over the country was anything but insignificant. So far, we have given only the story of a single neighborhood; while a score of others suffered more or less. A brief account of some of these will be of interest, and will give us a far better idea of the character of great storms and tornadoes.

The farthest point west touched by a tornado on that memorable day was a strip near the line between Missouri and Kansas, some fifty or sixty miles south of Kansas City. Here, a small tornado made its appearance about five o’clock in the afternoon, demolishing some fences and

LOOKING WEST FROM TENTH AND MAIN, LOUISVILLE.

barns, and breaking down a few trees: but, so far as known, no one was hurt. Meanwhile, the main storm had passed eastward much earlier in the afternoon.

Shortly after the storm reached St. Louis, violent cyclonic movements were excited in southeast Missouri, upwards of a hundred miles away. At 3 P.M. the little town of Bloomsdale was struck, and five houses were instantly prostrated. The occupants of four of them were, at the time, in the Catholic church, and the family who occupied the fifth escaped unhurt. Two sides of their house were blown away; while one side was blown inward, and would have crushed them but for chairs and tables which sustained its weight. The church suffered the loss of its steeple, and was otherwise damaged. A stable containing seven horses was blown away, and not one of the horses was injured.

A cloud gathered, and a cyclone seemed to form at, or over, Charleston. It followed the Cairo branch of the Iron Mountain Road eastward. Four miles from Charleston it struck the flag-station known as Hough’s, having on the way demolished one or two farm-houses, and made havoc of the forest. The little hamlet of Hough’s was razed from the earth, not a house being left intact. One dwelling was blown two hundred feet across the railway track and smashed. The owner, his wife and son were killed, and another son was badly injured. The three-year-old baby was taken up unharmed. Another family lived near by in a log house. It was blown away, and they were left sitting on the floor, wondering.

Such a case as this is by no means rare. It is one of the many freaks of the wind not easily understood. In the great cyclone of forty or fifty miles in diameter, the wind comes in gusts or waves, and such effects might be readily understood; but in the case of the tornado, of at most but a few Hundred yards in diameter, its passage is too rapid for those in its path to learn definitely whether it be uniform or not.

Other peculiar feats were noticed at Hough’s. A girl seventeen years old was blown one hundred and fifty yards into a pond, but was rescued in time to save her from drowning; and it is said that a man and woman were blown across a sixty-acre wheat field, and picked up insensible. The further statement that the bark was peeled clean from the trees, though seemingly most incredible of all, is very probably true; for the writer has a vivid recollection of precisely the same phenomenon on the theater of the Marshfield cyclone in southwest Missouri. In that instance the bark was peeled from hundreds of hickory saplings, almost from the roots to their topmost twigs. This effect was inconceivable from any cause that could be thought of. It was done by missiles flying through the air, or the trees were bent over and threshed against the ground, or there was some unknown force prevalent in the storm, similar, perhaps, to that which shatters the bark or body of a thunder-smitten oak. To an observer on the ground the first two suppositions seemed to be excluded. Is this peculiar power of the tornado to be sought, like that of Keely’s Motor, in some occult force?

From Hough’s Station the tornado may have bounded above the tree-tops and descended again a few miles further on at Bird’s Point, opposite to Cairo, Illinois. Anyhow, a tornado struck the former place at 4:35 P.M. It was first seen above the trees, it showed a yellowish cast, and had the usual funnel shape. About three hundred yards from the town it came to the ground and commenced its work of destruction. Eight or ten houses were blown to pieces, or badly damaged; a roof was carried two hundred feet into the air; a yearling calf was thrown forty

VIEW IN THE RESIDENCE DISTRICT, LOUISVILLE.

feet into a big ditch filled with, water, and—nobody was hurt.

At Cape Girardeau, on the Mississippi, fifty miles above Bird’s Point, there was a tremendous hail, which broke thousands of windows, and a gale lasting far into the night, with damage to timber, fences, and buildings.

Illinois suffered far worse than Missouri. The southern part of the state fared badly; and the further south, the worse. The storm which struck St. Louis at 3 P.M., was, a few minutes later, giving the Illinois towns on the other side a lively experience. Edwardsville, O’Fallon and Centerville received a heavy gale. At Coulterville, buildings, barns, and orchards suffered severely, and several persons were injured. Sparta was struck about 3:15 P.M. From the second story of the public school building, observers watched the approach of the storm. Two black clouds from opposite quarters of the heavens came together, as by attraction, and mingled with a rotary motion. The tornado passed within a mile of the town on the northeast, and mowed a swath through the heavy timber. No such rain, hail and wind, mingled with fire, had ever been seen before. Many barns were destroyed; several houses were blown to pieces; three or four persons were seriously hurt. A traveling man was whisked out of his buggy by the wind, carried some distance, and sustained severe injuries; the horses were thrown down, and the buggy was completely wrecked.

At Grand Tower, on the Mississippi, forty miles above Cape Girardeau, there was a terrific tornado at 4:30 P.M. It came from the west, and swept houses, trees, trains—everything, in its course. Its track is described as one of “extreme desolation.” Four or five persons, at least, were killed, and as many injured. Twenty-seven dwelling-houses were completely demolished, and a great many others unroofed, or otherwise damaged.

At Murphysboro, Illinois, many windows were broken by the great hail; while there came an unverified report of fifteen or more persons killed about Shiloh, and to the north of Campbell Hill. South of Murphysboro, several houses were blown down; two children were killed.

At Centralia, two and one-fourth inches of rain fell in twenty minutes, changing later into snow. Farm buildings west of town suffered considerable damage.

At Carbondale, the dreaded funnel appeared, and two blocks of houses were unroofed.

Five miles southwest of Xenia, many out-buildings were blown down and several houses destroyed. A school-house on the prairie was blown away, and one of the sills carried nearly a quarter of a mile.

In the southern part of Union county, seven miles southwest of Anna, a tornado swept a track about half a mile wide and four miles long, over the richest farms, destroying stock, orchards, forests and houses. One or two persons were fatally hurt. At Mt. Pleasant, twelve miles east of Anna, there was extensive destruction of property.

At Braidwood, a number of houses and out-buildings were blown away; trees were torn up, several persons severely injured, and two or three children are said to have “disappeared.” The writer remembers an instance that occurred some years ago, when a fourteen-year-old boy was carried five miles and dropped into a stream: but such a case does not occur in this country once in many years. One of the freaks told of the wind at Braidwood is, that it rolled a man in the road and whisked a watch out of his pocket. It does not appear that any funnel-shaped cloud was seen here.

At Cairo, out of a fleet of shanty-boats, thirteen were destroyed, and an old cripple was drowned.

The storm struck Nashville (Ill.) at 4 P.M. The rain,

RUINED DWELLINGS.

changing to furious hail, fell so fast that one could scarcely see ten feet. The wind blew with terrific force. The Prohibition Tabernacle and a two-story brick cooper shop went down. Beginning six miles southeast on Little Prairie, the damage was fearful, and ranged through a sweep, to the northeast, of twenty miles. Not less than thirty houses were destroyed, and twice that number badly damaged. Of numerous casualties, one or two will illustrate the force of the wind at this place: One family of seven were sitting in their house as the storm drew near. Two of the little girls becoming frightened, ran out, when the wind caught them up, carried them across a field a quarter of a mile wide, and dropped them uninjured, save from violent pelting of the hail. As the remaining members of the family were in the act of forsaking the house, it fell, and all were more or less hurt.

This case would seem to indicate a lack of uniformity in the strength of the wind; it being powerful enough at one point to carry away children, while the house, only a few feet away at most, was still standing. One or two other cases of persons being carried a considerable distance were reported from Nashville.

All such instances show the powerful upward current of the tornado; for wind of greater horizontal velocity is often observed, which produces no such effects. To the uplifting force must be in some degree attributed the fact that in many cases only roofs or upper stories are damaged. This same force is responsible for not a few showers of objects that do not pertain to the upper air: such as the occasionally reported showers of fish and frogs.

A tornado swept up Bay Bottom in Pope county, accompanied by “rain and hail in floods and volleys.” A partial report shows a school-house dashed against a bluff a hundred feet away and reduced to kindling-wood. A number of residences were destroyed, and several persons were killed.

In all the cases hitherto noted, the tornado, when seen, is reported as about one-eighth of a mile wide. The next one on the list, while powerful, is much smaller.

The southwest part of Olney was devastated by a cyclone at 5:35 P.M. Its track was about a hundred yards wide and a mile long. It shattered or destroyed the homes of, perhaps, five hundred people. Strange to relate, only two or three persons were badly hurt. John Bourrell was voted the wisest man. His house was blown to atoms; but he and his wife were safe in their “cyclone cellar,” and absorbing much comfort from a $600 cyclone policy on their building.

But the climax of ruin for Illinois was reached at Metropolis, a town of 4,000 people, situated on the Ohio River, thirty-eight miles above Cairo, and eleven miles below Paducah. A greenish tinge of the approaching cloud was the only unusual portent. “Suddenly there came from the southwest a rolling, apparently born of the union of two clouds, which met in mid-air, and in a moment swooped down into the Ohio river, now at flood-tide, and on lifting, there followed it a column of water, estimated all the way from fifty to two hundred feet in height.” This curious phenomenon swept onward, striking the river front like the hammer of a Cyclop. In an instant, down went a large number of buildings, including principal business houses, and the finest residences of the city. A few persons were seriously hurt, and two or three were killed. Of course, there were wonderful escapes. One gentleman had a numerous array of little children; the house was swept from over the family, and not a soul was hurt. In the country the devastation was even more appalling. Residences, out-buildings, churches, even grave-stones were wiped from the face of the earth.

A relief committee was organized. In their dispatch of two days later, addressed to the St. Louis Republic newspaper, and praying for help, they say: “Hundreds of homes, the result of a life of labor, have been swept away in less time than it takes to record it. All kinds of property have been destroyed. The damage is estimated at over $200,000.”

PATH OF TORNADO—OLNEY, ILL.

Such is a partial list of the more important casualties of the great storm. Space is lacking to give detail to all the minor visitations and incidents. Such storms only attract the attention of the public when some thickly-settled region is visited. Numerous hamlets and small towns might be named, of which nothing but the bare fact that a tornado passed through is recorded. The rural districts are, of course, far more frequently swept; but the narrowness and short path of the tornado preclude its doing much damage among them.

Now, we have noticed a dozen different localities, all experiencing much the same sort of storms. The unthinking person might deem all this devastation the work of a single storm. Such is the case: but a distinction must be made between the storm itself, and the tornadoes produced by it. That there were various tornadoes entirely distinct, or independent of each other, the reader may clearly perceive, by examining the foregoing pages. It will be noticed that in several cases the tornado was seen to form near the spot devastated; and further may be noted the hours at which the whirlwinds appeared. For instance, the one which passed near Shawneetown, Missouri, came later than most of those in Illinois; yet all moved toward the northeast. A brief review of the main storm will be of interest, and show how the various tornadoes were produced.

It has already been stated that the storm originated somewhere about the southwest corner of Wyoming. Here, as early as Wednesday morning, the Signal Service observed an area of very low barometer. It moved rapidly eastward, with a trend toward the south, passing in the vicinity of Denver, Kansas City, and St. Louis, thence northeast through the central part of Indiana to Lake Erie. The central path of the storm was a violent and progressive movement of the air, doing in its passage trifling damage in some localities. The cyclonic movements which did the principal mischief, were all to the south of the storm center, and were local and violent motions of the air about an axis, while yet there was a progressive movement from southwest to northeast.

Now, these lesser whirlwinds are produced in exactly the same way as the great cyclones of many miles in diameter, which we have already seen do not originate on land often, because of the irregularities of surface that hinder. But the local currents of wind, in meeting, produce the whirling motion. Compare with the moving of a current of water. Every river forms eddies along the bank, which move a short distance down and toward the main current, and then break up. Consider the great area of low barometer moving eastward, and it will be seen that the local tornadoes, suddenly forming and moving but a few miles, are simply eddies on its edge. It is easy to watch these produced on a small scale; for nature’s principles are the same in small and great: when we have mastered the atom, we have mastered the whole object.

SCENE AT OLNEY, ILL.

Let one observe a great fire in a forest or prairie. On the outskirts of newly burned areas, when the air has been rarefied by heat, may be seen sudden and violent movements about a point, as though there was a spirit in the wind. In a moment it has lifted the ashes and scorched

WHIRLWIND FROM BURNT PRAIRIE.

stalks, and whatever light matters were in its way, and circling, perhaps, wider and stronger for a time, has borne them onward and upward toward the heavens, where at length its force was dissipated, and it mingled with the surrounding air. Similar movements were excited along the southern limits of the storm area, which we are describing; and hence, not one cyclone, but more properly speaking, a multitude of little cyclones—tornadoes independent of each other, but dependent on the main current, or great eastward traveling storm center—swept through points in Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky; all rushing toward the line of the lowest barometrical depression, the actual and advancing storm center. Not since the Signal Service had been established had the barometer at St. Louis stood so low as 28.46, which, reduced to sea-level, means 29.08. Toward this region of rarefied air—this partial vacuum—the cyclonic movements from the south rushed with inconceivable fury, and as the nucleus of the storm was rapidly moving eastward, the cyclonic movements were turned from a north to a northeast course. All these varied movements simply result from the effort of a disturbed atmosphere to restore an equilibrium.

The illustration of the fire used above also affords a good example of the way rotation may result from rising air. Any one who has watched a great fire in calm weather knows that sparks and smoke do not rise straight up, but in spirals and whirls, the warmer centers rising faster, just as the middle of a stream flows faster than the edge.

But the powerful winds and the damage done were not all the work of the marginal whirlwinds. A storm center moving so rapidly must necessarily have carried a steady high wind. Leaving Wyoming, by Wednesday evening the storm was in the middle of Colorado; on Wednesday night, it moved well into Kansas; on Thursday, it crossed States of Missouri and Illinois, and Thursday night it was passing over Indiana.

The climax of energy was apparently not attained until the storm reached Illinois. In Missouri, more or less damage was done to fences and buildings, from Sedalia to St. Louis. At the former place, a roof or two was blown off, and the teachers in one of the schools were so alarmed that they dismissed the children. Jefferson City, sixty miles further on, made a record of damaged roofs and shattered windows. At St. Louis, there was a deluge of rain at three o’clock in the afternoon, lasting a half hour; and the wind blew with fury during the evening and greater part of the night. It drove in and smashed some plate-glass windows, blew off an occasional roof, and from the top of the corner of St. Patrick’s School, hurled to the sidewalk a stone weighing, probably, four hundred pounds.

The story of the Louisville tornado serves to well illustrate all the peculiar features of the local whirlwinds produced by great storms. They seldom travel more than thirty miles; usually much less. Sometimes as large as two miles in diameter, they seldom exceed five hundred yards; and one of but fifty yards in diameter may be powerful enough to wreck a house.

Often it is possible to trace the path of a tornado through the forest a century or more after its passage; for the reason that trees once destroyed are usually replaced by different varieties. But the tornado usually originates in the open country, though after its formation it may sweep through heavy timber.

TORNADO FOLLOWED BY RAIN STORM.

So far as loss of life is concerned, the tornado is much more to be feared than lightning. About two thousand people have been killed in this country within ten years by these rotary storms. Yet, all over the land, people put up rods that are expensive, and often worse than useless, as a precaution against lightning, when a small “cyclone cellar” could be dug that would be far more useful, and less expensive. While intense electrical displays accompany the tornado, there is no authentic record of lightning striking during one; and as will be seen in another place, the amount of electricity present seems to be rather an effect than a cause: for rapid motion of gases may be made to produce powerful electric currents.

While the tornado is justly feared in this country, yet, as a destructive agent, it is far surpassed by a number of

Instantaneous View of a Tornado.

others whose ravages are less dreaded. It would be comparatively easy to show, we think, that more persons have been killed in one way or another by railways in ten years past than by tornadoes.

The one that has been so carefully examined must not be considered as the worst our country has known. An examination of records of the past century will show a number that were more destructive to life and property. Doubtless, an account of some of these would interest the reader. Place is given to a few.

The tornado has been observed, to some extent, in this country for more than a century: but only when our central states were well peopled did it attract very great attention. It is not common in the eastern states, and but one has ever been recorded west of Dodge City, Kansas. It is not unknown in Europe, though far less common than with us, having been noticed a few times in France. In general, it is so rare that a tornado that passed through Monville in 1845 attracted such attention as to be noticed in French text-books on physics. To the American, there is nothing unusual in the conduct of this storm.

Perhaps the earliest detail of a storm of this sort among us is that of a double one in South Carolina, on the afternoon of May 2, 1761:

“The tornado crossed the Ashley River and swooped down upon the shipping at Rebellion Wharf with such fury as to threaten the destruction of the entire fleet. From the city, it was seen coming at first rapidly toward Wappo Creek, like a column of smoke, with a very irregular and tumultuous movement. The quantity of vapor which composed this column, and its prodigious velocity, produced such intense commotion that it agitated Ashley River to its depths and left the channel bare. The ebb and flow made the shipping float off to a great distance. When it struck the river, it made a noise like continuous thunder; its diameter, at that moment, was estimated at fifteen hundred feet, and its height, as seen at Charleston,

TORNADO AT MONVILLE.

at twenty-five degrees. It was met at White Point by another whirlwind, which descended Cooper River, but was not equal to the first. When they came together, the commotion in the air was much greater still; the foam and the vapor seemed to be thrown to the height of forty degrees, while the clouds that hurried from all directions toward that point seemed to rush thither and whirl about at one and the same time, with incredible velocity. The meteor then darted on the shipping in the roadstead, and reached them in three minutes, although the distance was nearly six miles. Out of forty-five vessels, five were sunk on the spot; the state ship, Dolphin, and eleven others were dismasted. The damage, estimated at more than £200,000, was done in a moment, and even the vessels that sank were swallowed up so rapidly that the people who were below had scarcely time to scramble up on deck. The whirlwind of Cooper River changed the course of the one that came from Wappo Creek, which, had it not been for that, would, proceeding in the same direction, have swept away the city of Charleston before it like so much straw.

“This terrible column was first perceived about noon, at more than fifty miles southwest of the roads. It destroyed everything in its way, making a complete avenue when it passed through the woods. The loss of the five ships was so sudden that it is not known whether it was the weight of the column of wind, or the mass of water driven upon them that made them go down.”

The tornado occasionally originates at sea and whirls up a heavy column of water for a few feet, which, meeting the dark funnel from above, presents the appearance of a pillar of water reaching the clouds. Not a few ignorant people once imagined that all rain originated from the water thus sucked up. These columns, or “water-spouts,” are generally a few feet in diameter, and may sometimes be broken by firing a cannon-ball through them. They are not ordinarily considered dangerous: but there are some exceptions, and it is not improbable that many a ship that left port, never to be heard of again, has been overwhelmed by some gigantic water-spout.

Of the most destructive tornadoes in the United States, Mississippi records the two leading ones. The first came on May 7, 1840, and Natchez was the principal sufferer, though other portions of Adams county were swept. The day began warm and cloudy, with the wind south, veering to east. At 2:15 P.M., the sky became a lurid yellow; the storm striking the river six or seven miles below the city, did not reach it until 2 P.M. The rush of the wind did not last five minutes, and the destructive blast only a few seconds. Houses were burst outward; three hundred and seventeen persons were killed in the city and on the river. Sheet tin was carried twenty miles, and windows thirty miles. One hundred and nine persons were badly injured, and property to the value of $1,260,000 destroyed. Most of the deaths resulted from drowning; two steamers and sixty flatboats were sunk, while the city was flooded with nine inches of rain. Enormous hail-stones fell. A desk fastened with three locks, was blown open by the explosive force of the expanding air within. Another curious freak of this expansive power occurred in a tornado at New Brunswick. A towel hanging on the wall was found apparently blown nearly through it. The expanding air had driven the towel in a large crevice which opened in the wall behind it; and the crevice closed as the storm passed on, holding the towel to puzzle the neighborhood.

The next great tornado visited Natchez, June 16, 1842, and killed five hundred people.

Next to these, in destruction of life, is the famous

WATER-SPOUT AT SEA.

Marshfield tornado of April, 1880, in which one hundred and one persons were killed, and six hundred injured. The town of Marshfield was literally wiped off the earth. This tornado is notable for its unusually wide path, and the large area traversed. Four counties were swept; and though the country was sparsely settled and comparatively little improved, yet the damage to property was estimated at more than $1,000,000. Gen. Greely, of the Signal Service, pronounces it one of the most remarkable in the history of the United States. It formed at the junction of two streams, a few miles southwest of Marshfield; and, like the South Carolina tornado of 1761, owed its immense power to the union of two lesser storms that had traveled down the valleys of the respective streams. Such a tornado passing over a great city would equal the earthquake in disastrous effects. Perhaps a better idea of its power may be gathered from a comparison with the New Haven storm of 1878, which killed but thirty-four people and destroyed $2,000,000 worth of property—as much as the recent storm at Louisville. The remarkable feature about every tornado—the very small destruction of life—may be better understood when it is stated that, excluding the two Natchez tornadoes, where the number of houses wrecked is not known, and the Louisville storm, the twenty most destructive tornadoes in the United States have killed six hundred and thirteen people, and destroyed over three thousand houses. This brings us to the peculiar fact that but one person is killed in every five houses. As the average house may be counted as containing four persons, it appears that the chances that any single individual in a wrecked house will not be killed, are nineteen to one. While the mathematical calculation may be encouraging, yet few will care to take the risk of a tornado, even though the odds be vastly in their favor. People place little dependence in arithmetic as a life preserver. The recent Louisville storm presents a high average, as about fifty of the victims were taken from a single building. The lowest average is shown by the tornado that struck Camden, New Jersey, August 3d, 1885, when five hundred houses were destroyed, and but six persons killed: one for every eighty-three houses. In general, there seems to be a prevalence of a one to ten rate: but a storm in a city usually vastly increases the death rate by reason of the number of brick houses, which, when wrecked, fall much more compactly than frame buildings.

MINNESOTA TORNADO, FORMING LATERAL SPURS.

The greatest destruction of property has been in Ohio, where the aggregate now amounts to about $9,000,000. Next is Minnesota with $7,000,000, and Missouri and Mississippi with about $4,000,000 each. Missouri is first in respect to loss of life, and Mississippi next. The months most liable to tornadoes are May, April, June, and July, in order; and the time of day the hottest; that is, from 3 to 5 P.M.

These data suffice to show the peculiar acts of the tornado in our land. There is one case of a great storm attended by tornadoes on its southeast border, that is even more noteworthy than the great one so minutely detailed in the preceding pages. A storm center passing over a wider region, on February 9, 1884, produced, after ten o’clock that day, over sixty tornadoes in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, and North Carolina. Over ten thousand buildings were destroyed, eight hundred people killed, and twenty-five hundred wounded. The damage done by any single one was small, while the aggregate was fearful.

The tornado is occasionally seen in Europe: but in the few instances recorded, it has been much smaller, and moved much slower than the same sort of storm in America, though quite as powerful within the territory traversed. One that was very formidable, was observed near Boulogne, in 1822. It moved about irregularly for an hour, tearing holes in the ground, snapping off trees, and twisting down houses; yet, it was not twenty-five feet in diameter. Another one in 1872, swept through a little town in Italy, and was so powerful as to twist iron balcony railings together like so many skeins of thread. Several persons were killed.

In some portions of the Sahara and of Arabia, very numerous small whirlwinds accompany desert storms, whirling up the fine sand in dense columns, presenting the appearance of clouds in a region where clouds are unknown. So many writhing columns, swaying like dancing serpents, present a peculiarly terrifying aspect to the superstitious Arab, who has only too good reason to fear them. Strange tales of their destructiveness are rife. It is said that the army of Cambyses was overwhelmed by one of these desert storms. This story must, however, be taken “with a grain of salt.” But there is no doubt that a sand storm is quite as dangerous as a Dakota blizzard.

SAND SPOUTS IN THE DESERT.

In tropical regions the tornado or “land-spout,” as many Europeans call it, gives place to the great cyclone. Still, it appears occasionally. One which swept the suburbs of Calcutta, in 1838, was but a few yards in diameter; but in its march of sixteen miles, it killed two hundred and fifteen persons, wounded two hundred and thirty-three, and destroyed one thousand two hundred and forty-five houses: thus displaying quite as great power as any tornado observed in our own land. The speed of rotation was so great that a bamboo cane was driven through a mud wall five feet thick, faced on both sides with brick; as great penetrative power as is usually given to a six-pound cannon-ball.

CHAPTER VIII.

TROPICAL CYCLONES.

“The Storm is on his way! With a lightning sword and a thunder shout, And his robe on the night-wind floating out, The Storm is on his way!

The Storm is on his way! He smites, and the death-swept valleys groan, The ocean writhes, and the forests moan,— The Storm is on his way!”

HE preceding pages show only the destructive power of the small tornadoes of our land. We are fortunate in that the great cyclone is, comparatively, a rare visitor among us. A moment’s consideration of this ravager, as he appears in the tropics, will show how trifling are the storms that have swept over our own land. A few examples will convince the most skeptical.

Of the great cyclones which have traversed our country in recent times, we may mention the hurricane of October 21-24, 1878. Gen. Greeley says: “It first damaged buildings and sank vessels at Havana. It entered the United States near Wilmington, N. C., and moving due north, passed over Washington and eastern Pennsylvania, after which it curved eastward, and crossing New England, left the coast near Portland, Maine. In Philadelphia, over seven hundred substantial buildings were totally destroyed, or seriously damaged, bridges injured, twenty-two vessels sunk, several persons injured, and eight killed, entailing a loss variously estimated from one to two millions of dollars. Other loss of life and great damage by freshets and winds occurred elsewhere in Pennsylvania. A large number of steamers, ships and coasting vessels were dismantled, wrecked or sunk along the New Jersey, Virginia and North Carolina coasts, entailing loss of life and enormous pecuniary damage. The wind reached seventy-two miles per hour at Philadelphia, and eighty-eight along the coast.” Another cyclone the next year ruined one hundred large vessels and two hundred yachts and smacks. Another, in 1881, destroyed four hundred persons along the Carolina coasts, and damaged property to the extent of $1,600,000.

But these are exceeded by the great Nova Scotia cyclone of 1873. The property damage alone is estimated at nearly $5,000,000. The Signal Service report says that “one thousand and thirty-two ships, of which four hundred and thirty-five were small fishing schooners, are known to have been destroyed during the 24th and 25th of August, in the neighborhood of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Atlantic shores of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and New Foundland. On the other hand, over one hundred and ninety vessels were destroyed by this hurricane in its passage over the ocean before it reached Nova Scotia, making a grand total of at least one thousand two hundred and twenty-three vessels destroyed within a few days by its power. Two hundred and twenty-three lives are definitely reported to be lost, and the moderate estimate of the numerous cases in which whole crews have been lost swells this number to nearly five hundred; and if to this is added the loss of life on land, and the loss in the earlier history of the cyclone, the grand total amounts to at least six hundred lives.”

Had the famed Shah Jehan ever visited the West Indies, it is probable that he might have pronounced many of its lovely islets fit rivals for that beautiful creation of his fancy, which bore above the gateway:

“If there be Paradise upon the earth, This it is, this it is, this it is.”

Among the loveliest groups are the beautiful Virgin Isles, and loveliest of these is the famed island of St. Thomas. A lofty mountain girdles the island, leaving an opening between two hills into a wide oval harbor, while the pretty little town lies around the inner side of the port, sloping up the mountain behind, the queen of a vast natural amphitheater. Such a fine harbor has rendered St. Thomas almost the mistress of West Indian commerce; and one would not suspect, in looking at the sunny slopes and green-clad ranges around the azure harbor, that in this region is the birthplace of the Storm King. Yet, not a spot on earth has been more frequently visited by great cyclones.

One of the most notable of its visitations during this century occurred August 2, 1837. The barometer fell rapidly during the forenoon, and by noon the storm began. In a short time it increased to a tremendous gale. At about three o’clock, the wind suddenly ceased. In a few moments it blew from the other direction, roaring and rolling black clouds before it, raising up immense sea-waves, covering the island with intense gloom. Six hours it blew, ever increasing. Tiles and slates whizzed through the air, to be shattered on the rocks or driven into timbers: great trees were whirled about, often dashing away houses that seemed about to weather the storm, while the terrible roar of the wind was such that even the crash of the thunder could hardly be distinguished. One authority tells us that the great guns at the fort were blown through the air and tossed about the beach like chaff! This must be taken with allowance. It is more probable that the great guns on the beach were washed up from the wrecks of some old pirate vessels or ships of war.

About 10 P.M. there was a slight cessation of the storm, and the people were congratulating themselves that the worst was over, when there came a violent earthquake, which laid in ruins almost everything that was left. The wreck took fire in two or three places: at once the hurricane began with renewed vigor: and ere the wretched people had fully comprehended the magnitude of the calamity, the whole ruined town was a sea of flame. Buffeted by the wind, blinded by the smoke and the pelting spray whirled up from the raging sea, the people ran for the slopes of the hills: the light of the funeral pyre of their hopes and labors rendering the gloom more horrible, and seeming to rival the gleams of Tartarus.

Day broke at last. The storm was gone. The earthquake staggered the miserable folk no longer. The warm and brilliant sun of the West Indies smiled upon the scene. “The whole country round was strewn with large trees, uprooted or snapped off, and all plantations were destroyed. In the town the fire was dying out, and it was only here and there that the ruins were still smoking. The hurricane had swept away nearly all the wooden houses; those which had been lightly placed upon beams, just above the soil, being carried off as they stood, while the larger ones, which had resisted the hurricane, were overturned in an instant by the earthquake. The whole town was strewn with wrecks that told of the violence of the catastrophe. The port, so gay and animated the day before, was dreary and deserted, a few masts here and there emerging from the water: while all along the shore, and even upon the slope of the hills, were scattered wreckage and corpses of sailors.”

While we have noticed only the destruction wrought at

CYCLONE, FIRE AND EARTHQUAKE AT ST. THOMAS.

St. Thomas, this storm was general throughout the Antilles. In the Bahamas, it was less violent, they lying on the outskirts of the storm. Millions of dollars worth of property—merchandise, vegetation, houses, and vessels—were destroyed, and thousands of lives lost.

Thirty years later, St. Thomas again suffered from the combined forces of storm and earthquake; and the damage was greater, because the earthquake, with its sea-wave, came a few days after the storm, as the work of restoration was well under way, and so involved a second prostration of the resources of the people. Moreover, the town had grown considerably in thirty years, and there was much more valuable property to damage. Fifteen large steamers and many smaller vessels were driven on the shore by the storm: while the sea-wave, a few days later, found the port again filled with vessels of different nations. It overleaped the sentinel hills at the entrance of the bay, and swept with tremendous force upon the city, drowning with its terrible roar, the despairing cry of the sailors; then suddenly retired with the wreck of the city to its dark abyss. The batteries of heavy guns at the entrance of the harbor were swept away. A few injured vessels wallowed on the waves, but most had been swallowed up and left no trace behind.

While there is always deep sympathy for those who suffer such calamities, yet it must remain of the type bestowed upon sufferers in Arctic expeditions. The character of the climate is well known, and the whole matter resolves itself into a question of the risk one is willing to run. There is no blind chance in control of these movements. The cyclone frequents only certain regions, and its habit and power is understood. While we pity the sufferers, we can not assert that the scourge is mysterious or unaccountable, any more than we find mystery in the fact of eternal snow in the Polar world.

“DROWNING, WITH ITS TERRIBLE ROAR, THE DESPAIRING CRY OF THE SAILORS.”

But there have been storms in the West Indies far more destructive than either of these, or both together. One of the most noted of the century is the famous Barbadoes storm of 1831, which an eye-witness thus describes:

“On the morning of the 10th of August, the sun arose without a cloud; at 10 A.M. a breeze that had been blowing, died away; towards 2 P.M. the heat became oppressive; at 5 P.M. thick clouds appeared in the north, rain fell, and was succeeded by a sudden stillness and a dismal blackness all around except towards the zenith, where there was an obscure circle of imperfect light. Till 10:30 P.M., however, there was no sign of change; then lightning appeared in the north, and very unusual fluctuations of the thermometer were observed. All this time the storm was only approaching.

“After midnight the continued flashing of the lightning was awfully grand, and a gale blew fiercely from the north and northeast, but at 1 A.M., on the 11th of August, the tempestuous rage of the wind increased as the storm suddenly shifted and burst from the northwest and immediate points. The upper regions were illuminated by incessant lightning, but the quivering sheet of blaze was surpassed in brilliancy by the darts of electric fire which exploded in every direction. At a little after 2 A.M. the astounding roar of the hurricane can not be described by language.

“About three o’clock the wind abated and the lightning ceased for a few moments at a time, when the blackness in which the town was enveloped was inexpressibly awful. Fiery meteors were presently seen falling from the heavens; one in particular of a globular form and a deep-red hue, was observed by the writer to descend perpendicularly from a vast height. On approaching the earth it assumed a dazzling whiteness and an elongated form, and on reaching the ground splashed around in the same manner as melted metal would have done, and was instantly extinct.” (It is evident that the coincidence on this occasion with the day on which the earth is known to pass through the August belt of meteors, rendered the effect of this great storm at Barbadoes more striking. It is not safe to assert that there was any relation between the phenomena.) “A few minutes after, the deafening noise of the wind sank to a solemn murmur, or rather a distant roar; and the lightning which from midnight had flashed and darted forkedly with but few momentary intermissions, now for nearly half a minute played frightfully between the clouds and the earth with novel and surprising action. The vast body of vapor appeared to touch the houses, and issued downward flaming blazes, which were nimbly returned from the earth upward.

“The moment after this singular alteration of lightning the hurricane again burst forth from the western points with violence prodigious beyond description, hurling before it thousands of missiles, the fragments of every unsheltered structure of human art. The strongest houses were caused to vibrate from their foundations, and the surface of the very earth trembled as the destroyer raged over it. No thunder was at any time distinctly heard. The horrible roar and yelling of the wind; the noise of the ocean, whose frightful waves threatened the town with the destruction of all that the other elements might spare; the clattering of tiles, the falling of floors, and walls, and the combination of a thousand other sounds, formed a hideous and appalling din.

“About 5 A.M. the storm abated; at six o’clock the wind was at south, at seven o’clock, southeast, at eight o’clock, east-southeast; and at nine o’clock, the weather was clear.

“The view from the summit of the cathedral tower, a few hours later, was frightfully grand. The whole face of the country was laid waste; no sign of vegetation was apparent, except here and there small patches of sickly green. The surface of the ground appeared as if fire had run through the land, scorching and burning up the productions of the earth. The few remaining trees, stripped of their boughs and foliage, wore a cold and wintry aspect; and the numerous seats in the environs of Bridgetown, formerly concealed among thick groves, were now exposed and in ruins.”

One peculiarity noticeable, was that in some places trees, timbers, and many other objects, presented a scorched appearance, as though subjected to intense heat. The reason of this is not clear, as unusual heat was not perceptible after the beginning of the storm by any one. It may be that this was produced by unusual quantities of electricity escaping through imperfect conductors, for we learn, from other phenomena, that during this storm there was an unusual state of electrical tension in the atmosphere. Sparks occasionally leaped from the heads of persons out of doors. Vast numbers of trees that were not blown down, speedily died: and it has been suggested that an excess of electricity killed them.

The total loss in this storm is not definitely known. Some further idea of its fearful violence may be gathered from the fact that at the north end of Barbadoes, the waves broke over a cliff seventy feet high, and the saltwater spray was carried inland in such quantities as to kill all the fresh-water fish in ponds far in the interior. As for the tremendous roar of the wind, the commanding officer of the thirty-sixth regiment sought protection by getting under the arch of a lower window outside his house. He did not hear the roof and upper story of the house fall, and only found it out by the dust caused by the fall.

Far more destructive was the great hurricane of 1780.

HURRICANE IN THE TROPICS.

The French and English were at war. Admiral George Rodney was in the West Indies with an English fleet in several divisions. The French had sent a convoy of five thousand troops to Martinique. The storm was of immense width, extending from Trinidad, on the extreme southwest, to Antigua. The evening of October 9th was red and lowering. By ten o’clock next morning, the wind was high, and by one o’clock, vessels in the harbors were dragging their anchors. The water was driven on shore with such force at Barbadoes, that it was four feet deep in the Government House. The family took refuge under the cannon, only to find that they were moved about by the wind. By morning not a building in town was standing; every tree was either blown away, or stripped of branches and leaves.

The sunny islands were suddenly become as bleak and bare as a Siberian steppe.

As to the loss, ten thousand perished at Martinique; six thousand at Santa Lucia; four thousand five hundred at St. Eustatia; three thousand five hundred at Barbadoes. Scores of smaller islands were devastated, but the loss in detail is not known. Of the British fleet, the greater part was destroyed; only one vessel out of nineteen at St. Eustatia survived. A score of other ships of war and numerous transports were sunk. Of the French convoy, with five thousand troops, the governor wrote laconically that it “had disappeared.” Several English vessels at Barbadoes were carried far in shore and converted into dwellings. Doubtless, fifty thousand would hardly be too great an estimate of the total loss of life in this storm. In a similar one in 1813, the hurricane drove back the Gulf Stream, piling up the water thirty feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The ship Ledbury Snow, endeavored to ride out the storm, and when it was over, found herself high and dry. She had let go her anchor among the tree-tops of Elliot’s Key. The Barbadoes region suffered another severe gale in 1782, when the prizes captured by Admiral Rodney were sunk, a number of merchant vessels and two English war-ships foundered, and three thousand lives were lost at sea alone.

The temperate zone has its occasional hurricanes, though they are by no means as powerful or as frequent as those of the tropics. It is stated that in the year 944, one thousand five hundred houses were destroyed by a tempest in London. In the year 1090, it is recorded that a violent storm overturned six hundred and six houses in London alone.

Terrible as is the destruction of the cyclone in the western world, its fury here can not give a fair idea of the awful havoc it makes in Oriental regions. All through the Malay archipelago, along the coasts of China, Japan, the Phillipines, Hindostan, and Farther India, the ravages of the Storm King have been appalling, far exceeding even the terrible hurricanes of the West Indies.

Hindostan affords peculiar facilities for destructiveness of cyclones. Both its great rivers flow, for the latter part of their course, through low alluvial plains, and their deltas extend into the ocean directly toward the region of monsoons; so that a hurricane may send a great tidal wave up the river: while the low rich plains for miles around are but few feet above tide-water, and teem with a population attracted by the amazing fertility. So a sudden great storm may totally submerge, without any warning, hundreds of square miles of these fertile tracts, with all their inhabitants. Even when the sea-wave is not added to the horrors of the storm, the losses are fearful. A cyclone at Calcutta in 1867, destroyed thirty thousand houses, wrecked or sunk six hundred ships and smaller vessels in the river, and killed ten thousand persons in the city alone. When to this is added the havoc committed by the storm—one hundred miles wide—in the rural districts, as it traveled on toward the foot-hills, it is clear that every reader may be devoutly thankful that such terrible visitants are altogether unknown in our land.

Terrible as this storm was, there was a greater one on the 5th of October, 1864. About one hundred ships were lost; and over sixty thousand persons perished; forty-three thousand in Calcutta alone. It was accompanied by a “bore” on the Hooghly, the water rising thirty feet, which is ten feet higher than the highest spring tides; whole towns were nearly destroyed. It indicated its approach for several days, and Capt. Watson, of the Clarence, seeing the barometer falling, knew a cyclone was approaching, and saved his ship by steering out of its range.

Compare this with the storms of our own land, that thrill the country with horror if but one hundred people are killed, and remember that the cyclone of India destroyed six hundred lives where one was destroyed in this region. Compare with the most terrible storms recorded in the West Indies, and the latter must yield.

Coringa, on the Coromandel coast, has been several times desolated by these terrible storm waves. In December, 1789, three immense rollers came ashore during a single storm; the town was destroyed; the neighboring country inundated. Ships were torn from their anchorage and thrown high on the land: twenty thousand people were lost; and the heaps of sand and mud rendered search for bodies and property useless.

In May, 1833, the region at the mouth of the Hooghly was inundated by a cyclone. Three hundred villages and fifty thousand people were destroyed. In June, 1822, Burisal and Backergunge, at the mouth of the Ganges, were overwhelmed, and fifty thousand persons drowned.

But Hindostan has far greater horrors to report. A terrible flood in 1887 was driven by the cyclone over the Ganges delta. The victims numbered many thousands: exact figures not at hand. But in 1876, a cyclone swept the Backergunge district, and rolled in a storm wave over the eastern edge of the fertile delta, covering it with from ten to fifty feet of water. When the storm had subsided, it was found that more than one hundred thousand people had perished!

Finally, a great cyclone in 1737, October 11-12, swept the Ganges delta with a wave thirty feet deep on the land. Three hundred thousand people perished in this storm! The mind can not grasp the appalling magnitude of such a disaster.

These cases are the most destructive cyclones on record, and in each case the destruction is due largely to the character of the region traversed, though the winds of Bengal are not surpassed in violence by those of any country in the world. Were the harbor an open seaport, instead of a large river, no ship could live through such a storm.

Other regions in the east suffer much from tempests. The whole Malay archipelago, with the Moluccas and Philippines, are visited quite as frequently as the coasts of Hindostan. A cyclone that swept the Philippine Islands, November 6, 1885, destroyed ten thousand people, and millions of dollars worth of property.

The same character of storms is frequently met with in the Japan and China seas, where it is known as the “typhoon,” our Anglicised spelling of the Chinese title, “tei-fun.” With one example of the power of this storm, this chapter must close. In the narrative of Commander Hall, of the British Navy, is found this description of a typhoon that occurred at Hong Kong, July 21-22, 1841:

“For days previously large black clouds appeared to

COAST OF INDIA SUBMERGED BY A STORM.

settle on the hills on either side; the atmosphere was extremely sultry and oppressive, and the most vivid lightning shot incessantly along the dense threatening clouds, and looked more brilliant, because the phenomena were most remarkable at night; while during the day, the threatening appearances were moderated considerably, and sometimes almost entirely disappeared. The vibrations of the mercury in the barometer were constant and rapid, and though it occasionally rose, still the improvement was only temporary; a storm was therefore confidently predicted. Between seven and eight o’clock in the morning, the wind was blowing very hard from the northward, or directly upon the shores of Hong Kong, and continued to increase in heavy squalls hour after hour. Ships were beginning to drive, and the work of destruction had commenced on every side; the Chinese junks and boats were blown about in all directions, and one of them was seen to founder with all hands on board. The fine basin of Hong Kong was gradually covered with scattered wrecks of the war of elements; planks, spars, broken boats, and human beings clinging hopelessly for succor to every treacherous log, were tossed about on every side; the wind howled and tore everything away before it, literally sweeping the face of the waters. From half-past ten to half-past two the hurricane was at its highest, the barometer at this time having descended to 28.50. The air was filled with spray and salt, so that it was impossible to see anything that was not close at hand; the wind roared and howled fearfully, so that it was impossible to hear a word that was said. Ships were now drifting foul of each other in all directions, masts were being cut away, and from the strength of the wind forcing the sea high upon the shore, several ships were driven high and dry. The Chinese were all distracted, imploring their gods in vain for help; such an awful scene of destruction and ruin is rarely witnessed, and almost every one was so busy in thinking of his own safety, as to be unable to render assistance to any one else. Hundreds of Chinese were drowned, and occasionally a whole family, children and all, floated past the ships, clinging in apparent apathy (perhaps under the influence of opium) to the last remnants of their shattered boats, which soon tumbled to pieces and left them to their fate. On the 26th another typhoon occurred, but not so severe as the first.”

The storm at sea presents a class of peculiar dangers and a variety of thrilling experiences, such as the landsman never knows. The stories of great shipwrecks and other purely naval disasters form some of the most interesting narratives in history: and doubtless the reader will be pleased to notice in detail the perils of the deep, and to learn of the precautions taken and the means in common use for averting, as far as possible, the disastrous results of the tempest. Certainly, the brave tars who peril their lives on the ocean to bring us the luxuries of a foreign land deserve especial attention, and no apology need be given for devoting a portion of this volume to the story of their perils and daring.

CHAPTER IX.

PERILS OF THE SEA.

“Daughter, the night was made for sleep; Why dost thou moan, why dost thou weep? Wherefore thy mournful vigil keep? Daughter, daughter, my daughter!”

“Mother, to me the night wind cries. Cold on the sands thy lover lies, With none to close his glazed eyes; Nello, Nello, my Nello!”

HE Storm at Sea! From the days of David to the present, the poet and the novelist have taxed their energies to portray the perils of those who go down into the deep in ships. The ravages of the hurricane on shore are confined largely to those portions of the world unknown to the ancients; but the treacherous deep has been sung in every age. We may hardly choose which of the myriad wrecks to describe. St. Paul’s perilous voyage to Rome is familiar wherever the gospel is preached; Jonah has furnished a comparison for the unlucky for centuries; Virgil has sung of the perils of exiled Æneas in his search for a foreign home.

The sea has dangers peculiarly its own, and likewise charms possessed by nothing else in nature. Every one may have heard of the little earnest woman who at her first sight of the ocean sighed: “Ah—at last here is something there is enough of!” The sailor knows the ocean’s every mood, and may sing with Barry Cornwall:

“HE SINKS INTO THY DEPTHS, WITH BUBBLING GROAN, WITHOUT A GRAVE, UNKNELLED, UNCOFFINED, AND UNKNOWN.”

“I love, oh, how I love to ride, On the fierce, foaming, bursting When every mad wave drowns the moon, Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the sou’west blasts do blow!”

Or if his mind be better adapted for homelier ditties, he may hum:

“The wind it blew a hurricane, the sea was mountains rollin’, When Barney Buntlin’ turned his quid, and said to Billy Bowlin’: ‘A strong sou’wester’s blowin’, Billy; don’t you hear it roar now? How I pity all unhappy folks as lives upon the shore now!’ ”

Or if becalmed, and forced for days to lie beneath a scorching tropical sun,

“As idly as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean,”

the inevitable dreariness of the wide waste of scarcely heaving water will oppress the mind till the sailor may murmur:

“So lonely ’twas that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.”

It is beyond dispute that the sea has been one of the most important factors in civilizations ancient and modern. Greece was no longer supreme in power when her naval supremacy was gone; Rome was not mistress of the world till she became mistress of the Mediterranean. Not a single great system of civilization has originated in districts far inland. The great centers—Greece, Rome, Asia Minor, Egypt, Spain, England—all that have wielded unusual power—are sea-coasts, peninsulas or islands. The Jew became prominent as a trader from the day Jewish vessels sailed from Tarshish. To some extent, these facts must be considered as results of position only, however powerful the tendencies or traits of any particular stock.

It is not merely as a highway for commerce and ready intercommunication that the seas have enriched mankind. The submarine world presents views as strange and weirdly beautiful as the ancient myths of nymphs and naiads.

“Deep in the wave lies a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove; Where the seaflower spreads its leaves of blue, That never were wet with falling dew; But in bright and changeful beauty, shine Far down in the green and glassy brine.”

And thousands of the human race depend entirely upon the products of the sea for a livelihood. The fish taken as food would be an enormous item in any year: but the billows that surge over the deep conceal far more treasure than these.

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.”

All our pearls, nearly all our amber, sponges, and as beautiful and delicate as spun glass, corals of infinite number and variety—all these, and more, we must obtain from the depths of the sea. Yet, while eagerness for gain leads men to brave countless perils to obtain these treasures, thousands of sad hearts will deem them dearly bought, and recall the more precious treasures of the deep.

“Yet more! the billows and the depths have more! High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast! They hear not now the booming waters roar; The battle thunders will not break their rest. Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave! Give back the true and brave!

“Give back the lost and lovely! those for whom The place was kept at board and hearth so long, The prayer went up through midnight’s breathless gloom, And the vain yearning woke ’midst festive song! Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers or throne— But all is not thine own.

“To thee the love of woman hath gone down; Dark flow the tides o’er manhood’s noble head, Or youth’s bright locks, and beauty’s flowery crown; Yet must thou hear a voice—Restore the dead! Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee! Restore the dead, thou sea!”

CAST ASHORE.

Like the atmosphere, the ocean has its great constant currents, which play an important part in the economy of nature. These flow steadily on, one beneath another, and are little affected by atmospheric disturbances. The presence of submarine currents is often shown by icebergs moving steadily onward against a surface current and moderate wind. But there is nothing in the sea, so far as known, that corresponds to the variable winds or local currents of the atmosphere: for as water is so much heavier than air, its equilibrium is not so easily disturbed by unusual heating: and moreover, it does not expand under the influence of heat to an extent in the least approaching the expansion of the air. Hence, its currents are steady and slow-moving, and, however much they affect climate and winds by the heating or cooling of the air above them, they offer no obstacle worthy of note to the sailor. The latter must then fear only the power of the storm: and were submarine vessels readily constructed and navigated, the storm would lose its terrors: for

“When the wrathful spirit of storms, Has made the top of the wave his own, And when the ship from his fury flies, When the myriad voices of ocean roar, When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies, And demons are waiting the wreck on shore, Then far below in the peaceful sea, The purple mullet and goldfish rove, Where the waters murmur tranquilly, Through the bending twigs of the coral grove.”

It should be said, however, that the sea and storm are not responsible for all the disasters at sea. For years the greatest losses of life and property were due to the greed of conscienceless owners, who sent rotten tubs to sea, fearfully overloaded and heavily insured, certain to make a good profit whether they perished or no. As for the sailors, they were not worth considering: there were plenty to be obtained. Human life is the cheapest commodity in any market. By a liberal spending of this currency men become Alexanders or Cæsars, or Sullas, or Marii: henceforth they are “Great.”

These abuses were especially prevalent in England, the greatest of maritime powers; nor were they corrected till Mr. Samuel Plimsoll, in 1870, began a series of earnest efforts to have a systematic inspection organized. He made a startling arraignment of the atrocious methods of the land-sharks. He wrote, in 1873, “No means are neglected by Parliament to provide for the safety of life ashore; and yet, as I said before, you may build a ship in any way you please, you may use timber utterly unfit, you may use it in quantity utterly inadequate, but no one has any authority to interfere with you.

“You may even buy an old ship two hundred and fifty tons burden by auction for £50, sold to be broken up, because extremely old and rotten; she had a narrow escape on her last voyage, and had suffered so severely that she was quite unfit to go to sea again without more being spent in repairs upon her than she would be worth when done. Instead of breaking up this old ship, bought for 4s. per ton (the cost of a new ship being from £10 to £14 per ton), as was expected, you may give her a coat of paint—she is too rotten for caulking—and to the dismay of her late owners, you may prepare to send her to sea. You may be remonstrated with, in the strongest terms, against doing so, even to being told that if you persist, and the men are lost, you deserve to be tried for manslaughter.

“You may engage men in another port, and they, having signed articles without seeing the ship, you may send them to the port where the ship lies in the custody of a mariner. You may then (after re-christening the ship, which ought not to be allowed), if you have managed to insure her heavily, load her until the main deck is within two feet of the water amidships, and send her to sea. Nobody can prevent you. Nay, more, if the men become riotous, you may arrest them without a magistrate’s warrant, and take them to prison, and the magistrates, who have no choice (they have not to make, but only to administer the law), will commit them to prison for twelve weeks with hard labor; or better still for you, you may send a policeman on board to overawe the mutineers, and induce them to do their duty! And then, if the ship is lost with all hands, you will gain a large sum of money and you will be asked no questions, as no inquiry will ever be held over those unfortunate men, unless (which has only happened once, I think), some member of the House asks for inquiry.

“The river policeman who in one case threatened a refractory crew with imprisonment, and urged them to do their duty (!) told me afterwards (when they were all drowned) that he and his colleagues at the river-side station had spoken to each other about the ship being dreadfully overloaded as she passed their station on the river, before he went on board to urge duty (!) and that he then, when he saw me, ’rued badly that he had not locked ’em up without talk, as then they wouldn’t have been drowned.’ ”

He also found that some ship-builders put together mere floating coffins, using “devils,” or dummy bolts, or bolt-heads without any shaft, to present the appearance of a staunchly built vessel. The old shell would founder in the first strong breeze. Hundreds of examples came in his way of entire crews lost in these hulks. What such losses meant to the poor dependent families at home we may imagine, but may not readily portray.

Another prolific source of disaster was the neglect to supply captains with the proper charts. There are notable instances of great vessels so lost. One ship and cargo, value $350,000, was lost near Boulogne, because the captain’s chart had not the lights properly marked on it.

The great steamer Deutschland, having a large number

WRECK OF THE MINOTAUR.

of German emigrants on board, ran on an unmarked shoal near the mouth of the Thames, December 30, 1875, and was lost. The vessel was fourteen hours on the shoal in the winter storm, ere her signals of distress were perceived. Fifty-seven of her passengers had been lost in the heavy sea ere help reached her.

Ship after ship has left her port, never to be heard of again, whose crews might have still been in peace and comfort with their families, had the owners had the least trace of humanity, or regard for simple justice. A single example will illustrate.

In a hovel, Plimsoll found a young wife, scrubbing for a living, trying to support herself and three children. “She had a loving husband but very lately, but the owner of the ship on which he served, the S——n, was a very needy man, who insured her for £3,000 more than she had cost him. So if she sank he would gain all this. Well, one voyage she was loaded under the owner’s personal superintendence; she was loaded so deeply that the dockmaster pointed her out to a friend as she left the dock, and said emphatically, ‘That ship will never reach her destination.’ She never did, for she was lost with all hands—twenty men and boys.”

Under the owner’s personal superintendence! Could cool calculating villany go any further? Yet this is but one out of many scores!

Yet, despite the apparent frequency of complaints from those who suffered most by these practices, the abuses had grown up so gradually that the masses of the people had come to accept them as almost a necessary concomitant of naval matters. While holding out stoutly for the difference of a penny more or less in wages, there was no effort at concerted action for better treatment. Men accustomed to risking their lives daily came to look upon the matter as of no great consequence. Only the worst possible vessels were very seriously objected to; and these usually had little difficulty in obtaining crews of men long out of employment, who would accept any risk rather than remain a burden to their friends and families, however the latter might object to the proceeding. So thousands went to a watery grave. Official records of the period showed that one-half the losses at sea were the result of sending out rotten hulks. Yet, when reforms were suggested, the promoters were frequently told that if such things did not properly regulate themselves as a matter of political economy, there was no use striving for a change. Cool weighing of human life against gold!

Even in staunch ships the accommodations provided for the sailors were of the meanest sort. Men might wade to their bunks through water, or be packed in a filthy forecastle like herrings; they were fed on “salt horse” and moldy biscuit; they might rot with scurvy—if the ship got to port with her cargo, it made little difference how the crew fared.

Our own ships and the Russian and French vessels the investigator found far superior in treatment of the sailor: and the majority of English owners did well by their crews; but Plimsoll’s efforts induced great improvement. Compulsory survey and no overloading were his main remedies for the prevention of the terrible loss of life in the mercantile marine. He cites two cases of great firms—the first engaged in the coal carrying, and the second in the guano trade—who do not permit overloading, and the first, in fifteen years had not, out of a large fleet of steamers, lost a single vessel, although they made from fifty to seventy double trips per year. The second case deserves particular mention. About the year 1860, the firm of Anthony Gibbs & Co., of London, took a contract from the Peruvian Government to charter and load ships from the Chincha Islands with guano, and as many as three or four hundred ships left those islands annually for different parts of the world. At first they were allowed to load and proceed to sea without inspection or surveying, and were permitted to load as deeply as the masters thought fit. What was the result? Accidents and losses were reported every few days, and many of their ships foundered at sea, some with all hands on board. When the head of the house at Lima, Peru, introduced proper surveying before loading, to discover what repairs were needed, etc., allowing no overloading, and not permitting the ships to go to sea without full inspection of her pumps and gear, a sudden and wonderful change took place, and for years after not one of these ships foundered at sea.

There is no sadder record than that which has been made of many a gallant vessel, sailing with the best prospects—“Missing,” or “Never heard of.” Occasionally the mysterious fate of some of these vessels has been revealed by the picking up of sealed bottles containing brief records of the disastrous end of the missing ships. But such cases are rare in comparison with the vast majority of the disasters; for the greatest peril to a vessel in a storm is the vicinity of a reef or shoal. In the open sea there is comparative safety, even in a considerable gale, for good seamen; but a shoal or rocky coast may be fatal to the vessel striking, even though the wind be but moderate. So nearly all disasters occur along shore; and the time is past in which it is possible for a vessel to be lost on an unknown or uninhabited coast. Hence, soon or late, the lot of nearly every vessel is known. Occasionally a vessel has been abandoned as unseaworthy or unmanageable, and has surprised those abandoning her by drifting around for months in the path of other vessels and occasionally fouling with some of them, to their serious injury.

WRECKED ON A ROCK.

The polar seas present peculiar perils to the navigator. Almost every one has heard of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, even though others may not be familiar. The attempts to find a northwest passage have long ceased, it being indisputable that it is useless though found. The great expeditions of later years have been equipped purely from a scientific standpoint. No conceivable benefit to commerce can result therefrom.

But the vast majority of fatalities in the polar seas have not been among the great exploring expeditions, any more than the majority of disasters in warmer climes are among first-class passenger steamers. The world over, it is the coasting vessels, the fishing smacks, the second and third-class freighters that swell the lists of losses at sea. And in the polar seas the most numerous disasters are among the whaling and sealing vessels, which visit the regions season after season. Many a vessel has been crushed like an egg-shell amid the enormous masses of ice. Often a vessel seemingly hopelessly imprisoned has been abandoned by the crew, only to be freed by some caprice of the winds and picked up by some other crew. And again there have been instances of vessels seen resting in masses of ice far above the water, raised by continual tilting and piling of ice-cakes beneath. Sometimes a vessel has floated about thus for a considerable period. Comparatively speaking, losses of life have been small in proportion to the dangers and property losses. Where so many vessels are in the same region at a time, the crew of a crushed ship can generally reach another vessel without great difficulty. But years ago, when the whaling fleet was smaller, and steam had not been called to the seaman’s aid, the peril of life was greater; and many is the vessel that sailed away never to be heard of again.

One of the best stories illustrating this class of dangers is that of the whaleship Rufus. A whaling vessel in 1774 found an abandoned ship; and on boarding her, found the crew scattered about in the postures assumed when they first yielded to the fatal sleep. The tale, in verse worth

CASTAWAYS ON A RAFT.

remembering, but seldom or never seen, was told many years ago by an unknown author. The distinctness and simplicity of the style render the poem worth preserving, aside from the interest of the story.

THE SHIP RUFUS.

Sing not, my Muse, of brightening fields Of ether, fair displayed, Of whispering bowers, where Zephyr yields His fragrance to the glade

But haste thee to the frozen throne, The starry blue domain Where Winter, monarch dread and lone, Asserts his iron reign.

Now Europe’s northern cape recedes, And Iceland’s utmost shore; The sailor turns his face and heeds Those viewless forms no more.

For mountains, distant yet, but bright, Edging the arctic tide, ’Neath spiry flames of dancing light, At masthead are descried.

For see! in glittering points, the coast Divides; the mountain chain, On waves afar in silence tossed, Trembles athwart the main.

Anon, the mariner looks forth, And scans with cheerless brow,— Borne onward by the angry North, An arctic navy now.

“How shall the good ship Rufus speed? How live?” the master cried;— “God send us help in time of need,"— “Amen!” the crew replied.

Each ice-built crag and snowy cliff Chases the foaming spray; And, ’mid those moving Alps, the skiff Must find her destined way.

Her destined way?—Her destined fate! Now drops the needful gale; The waves become a glassy plate; The bark forbears to sail.

Prisoned of God; by mountains pent,— Fuel and food consumed;— Ask not of me the dire event, Nor why they thus were doomed. . . . . . . . . . .

Again, borne forth by waves and wind, Men spread a venturous sail, ’Mid rocks of massy ice to find The scarce less massy whale.

The optic tube now aids the eye, And scans the distant sea: A distant speck they now descry; A speck—what can it be?

“What can it be?” inquire the men— “An iceberg, or a sail?” As yet the crew inquire in vain, And doubt must yet prevail.

Yes, doubt prevails, and strengthens still, Though fast the object nears. “Sure ’tis no sail which at the will Of winds and billows steers!”

Fancy still limns out forms uncouth, Yet scarce herself persuades; But fancy now gives place to truth More startling than her shades.

A dreary hull, with shattered mast, And sails of strangest guise, And cordage fluttering in the blast, Now meets their wondering eyes.

The bark they hail;—in many a groan The bellowing shrouds reply; But bellowing shrouds respond alone;— No voice returns the cry.

Strange!—for, as near with curious haste They ply, and glance within, Lo! at the cabin window placed, A form is dimly seen.

They mount the floating ruin now— Her deck is overlaid Man’s height in crusted ice and snow, Which shows no human tread.

To find the hatch beneath the drift, They all their efforts lend,— Its frozen planks at length they lift, And fearfully descend.

Now pause they at the cabin door;— Now enter, as they will;— Its quiet inmate, as before, Sits unconcerned and still.

With pen in hand, and half reclined, Like those in thoughtful moods; To noises deaf, to visions blind, He cares not who intrudes.

No!—for a filmy mold invests His long untroubled brow;— His eyeballs green sought not his guests, Nor can he turn them now.

SINKING OF THE LONDON.

A crumbling page before him lay, Which told the unspoken woe;— “Our cabin fire went out to-day— Food spent five days ago;—

“Locked in the ice three weeks,—our crew All dead,—all hope is o’er;— Ship Rufus—1762— One hour, and I’m no more!”

Now horror on the souls sunk down— On all who viewed the scene; Twelve arctic winters then had flown, Since this a corpse had been!

Twelve years on polar surges tossed, By northern blasts conveyed— Destroyed—preserved, by iron frost, Her crew were statues made.

Perchance this fate-directed prow Had crossed ’neath cloudless skies The pole, which jealous Nature now Shuts out from human eyes.

Perchance the dreamed of Northern Way This guileless keel had plowed, While billows with the helm did play, And wild winds trimmed the shroud.

Say when, Stern Spirits of the North, They found their watery grave? Or do ye still in awful mirth, Toss them from wave to wave?

CHAPTER X.

LIFE-SAVING MEASURES.

“ ‘O father, I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?’ ’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast,’ And he steered for the open sea.

‘O father, I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?’ ‘Some ship in distress that can not live In such an angry sea.’

‘O father, I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?’ But the father answered not a word, For a frozen corpse was he. . . . . . . . . . .

At daybreak, on the bleak sea beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes. And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed, On the billows fall and rise.”

NE of the most destructive storms on record, and certainly the most terrible ever known on the whole English coast is the great storm of 1703. It is the only storm which has ever been made the subject of a Parliamentary memorial. It raged for a week over nearly the whole of England. Scores of vessels were driven on shore and perished. At Bristol, the in-driven sea filled the merchants’ cellars, destroying sugar, tobacco, and other produce, to the value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Eighty people were drowned in the river and adjacent

STORM ON THE SHOALS, 1703.

marshes; fifteen thousand sheep were drowned by the overflow or backing up of the Severn. At London, the river was filled with vessels, the crews of which were nearly all on shore. The storm tore them from their moorings, and drove them into a bight on the opposite side of the stream. It was a strange sight they presented after the storm. Defoe says that “there lay, by the best account he could take, few less than seven hundred sail of ships, some very great ones, between Shadwell and Limehouse inclusive; the posture is not to be imagined but by them that saw it; some vessels lay heeling off with the bow of another ship over her waist, and the stern of another upon her forecastle; the boltsprits of some drove into the cabin windows of others; some lay with their sterns tossed up so high that the tide flowed into their forecastles before they could come to rights; some lay so leaning upon others that the undermost vessels would sink before the other could float; the number of masts, boltsprits and yards split and broke, the staving the heads and sterns and carved work, the tearing and destruction of rigging, and the squeezing of boats to pieces between the ships, is not to be reckoned; but there was hardly a vessel to be seen that had not suffered some damage or other in one or all of these articles.”

In the city itself, the streets were covered with tiles, slates, bricks, and fallen chimneys. Common tiles rose to nearly six times their usual price. Numbers of people were killed by crumbling roofs or falling houses. In Gloucester, six hundred great trees were prostrated in a space of five acres. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, and his wife, were among the more noted dead. The total loss of life has been estimated at from eight to thirty thousand. The former is Defoe’s, but as he only counts those of which he obtained direct personal information, this estimate is certainly too low.

A single item of this storm will give some idea of the peculiar dangers once incurred by shipwrecked sailors. Mr. Whymper writes, “The townspeople of Deal, in particular, were blamed for their inhumanity in leaving many to their fate who could have been rescued. Boatmen went off to the sands for booty, some of whom would not listen to poor wretches who might have been saved. Many unfortunate shipwrecked persons could be seen, by the aid of glasses, walking on the Goodwin Sands in despairing postures, knowing that they would, as Defoe puts it, ‘be washed into another world’ at the reflux of the tide. The mayor of Deal, Mr. Thomas Powell, asked the Custom House officers to take out their boats and endeavor to save the lives of some of these unfortunates, but they utterly refused. The mayor then offered, from his own pocket, five shillings a head for all saved, and a number of fishermen and others volunteered, and succeeded in bringing two hundred persons on shore, who would have been lost in a half an hour afterwards. The Queen’s agent for sick and wounded seamen would not furnish a penny for their lodging or food, and the good mayor supplied all of them with what they required. Several died, and he was compelled to bury all of them at his own expense; he furnished a large number with money to pay their way to London. He received no thanks from the Government of the day, but some long time after was reimbursed the large sums he had expended.”

One not versed in the tales of the past might be astounded at such inhumanity; yet the case cited is comparatively a mild one. People acquainted with the history of pirates and buccaneers know that coasts everywhere were once more or less infested with land-sharks, more merciless than any shark of the deep, who enriched themselves by the misfortunes of others: and drowning sailors would be disregarded in the race for plunder. Yet this is but a shadow of the fearful tragedies often enacted.

Picture a richly laden vessel, homeward bound, with scores of eager anxious hearts on board, and other scores in port eagerly waiting them. The captain smiles thoughtfully, as he murmurs, “We shall be at home to-morrow!” The mother with child in arms repeats, as she thinks of the waiting husband, “We shall be home to-morrow!” The bronzed wanderer, returning after years of adventure, wonders if his boyhood’s home is changed, as he thinks, “I shall be home to-morrow!”

There is but the faintest indication of storm. On shore, cruel, sinister faces scan the sky and the distant ship as the twilight settles down, and whisper together, and scowl as they recall past disappointments. They will take care that they are not disappointed again. Their grizzled old leader will see to that.

Night gathers apace. The storm bursts—the ship is far off shore, and in safe quarters. It is time to act. “Now, in the pitchy darkness of the night, with bowed head, and faltering steps battling against the storm, the old man leads a white horse along the edge of the cliff. To the tip of the horse’s tail a lantern is tied, and the light sways with the movement of the horse, and in its movements seems not unlike the masthead light of a vessel rocked by the motion of the sea. A whisper has gone through the village of a chance of something happening during the night, and most of the men and many of the women are on the alert, lurking in the caves beneath the cliff, or sheltered behind jutting pieces of rock.

“The vessel makes in steadily for the land; the captain grows uneasy, and fears running into danger; he will put the vessel round, and try and battle his way out to sea.

“The look-out man reports a dim light ahead. What kind? and whither away? He can make out that it is a ship’s light, for it is in motion. Yes, she must be a vessel standing on in the same course as that which they are on.

ON A LEE SHORE.

It is all safe, then; the captain will stand in a little longer; when suddenly, in the lull of the storm, a hoarse murmur is heard—surely the sound of the sea beating upon rocks! Yes! look! a white gleam upon the water! Breakers ahead! breakers ahead! Oh, a very knell of doom! The cry rings through the ship, ‘Down, down with the helm—round her to!’ Too late, too late! A crash, a shudder from stem to stern of the stout ship, the shriek of many voices in their agony, green seas sweeping over the vessel, and soon broken timbers, bales of cargo, and lifeless bodies scattered along the beach, while the shattered remnant of the hull is torn still further to pieces with each insweep of the mighty seas as they roll it to and fro among the rocks. Fearful and crafty the smile that darkened the face of the willing murderer who was leading the horse with the false light as he heard the crash of the vessel and the shrieks of the drowning crew! Fearful the smile that darkened the faces of the men and women waiting on the beach as they came out from their places, ready to struggle and fight among themselves for any spoil that might come ashore! A homeward-bound ship from the Indies! Great good fortune—rich spoil! Bale after bale is seized upon by the wreckers, and dragged high upon the beach out of the way of the surf. But, see! a sailor clinging to a bit of broken mast! With his last conscious effort he gains a footing on the shore, staggers forward, and falls. Is he alive? Not now! Why did that fearful old woman kneel upon his chest and cover his mouth with her cloak? Dead men tell no tales—claim no property!”

No fiction of the fancy, this! Only the last great day will ever reveal how many souls have perished at the hands of those who should have succored them. Think of a man and his wife reaching the shore after an exhausting struggle; the man leaving his wife in a sheltered nook while he goes in search of human habitations, and returning after a few moments to find his wife, a plundered, naked corpse! And yet, such practices were tolerably common, even within the range of a century past!

In striking contrast with the heartless wreckers are those known on the British coast as “hovellers.” These put out to sea in stormy weather to ascertain if vessels in the offing are in need of anything, or are otherwise crippled: and many a ship have they saved from wreck by their timely aid.

It appears strange that, among a people so dependent upon the sea as the English, no regularly organized methods of diminishing the losses by wreck existed till within the present century. Yet such is the fact. A hundred years ago, there was no boat that could safely venture in a heavy sea; and if, perchance, some humane people wished to succor a vessel in distress, few were the means and terrible the risks. The graphic pen of Dickens, in this abridged narrative, will illustrate the case. The scene is Yarmouth, England:

“In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattooed arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!

“One mast was broken off short, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat—which she did without a moment’s pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest.

“But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind

HOVELLERS RELIEVING A VESSEL.

and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks—heaps of such toys—into the boiling surge. The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck again.

“As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach; four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair. There was a bell on board; and, as the ship rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore, now, nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne towards us on the wind.

“Again, we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on shore increased. Men groaned and clasped their hands, women shrieked and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes, when I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.

“I ran to him, held him back with both arms and implored the men with whom I had been speaking not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand! Another cry arose on shore, and, looking to the wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.

“Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind. ‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, ‘if my time is come, ’tis come. If ’tain’t, I’ll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I’m a-going off!’

“I don’t know what I answered, or what they rejoined; but I saw a hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then I saw him standing alone, in a seaman’s frock and trousers, a rope in his hand, or slung to his wrist; another round his body, and several of the best men, holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.

“Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and, in a moment was buffeting with the water. Now, he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly.

“The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly. At length, he neared the wreck. He was so near that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it—when a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on, shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

“On running to the spot where they were hauling in,

THE LIFE-BOAT.

I saw some eddying fragments in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken. Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet—insensible—dead—beaten to death by the great wave; and his generous heart was stilled forever.”

Such things weighed heavily upon the humanely disposed; and when a century ago Mr. Greathead, who had a great heart, stood at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and saw man after man drop from a great wreck into a raging sea without the possibility of rescue, he set himself to work upon the problem of the life-boat. Noticing that the half of a circular wooden bowl invariably turned concave side upward, when thrown in the water, it occurred to him at once that a boat with a curved instead of straight keel would always right itself. Wouldhave, at the same time was advocating padding the boat heavily with cork: and the first life-boat was constructed from these ideas. A year or two later, a minister in the Orkneys suggested that all boats could be made self-righting by fixing an empty water-tight cask in either end. So the idea of air-chambers developed: and later the curved keel was made of iron, to aid in ballasting the craft: so that the modern life-boat, with curved iron keel, cork padding, air chambers, and tubes to permit water to flow out, cannot be sunk, or made to float bottom up. The men may sometimes be washed out of it, or a side stove in, but the boat will always be found right side up.

Strange as it may appear, though the first life-boat, with its crudities, saved hundreds of lives within a few years, the Government took no steps to institute a general system or life-saving service. To the average American, this seems striking; but governments a century ago were more concerned about the success in war than about the welfare of the masses; they studied destruction of life more than its preservation: and if perchance, some ruler affected peculiar concern for the welfare of “the State,” it was generally the case that the definition of Louis XIV was applicable; “The State—that’s me!”

But Sir William Hillary and Thomas Wilson made earnest appeals to Parliament for the establishment of a national life-saving institution; and Hillary added the more effective argument of many deeds of personal daring in the venturous work. Between 1821-1846, no fewer than one hundred and forty-four wrecks occurred on the Isle of Man, and “one hundred and seventy-two lives were lost; while the destruction of property was estimated at a quarter of a million. In 1825, when the City of Glasgow steamer was stranded in Douglas Bay, Sir William Hillary assisted in saving the lives of sixty-two persons; and in the same year eleven men from the brig Leopard, and nine from the sloop Fancy, which became a total wreck. In 1827-32, Sir William, accompanied by his son, saved many other lives; but his greatest success was on the 20th of November, 1830, when he saved in the life-boat twenty-two men, the whole of the crew of the mail steamer St. George, which became a total wreck on St. Mary’s Rock. On this occasion he was washed overboard among the wreck, with three other persons, and was saved with great difficulty, having had six of his ribs fractured.”

So the British institution arose, small at first, but mighty in its work since. Ten years after, in 1850, it was reorganized, and improved life-boats secured. The importance of the work may be imagined when we record that from 1852 to 1871, the wrecks on British coasts alone averaged one thousand four hundred and forty-six per annum! When we add the work of our own life-saving service, and the service of life-boats in many other lands, we may realize how inestimable is the value of such an institution.

THE LIFE-BOAT AT WORK.

Among the earlier measures to prevent loss of life are fog-bells, fog-horns, and lighthouses, to warn the sailor of dangerous shoals. In earlier days, wreckers sometimes silenced the fog-bell. Southey has given us a ballad upon the poetic justice said to have been meted out to a famous pirate who removed the bell placed by the abbot of Arberbrothok upon the Inchcape Rock, off the Scottish coast. One year later, with a rich booty, the pirate nears home once more,

“They hear no sound, the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen they drift along, Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,— ‘Oh, Christ! it is the Inchcape Rock!’

Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair; He curst himself in his despair; The waves rush in on every side, The ship is sinking beneath the tide.”

With this notice of the extent to which man may be responsible for disasters, the subject must be dismissed. Ere leaving the topic of storms, the reader shall know of one of the most notable naval disasters of the century, which will illustrate the difficulty with which even powerful war ships face high winds at sea.

CHAPTER XI.

GREAT SAMOAN HURRICANE.

“Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue Ocean, roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin: his control Stops with thy shores: upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed; nor doth remain A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own, When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.”

URING the fall of 1888, no little interest centered in one of the little inland groups of the Pacific. In 1887, German officers in the Samoan group conceived that the king, Malietoa, was so prejudiced toward their interests that he should be deposed. So without much ceremony they laid hands upon and carried him into exile, placing him on an island some thousands of miles distant.

There seems no reason to doubt that Germany’s ultimate design was to formally occupy the islands. It is the old story of the civilized man’s dealings with the savage; of the man who has ten talents, obtaining the property of the man with one.

Methods have changed somewhat, however, since the day when our pilgrim fathers kindly relieved the Red man of such encumbrances as he had in the way of real estate, and established quit-claim deeds and perfect titles in their flint-lock muskets. It is not now considered “good form,” as it was in the days of olden Spanish America, to declare one’s self Marquis of this or Duke de that, with several thousands of Indians as slaves or tributaries, without consulting them. The modern method is that of the European guide who attaches himself to your person willy-nilly, in order that he rifle your pockets as the need of his divers imaginary services. It is a less expensive method, and none the less sure. So the colonizers of our day kindly establish a “protectorate” over Naboth’s vineyard. Naboth, however, fully understands the process, as some civilized races have found to their cost.

The Samoans were in high dudgeon at the action of Germany: and when the foreigners coolly proceeded, without consulting the wishes of the natives, to select and establish a new king, whom they thought would be favorable to their own interests, open hostility resulted.

The Samoans had no way to bring back their former king, Malietoa; but they promptly deposed the creature of the Germans, Tamasese, and chose instead Mataafa, a relative and personal representative of their exiled king. The few American residents and frequenters of the islands approved this, deeming the act of the Germans one of unjustifiable aggression.

Civil war resulted. At the outset, Tamasese’s strong personal following, and the fear of German interference, gave him a very large party. But in the half-dozen fierce battles that were fought he was decidedly worsted, and, forced to flee from the capital, Apia, he shut himself up in a native fortress eight miles distant.

The Germans had in the meantime actively espoused his cause, and went so far as to bombard several native villages. Still they did not come into direct personal collision with the natives until December, 1888. A body of Germans landed a few miles from Apia, and assaulted Mataafa’s forces.

The island blood was up. The battle was stubbornly contested. The Germans were utterly routed and driven back to their vessels with a loss of fifty killed and wounded.

This is precisely the sort of pretext a “protecting” power desires. In great indignation at the pesky people who had failed to allow themselves to be thrashed, the Germans formally declared war, and began a series of high-handed seizures and aggressions. The interests of other nations in Samoa were endangered. There was but one American man-of-war in the harbor.

As soon as the War Department learned of the state of affairs, reinforcements were sent out, and it seemed highly probable that a collision between America and Germany might be precipitated at any moment. Thus, there were collected in the harbor the American warship Trenton, the flag-ship of Rear-Admiral Kimberly, and one of the largest vessels in the navy, N. H. Farquhar, Commander: the Nipsic, Commander D. W. Mullan; and the Vandalia, Commander C. M. Schoonmaker. The Germans were represented by the warship Olga, and the cruisers Eber and Adler. England had sent the man-of-war Calliope. In addition, there were in the harbor ten or twelve schooners and trading vessels. Such was the force assembled at Apia, March 15, 1889.

The news does not travel rapidly from that portion of the world. During the spring a report reached America that the looked-for collision between the assembled forces had occurred, and that the Nipsic had been sunk by the Olga. There was much suppressed excitement; but as the report was not officially confirmed, this soon ceased.

No one was prepared for the actual occurrence, or the magnitude of the calamity.

The town of Apia, the Samoan capital, lies around a small circular bay. Across the mouth of the harbor, two miles in width, extends a coral reef, which is visible at low water. A break in the reef a quarter of a mile in width forms the entrance to the harbor. Only a small portion of the latter is available for anchorage, as the eastern part is quite shallow, and on the west the bay has a small fringing reef well out from the shore. It will be seen that the crowded condition of the harbor rendered it peculiarly perilous. The war vessels were anchored in the deep water, the Eber and Nipsic being nearest the shore. The schooners and lighter craft were in the shoal water next to the fringing reef on the west side of the harbor.

The town is composed of cottages, built after the native pattern: low, of elastic materials, and bound well together; so that the low houses, swaying easily with the wind, are not so easily blown away as structures of stiffer and more pretentious build. The American consulate, facing the harbor, lies about the center of the town, with a long strip of sandy beach before it.

For some weeks the weather had been gloomy and capricious. The time of the vernal equinox was at hand, and a low area storm of unusual violence might be expected at any time. During the afternoon of March 15, the wind began to increase: the war ships lowered their topmasts and secured their spars; one or two prepared storm-sails for emergencies. The anchors were all out, and steam was raised lest the anchors should not hold.

The wind increased steadily, blowing from the same quarter continuously. Though the only recorded observations are at this one point, its proximity to the equator, the steadiness of the wind and the length of time it blew indicate a cyclonic tempest of unusual violence.

By 11 P.M. the wind was a strong gale: not too strong in the harbor for small boats, however; for the crews of nearly all the schooners, divining what was coming, put out their spare anchors and went ashore, leaving the vessels to their fate. Mayhap the anchors would hold; but on their lives they would take no risks.

An hour later immense rollers were coming in from the ocean, finding the coral reef only a partial check. Ordinarily a reef insures a harbor from the force of the waves, and leaves only the direct fury of the winds to be encountered. But the reef at Apia is a lower barrier than such harbors usually possess, and may not be seen at high tide.

At midnight, rain was falling. The wind still increased. The vessels were pitching fearfully. At this time the Eber, nearest the shore, began dragging her anchors, and was compelled to aid them with her engines. At one o’clock the Vandalia, also, was compelled to use her engines. Should the wind increase, their case was truly desperate.

The rain poured in torrents; fiercer grew the gale. By three o’clock every vessel in the harbor was dragging her anchors. There might be a collision, or a wreck, at any time. Every able-bodied man was required, that any emergency might be met. Neither officer nor private could think of sleep.

Those on shore realized the peril of the situation. Accustomed to heavy gales, the natives slept soundly for a time in their low huts. At length, the crash of falling trees and the tearing away of roofs began to be heard in the storm. Little knots of people crept about in the darkness, seeking shelter from the tempest. Sand and pebbles, gathered up from the beach, were hurled by the wind with cutting force. The tide was rising, and the gale brought it into the streets, a hundred feet above the usual high water mark. The spray from the dashing surf sprang high in the air, and beat into the windows of houses nearest the shore. It was a memorable night.

Long before dawn the natives were huddled in little groups about the shore, gazing at the shifting lights of the tossing vessels. Their houses were being wrecked, their crops and trees destroyed, but they themselves were measurably safe. But those in the harbor!

There was little need of conversation; and, indeed, did one wish to speak to his neighbor, he was compelled to shout in his ear. As each peered into his fellow’s face in the uncertain light, he saw the shadow of a terrible fear and a desperate resolve that spoke plainer than any words. Explanations were useless; that tacit understanding was enough. For the time, thrones, principalities, feuds and hostilities were forgotten. The followers of Tamasese and Mataafa were shoulder to shoulder. No longer was there thought of the foeman who had exiled their chief and bombarded their villages. Out in that seething caldron were scores of human beings, battling for life with wind and wave. That was enough.

As the day drew near, the white men on the shore began to join the little groups of natives. Through the gloom could be seen the lights of the plunging ships, and ever and anon there came on the gale the sound of shouted orders, like a distant echo. The wavering of the lights showed that, despite steam and anchor, the vessels were slowly dragging about, crossing and re-crossing each others’ paths. The breathless watchers on the beach listened for the crash of collision that would be the death-knell of scores of gallant marines. Some shielded their faces with bits of tile, and endeavored to distinguish the position of the respective ships. Less hopeful than the whites, the natives saw no chance of escape. Which vessel would strike first? Would any be saved?

BOW OF THE EBER, CAST ASHORE.

Between five and six o’clock, it began to grow light. The position of the vessels was completely altered. Forced from their moorings, they were drifting toward the inner reef. Each contended stubbornly with the storm. Volumes of black smoke poured from the furnaces of the quivering hulls. A number of the sailing vessels were already on the reef. Fragments of wreckage began to be tossed ashore. The Trenton and Vandalia, being farthest out in the harbor, were scarcely visible through the mist and spray. The large iron hulls were tossed about like corks. Wave after wave dashed over their decks. The men swarmed about the masts and the lower rigging, clinging to anything they could grasp. The Eber, Adler and Nipsic were within a few yards of each other and close on the fatal reef. Each vessel seemed as though endowed with a life of its own. They struggled like wild creatures; as the stag might struggle in the clutch of a panther.

The Eber slowly retreated toward the reef, contesting every inch. Suddenly she paused, recovered, and dashed forward into the teeth of the furious storm.

It was her last desperate sally. The current bore her to the right. In a moment she collided with the Nipsic, her bow carrying away a boat and several feet of the post-quarter rail. Falling back, she fouled with the Olga, and her rudder was carried away. This left her helpless. Swinging broadside to the wind, she lay a few moments rolling heavily in the trough of the sea. Over her deck the surf foamed and roared.

At length, a gigantic wave lifted her up and hurled her with awful force upon the reef. Striking fairly on her keel, she heeled over toward the sea. No further trace of her was seen. Every timber must have been shattered. Doubtless more of her crew were crushed than were drowned.

The horror-stricken natives, accustomed to the sea from infancy, dashed into the surf, struggling with death for the lives of their late oppressors. They were but savages; they knew no better.

For a few moments, not a hand was raised from the site of the wreck. At length, a few faintly struggling forms appeared in the surf. They were grasped by eager hands, and safely reached the shore. Another was seen clinging to the piling of a small wharf, beaten half senseless by the furious waves. He was drawn ashore. It was a handsome boyish-faced lieutenant, the sole surviving officer. Out of a total force of seventy-six men and officers on the Eber, five only were saved. The young lieutenant was the officer of the watch at the time of the wreck. The others were all below, and must have been crushed to death. This occurred about six o’clock in the morning.

Finding no other survivors, those on shore turned to the remaining vessels once more. Their position had changed again. The situation rapidly grew more perilous.

The Adler had fouled with the Olga, and was close on the reef, some two hundred yards from where the Eber struck, and like it, was approaching the shore broadside on. The suspense was prolonged and painful. For nearly half an hour she lay thus swept by the waves.

Finally, a huge roller tossed her on top of the reef and turned her over on her side, throwing those on deck into the water. They struggled to regain the vessel; those who succeeded clung to guns, tackling, spars and masts; but twenty were drowned. The vessel lay with her keel to the sea and nearly her entire hull out of water; so those who clung to the rigging were fairly protected.

During the day the natives succeeded in getting a line to the wreck, and a number of the sailors escaped. But the line parted while some were still on the vessel, and could not be replaced. The remainder of the crew clung to the wreck through all that terrible day and night, and were finally gotten off when at the verge of exhaustion.

While the Adler was drifting toward the reef, the Nipsic was battling with fearful odds. Facing the wind, she was

THE ADLER ON THE REEF.

nevertheless dragging her three anchors, and receding toward the reef.

But her chief danger lay in another source. The gigantic Olga, which had crippled the two vessels already wrecked, threatened to crush her also. While the Nipsic endeavored by skillful use of steam and rudder to avoid the Olga, a little schooner, the Lily, fell in her way and was cut down in an instant. There were but three men on board; two of whom succeeded in reaching the Olga.

Just then it occurred to the commander of the Nipsic to reinforce the anchors by attaching a hawser to one of the heavy eight-inch rifles and casting it overboard. Ere this was accomplished the Olga struck her a terrible blow directly amidships. Her smoke-stack was overturned and fell on the deck with a terrible crash. One of her boats was carried away and the rail splintered. No one at first knew the extent of the damage. The frightened crew clambered into the rigging, thinking the ship was sinking. The lumbering smoke-stack dashed from side to side with the roll of the ship.

It was a frightful moment. Only a few yards away the Eber had disappeared. The Nipsic had swung around and was rapidly nearing the spot. Only promptness and most skillful management saved her officers and crew from the fate of the Eber.

Captain Mullane was on the bridge at the time, and took in the situation in an instant. With the smoke-stack gone it would be impossible to keep up steam; without steam the reef could not be avoided. At once the smoke-stack was chocked to prevent its rolling about the deck, and orders were given to beach the ship while a small head of steam was still available. Two hundred yards away lay the sandy beach before the American consulate.

A great throng awaited anxiously the result of this manœuvre. The vessel’s course was parallel to the terrible reef, and but a few feet from it. Her crew were gathered about the bow, and those on shore recognized many a familiar face or personal friend in the driving spray, on whom they might be looking for the last time. One or two of the crew had been on shore during the night, and now stood watching the fate of their comrades.

Barely escaping the reef, the steamer plunged into the sand a few yards from the shore, and swung around diagonally to the storm. The breakers dashed furiously upon her stern, and it seemed as though she would be beaten to pieces in an instant. Those who escaped must do so at once.

Five sailors dashed into a boat; but the falls did not work properly, and one end of the boat dropped. The men fell into the sea and were drowned. The surgeon and five sick men were placed in another boat: no sooner launched than capsized. But the natives had formed a chain by grasping each others hands; and dashing into surf where a white man would have perished at once, they seized the men and passed them to the shore. Several of those on the Nipsic took advantage of the opportunity and sprang overboard. But two of these were lost.

Meanwhile, all those remaining on board had crowded into the forecastle. The natives in the surf, under the direction of two of their chiefs, Seumanu Tafa and Salu Anae, had succeeded in getting lines to the vessels, and double hawsers were quickly stretched to the shore. Scores of eager hands were outstretched to assist in the work. The waves broke high on the beach, and the undertow was so strong that even the natives narrowly escaped being carried out into the bay. The white men on shore scarcely dared venture into the surf. The rain poured more heavily. The clouds of flying sand grew thicker and more

SAMOANS SAVING THE LIVES OF AMERICAN SAILORS.

cutting. The hoarse shouts of the officers mingled with the roar of the storm, and the stricken vessel quivered in every fibre. Fragments of wreckage were ever and anon hurled amongst those in the surf. The gloom of the awful tempest combined with all these things to produce a tableau of chaos itself.

Yet, throughout the whole fearful scene, the natives never faltered, but sang and shouted words of encouragement to each other as they stood at their chosen posts. The white men on shore rendered all the aid in their power; but the posts of danger and need were filled by the natives. An eye-witness of the scene says:

“To one who saw the noble work of those men during the storm, it is a cause of wonder that they should be called savages by more enlightened races. There seemed to be no instinct of the savage in a man who could rush into that boiling torrent of water that broke upon the reef, and place his own life in peril to save the helpless drowning men of a foreign country.

“While the Americans and Germans were treated alike, it was plain that their sympathies were with the Americans, and they redoubled their efforts when they saw an opportunity to aid the men who represented a country which had insisted that their native government should not be interfered with by a foreign power.”

The coolness of Captain Mullane had mastered the frightened crew. There was no longer confusion. The officers stood by the rail and directed the movements of the men. Time after time the rolling billows dashed the men from the hawser; but the gallant natives succeeded in saving all. By eight o’clock the Nipsic was deserted. The three smallest of the war ships were wrecked.

The four large men-of-war were well out in the harbor, and for the time measurably safe.

But near ten o’clock, the situation became alarming again. Masses of floating wreckage struck the Trenton, as it was lifted by a heavy wave, and carried away the rudder and propeller. Her anchors, unaided, would not keep her from the reef, or from fouling with the other vessels in the harbor.

The Vandalia and the Calliope were drifting toward the wreck of the Adler. As the Vandalia endeavored to steam away, the iron prow of the Englishman arose high in the air and fell with full force upon the Vandalia’s port-quarter. The Calliope lost her jib-boom, and the heavy timbers of the Vandalia were shivered. Every man near the point of the collision was thrown from his feet by the shock. Water was rushing through a great rent in the cabin. It seemed that the Vandalia had received her death blow. The frightened men swarmed from the hatches, but presently returned to their posts.

At this crisis the Englishman essayed a bold manœuvre. Seeing that to remain where he was would be, in a few more moments, ruin to the Vandalia, he resolved to take all risks himself, and letting go all anchors, swung around to the wind and endeavored to put to sea. For a moment the vessel seemed stationary. Then the tremendous power of the propeller began to tell, and the vessel moved slowly forward in the teeth of the storm. Volumes of smoke poured from her funnels, and the ship groaned in every timber. Gradually it became clear that she could escape from the harbor.

This is one of the most daring feats in the naval annals. It was the one desperate chance to save the Calliope and her crew from certain death. An accident to the machinery at this moment, or a slight change in the direction of the wind as she neared the narrow gate-way of the harbor, would have been fatal. Down in the fire room, the men

THE CALLIOPE PUTTING TO SEA.

worked as they never had before. The Trenton lay close to the reef, and the Calliope was compelled to pass between the two. The flagship’s fires were out, and she could do nothing to save herself. Every man felt that a few moments longer would find him a grave in the coral reef. Those on shore were watching with intensest anxiety.

Just then a strange sound came, borne on the wind; a wild ringing cry from the four hundred and fifty on board the Trenton. The Americans were cheering the Calliope. Expecting death for themselves, they rejoiced that their friends might yet escape, and the heart of every Englishman went out to the brave Americans who gave their parting tribute to the Queen’s ship.

There is something peculiarly touching in this incident. It is far above the morituri te salutamus of the gladiator in the arena. It was an expression of immortal courage; the dying saluting the victor; the doomed saluting the saved; manhood distressed greeting manhood triumphant. The English seamen returned the cry. The Calliope safely reached the sea. Her commander afterward said: “Those ringing cheers of the American flagship pierced deep into my heart, and I will ever remember that mighty outburst of fellow-feeling, which I felt came from the bottom of the hearts of the gallant admiral and his crew. Every man on board the Calliope felt as I did; it made us work to win. I can only say, God bless America and her noble sailors.”

Meanwhile the Vandalia, seeing her doom certain, endeavored to reach the beach, but being a much larger vessel than the Nipsic, she could not come so near the shore. A blow from a terrific wave in the night had hurled the captain across his cabin and so injured him that he was unable to control his vessel. His executive officer, Carlin, was in command, but the captain stood by his side to the last. Carlin’s coolness and nerve were wonderful. He had been on duty thirty consecutive hours, and had not tasted food all that time.

In order to reach the beach, the Vandalia was compelled to execute the same perilous feat that had been performed three hours before by the Nipsic. Slipping her anchors, she crowded on all steam and skirted the edge of the reef, finally dashing into the soft sand two hundred yards from the shore and eighty yards from the stern of the Nipsic. The engines were stopped and the fires put out; all hands were ordered on deck, and the vessel swung around broadside to the waves.

At first, her position being supposed safe, it was thought the two hundred and forty men on board might well remain until the storm was over. The men were scattered about the deck and forecastle, clinging to the guns, the masts, rigging and sides of the ship. Within half an hour her real danger became apparent; she wallowed lower and lower in the yielding sand; more and more frequently the seas dashed over her, flooding the hatchways with water. Her boats were dashed from the davits and torn to pieces. It was attempted to fire lines to the shore, but all her powder was ruined. The spray and mist arose in such masses from the sides of the ship, that those on shore could hardly distinguish her position.

At this moment a brave sailor volunteered to swim through the surf with a line, in the hope that his comrades might be rescued. It was a perilous task, as the water was filled with floating wreckage. Fastening a cord to his body, he sprang overboard; an immense wave hurled him against the side of the vessel and struck him senseless. He was drowned almost within touch of his comrades. Gradually the men were driven from the gun-deck. By noon it was under water. The heavy billows that swept over the ship lifted the men from their feet and hurled them against the sides. The salt water intensified the pain of their bruises. Soon all of the men sought refuge in the rigging, and a few officers only remained on the poop-deck. The waves grew more violent.

For once the bold men on shore were powerless. No boat could live in the surf, and there was no firing apparatus on shore, that a line might be conveyed to the vessel. The scores on the land were desperate, but the Vandalia’s doom was sealed.

Finally, they resolved on bolder efforts than had hitherto been made. Three natives fastened a cord to their bodies, and, passing around the side of the bay a quarter of a mile above the wrecked war ship, endeavored to take advantage of the powerful current setting toward the shore, and so reach the vessel. Powerful swimmers as they were, they were hurled to the beach without being able to get within one hundred yards of the vessel. Urged by their chief to try again, effort after effort was made, but without success.

Seeing no other chance, those on the Vandalia one by one dropped into the sea, in the faint hope that they might yet reach the land in safety. Some succeeded in reaching the wreck of the Nipsic, only a short distance away, but many were too weak to draw themselves up to its deck. As they clung to the ropes, the violence of the waves, in some cases, tore the clothing from their bodies.

The captain, sick and feeble, was growing weaker every moment. The brave Carlin stood by him endeavoring to hold him on, and speaking words of encouragement. He had not sufficient strength left to clamber into the rigging and refused a life preserver, insisting that it should be given to some of the others. At length an immense roller plunged toward the vessel, and the captain bent forward to receive the shock. A heavy machine gun was torn from its fastening and hurled full upon the captain. His body passed overboard and was never more seen.

THE BOW OF THE SUNKEN VANDALIA.

One by one others of the officers were beaten from the deck. The suffering was not only with those on the vessel. The brave fellows who labored on the shore and in the surf were cut and bruised by flying sand and the floating fragments. Exposure to the sea water was making them stiff and sore. The natives sought occasional shelter and rest behind an up-turned boat or the masses of drift, and then returned to the battle.

Finally, as by common consent, nearly all of those left in the rigging dropped into the sea. It was an easy matter to reach the Nipsic, and a few succeeded in clambering to her deck; but many were too weak and exhausted to hold on long enough to receive assistance from their comrades, and too far off to be reached by the natives.

By three o’clock the hull of the Vandalia had almost disappeared. A few men were still in the rigging, lying exhausted on the small platforms or clinging to the rat-lines or yards with the desperation of dying men, expecting every moment to be their last. Their arms and limbs were bruised and swollen and cut by holding on the rough ropes. For twenty-four hours they had been without food, and cold and exposure were doing their work. At this moment the rear of the Nipsic swung to the sea, so that but fifty yards separated the two vessels. A successful effort was made to stretch a line between the two; but before all in the fore-rigging could be rescued, the line parted and could not be replaced.

Meanwhile the Trenton, without steam or rudder, lay with her head to the wind, while volumes of water dashed through the hawse-pipes and flooded the engine room. Had the vessel gone down suddenly, none below could have escaped. They stood at their posts till waist deep in the water and the fires were extinct. The berth-deck was flooded. Lieut. Allen and a portion of the men made repeated efforts to close the hawse-pipes, but the force of the waves tore away every plug. Still they labored on, far beneath the decks, momentarily expecting the last.

The admiral and his officers stood on the bridge directing the movements of the vessel. When almost on the eastern shoals a bold coup was suggested by Lieut. Brown. Every man was ordered into the port-rigging, and the compact mass of bodies was used as a sail. The vessel was brought into the center of the bay again. Then she commenced to drift back toward the Olga, which had been holding up in the gale more successfully than any of the other vessels. The stars and stripes were flung to the breeze. If she were doomed, she would go down with flying colors. The Olga endeavored to steam out of the way, but her bow struck the starboard quarter of the flagship, shivering the heavy timbers, carrying away several boats, and throwing the flag to the deck. Again it was flung from the mast-head. The Olga reached the mud-flat on the east side of the harbor. Not a life was lost, and a few weeks later the vessel was hauled off and saved.

The struggle of the Trenton was almost ended. It was five o’clock and daylight was fading as the immense war ship bore down upon the Vandalia. When she struck the latter, all would be over.

That was a memorable scene. The night was coming on the wings of the storm. Those in the Vandalia’s main-top still clung, bruised and bleeding. Their eyes were blinded by the salty spray. They looked on the black waters below knowing they had no strength for further battle with the waves. The final hour was upon them. The great black hull of the Trenton could be seen through the gloom, about to dash upon the stranded vessel and grind her to atoms. Those on the beach ceased their efforts in despair, and stood waiting the last act of the tragedy.

At this moment there came over the waves a renewal of the wild cheer of the morning. Four hundred and fifty voices were heard above the roar of the storm, “Three cheers for the Vandalia!” A cheer in the morning had animated the British; perhaps another cheer now would encourage the despairing seamen of the Vandalia to hold on a little longer. A response went up, feeble, quavering and uncertain, so faint it was scarcely heard by those on shore. With death staring them in the face, they sent up a cheer for the flagship; a cheer more pathetic than any lamentation. That was the saddest cry ever heard. Every heart on shore was melted to pity. “God help them!” they murmured.

Darkness hid the scene. The last cheer had died away. As those on shore listened for the crash, another strange sound came up from the deep. It was a wild burst of music in defiance of the storm. The Trenton’s band was playing the “Star Spangled Banner.” Never before had the thousand men on sea and shore heard such strains at a time like that. The feelings of the Americans on the beach were indescribable. The power of the music vied with the howling of the storm.

Men who during that awful day had exhausted every means of rendering some assistance to their comrades, now seemed inspired to greater effort. They dashed at the surf like wild creatures; but they were powerless. There was nothing left for them to do but wait; and, if they dared, to hope.

The Trenton proved the Vandalia’s salvation. She bore lightly against her without a shock, and swung around in the sand broadside to the sunken ship. Those who remained quickly escaped to the Trenton’s deck.

By ten o’clock the beach was deserted, and all that tempest or man could do had been done. A few watchers patrolled the beach all night in hope of rescuing some one who might not have escaped to the Trenton. But one person was found—a young ensign.

One hundred and forty-four persons had perished. Ninety-one were from the German vessels; fifty-one from the Americans; two from a little trading schooner. Not more than one-third of the bodies were recovered.

AFTER THE STORM: TRENTON IN THE FOREGROUND; VANDALIA’S BOW IN RIGHT CENTER; OLGA IN THE DISTANCE.

The storm died away. It was a strange scene which the morning sun beheld. The shore was strewn with drifted wreck. The shattered schooners lay about the reef. The streets were crossed with fallen trees, and roofless houses stood amid the groves. A fragment of the Eber’s bow was high upon the beach. Far up the western reef the Adler lay. The Olga stood unharmed upon the eastern shoal. Before the consulate, the Nipsic was fast in the sand. Only the bow of the Vandalia’s hull could be seen. By her side was the Trenton, grand though in ruin. And above the desolation floated the Star Spangled Banner, triumphant over the storm.

CHAPTER XII.

ELECTRIC STORMS.

“Far along, From peak to peak the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

And this is in the night:—Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again ’tis black—and now, the glee, Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth.”

HO has not quailed before the storm? Few, indeed, are they whose spirits kindle with the flash of the lightning, and joy in the roar of the thunder, that fills the heavens like the voice of many waters. Bold is the heart that in such scenes can mount with a Byron, and say to the Avernian gloom that wraps the frightened world,

“Let me be A portion of the tempest and of thee!”

Only that fiery, untameable spirit, fearless of man or demon, dare so approach the King of the Storm, or pat the mane of Ocean in his wrath. A thousand plaudits has he won—but not a follower: for when the lightning flames and roars, the cheering rabble slink away in fear, nor dare to emulate that genius, strange and wild as chaos as itself.

THE LYSE FIORD.

The fear of the tempest belongs to every age. The ancient Greeks, from whom the Romans borrowed and modified the myth, told how Hephaistos toiled in his volcanic forge to form the bolts of Zeus, great father of gods and men. These flaming weapons could none oppose. By them rebellious giants were overturned. And the bold Goth, rugged and vigorous, heard the voice of the war-god, Thor, shout to him:

“Mine eyes are the lightning, The wheels of my chariot Roll in the thunder!”

The Arab saw the wild combat of genii, whom the great Solomon had not subdued. Woe to the luckless wight who should arouse their ill-will! The Arabian Nights tell us of a contest between one of these spirits of fire and a beautiful princess, versed in magic. The swarthy Moor beheld the hand of God, waving on his angels to contest with the hosts of evil: and the same idea of wild combat in the spirit world is found in the myths of the Caribs and Lapps. In the Hindoo cosmogony, the lightning and storm are the chief weapons of Siva, the destroyer, who will one day blot the world out of existence. Only in the red man’s tales do we find the idea of the Christian world, of one Great Spirit who rules all nature. In the Persian mythology, lightning and gloom represent the contest between the forces of Ahriman, prince of evil, and Ormuzd, the great creator and preserver of good. And among the old Etruscans, from whom the Romans borrowed many rites and ceremonies, the lightning was one of the chief objects in their system of augury and divination. A favorable flash of lightning outweighed all portents of ill. The thunder was the voice of the gods, communicating their will to men.

And so the ancients were content to pass the mystery by, unsolved. Now and then a Pliny, a Seneca, an Aristotle, ventured a timid speculation upon the origin and cause of lightning, but as electricity was an unknown force to them, their conjectures were as wild as the chimærical tales of Cimmerian darkness in ultra-Scythian realms, or of the Utopian haven of bliss, where the Hyperboreans dwelt. But one of their various conjectures is worthy of note, as it contains an element of truth. It was, that the lightning was produced by mutual friction or violent concussion of the clouds.

Since electricity has been recognized as the agent in the phenomena of thunder storms, inquiry as to whether it is a cause or a result of the formation of clouds, has produced evidence in favor of the latter fact (though clouds differently charged have mutual attraction for each other), for rapid motion of gases may be made to generate electricity. A natural sequence would be that thunder storms are most violent where clouds are heaviest. Hence, thunder storms are naturally most frequent and violent in the tropics, where the greater heat produces immense masses of vapor. and are unknown in the polar world, where the comparative dryness of the atmosphere is unfavorable. The unusual amount of electricity in dense clouds in rapid motion is shown by the tremendous electrical displays attendant upon tornadoes and cyclones. Another illustration of lightning resulting from cloud agency, rather than controlling them, may be found in the cloudless Sahara, where evidences of electricity are sometimes to be observed in the time of the Khamsin, while the thunder storm is unknown. One notable exception to the rule that thunder storms are violent and frequent in all tropical regions is to be found in Peru, with its cloudless skies and eternal sun, where a rainfall or a thunder storm would be as great a curiosity as a palm tree at the north pole. The mere fact of elevation renders the thunder storm more violent in mountainous regions, in both temperate and tropical worlds.

Knowing the character of this mysterious power, we may not enter upon a lengthy discussion of the changes, chemical, physical and otherwise, that may be produced by it. Within the scope of this work, only its rank as an agent of destruction and a historical factor may be considered. Is electricity to be greatly feared? to be put on a par with the flood, the hurricane, and the earthquake? Has it ever figured in the history of nations sufficiently to directly affect their destinies?

The first and most familiar aspect of its power is the thunder storm, which needs not a word of description. It results merely from the discharges passing between two bodies oppositely charged. There is one comparatively rare form of lightning, in which it appears as a globe of fire slowly descending, with wayward and unexpected dashes to the side, sometimes coming down a chimney and playing about the floor like a kitten, much to the discomfiture of the inmates, till it at length explodes with immense force, hurling zig-zag lightnings all about. This peculiar freak, several times observed, is as yet unexplained.

The lightning seems throughout most civilized nations to be the most dreaded of all natural agencies, if we may judge from the many precautions taken against it. And in truth it is a terrific power, cleaving the hardest rocks, rending the mighty oak, and fusing the most refractory substances. Darting into the soil it frequently forms tubes of vitreous appearance by fusing the earth and stones as it passes. The writer has seen masses of straw fused in the same way. And when we remember that French savants have, with the most powerful of batteries been able to produce tubes only an inch in length and one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter by passing shocks through powdered glass, we may well stand in awe at the terrible power that produces tubes thirty feet long and four inches in diameter in the far more obstinate feldspar and quartz.

IDEAL SUBTERRANEAN STORM.

There are numerous cases of death by lightning; but the instances in which more than one person has been killed by a flash are comparatively rare. The freaks played far outdo those of the wind, and puzzle the wisest. March 20, 1784, about four hundred people were assembled in the theatre at Mantua, when lightning struck the building, and killed two persons, injuring ten. But many who were not hurt found the bolt had melted their watch-keys, earrings, and split diamonds they were wearing. How such feats could be performed without in the least harming the possessors is a mystery.

June 11, 1819, while a large assembly were attending divine services in the church of Chateau Neuf les Montiers, in France, lightning struck the building, killing nine persons and wounding eighty-two. In 1715 the lightning fell into the abbey of Noirmoutiers, near Tours, and killed twenty-two horses, but did no further harm to the one hundred and fifty monks at supper than to turn over their one hundred and fifty bottles of wine. In 1855, lightning struck a flock of sheep in France, killing seventy-eight of them and two dogs, and sparing the old shepherdess. A French author relates the case of a priest who was killed by lightning, while the horse on which he rode was unhurt, and quietly continued homeward with the stiffened corpse. A somewhat similar case has come within the knowledge of the writer: a man on horseback being killed, and the saddle perforated; yet the horse remained apparently unhurt. I remember another instance of a man who was struck, and escaped unharmed; but one of his boots was torn to shreds and some of the hobnails melted: and I myself have been struck upon the foot, with no other result than a peculiar numbness, lasting nearly half an hour.

In many instances a livid streak is the only mark left upon the dead body; and again it may be torn almost to atoms; while in some cases not the slightest trace is perceptible. The greater number fall in the first class. In 1838, some cattle were killed by lightning near Nymnegen, in Holland. Their bones were shattered to a thousand fragments, as though by nitro-glycerine; while externally there was no particular token visible. Some sheep killed in Bohemia, in 1718, were similarly served. The fragments of bone were driven so thoroughly throughout the flesh that the carcasses were unfit for food.

In 1869, the mayor of Pradette, France, was killed by lightning, and all his clothes, with the exception of one shoe, were torn from the body. “August 11, 1855, a man was struck by lightning on a road near Vallerois, and entirely divested of his raiment, only a few remnants of which could afterwards be found. Ten minutes after the stroke he was restored to consciousness, complained of the cold, and asked how he came to be without any clothing. No doubt, he would have more easily consoled himself for the loss of his apparel had he known of the case reported by Sestier, of a man whose whole right side was burnt, as if he had been held for some time over a fire-pan, while his shirt, his drawers and the rest of his dress bore no marks whatever of combustion.” Sometimes the clothing is found unstitched; again, it is burnt, and again, in some mysterious manner, seems to be annihilated.

Prof. Tyndall relates his sensations upon having a powerful electric discharge pass through him: “Life was absolutely blotted out for a very sensible interval, without a trace of pain. In a second or so consciousness returned. * * * The intellectual consciousness of my position was restored with singular rapidity, but not so the optical consciousness. * * * The appearance which my body presented to myself was that of a number of separate pieces. The arms, for example, were detached from the trunk and suspended in the air. In fact, memory and the power of reasoning appeared to be complete long before the optic nerve was restored to healthy action. But what I wish chiefly to dwell upon here, is the absolute painlessness of the shock; and there can not be a doubt that to a person struck dead by lightning the passage from life to death occurs without consciousness being in the least degree implicated. It is an abrupt stoppage of sensation, unaccompanied by a pang.”

There is another class of peculiar freaks performed by this subtle force, which the following instances illustrate. Prof. Perty tells of a thunder storm in Switzerland, when “the lightning sprang from a pear tree upon the verandah of a house, where it killed a boy and wounded his mother. The pear tree and the house were burned down. On the arm of the wounded woman a remarkably elegant impression of twigs and leaves, like a photographic copy of part of the pear tree, was found.”

There are several cases noted of persons sitting near windows when lightning flashing near by has produced an exact likeness of the person, as though engraved on the glass.

“In 1825 the lightning fell upon the brigantine El Buon Servo, which lay at anchor in the bay of Armiro, at the mouth of the Adriatic Sea. The superstitious Ionian sailors generally fasten a horseshoe to the foremasts of their ships, probably fancying that this simple means affords them protection against the evil intentions of wizards and witches. Of course, the Buon Servo was not without its horseshoe. Antonio Teodoro, of Scarpanto, was sitting near the mast, when it was struck by lightning. He was killed at once. No marks of combustion were found on his body, nor were his clothes torn; but on his back was found the distinct impression of a horseshoe of the same size as that which was nailed to the mast.”

In the records of the Academy of Sciences, we find that “the Signora Morosa, a lady of Lugano, who sat near a window during a thunder storm, received a shock which did her no further injury; but a flower which stood in the passage of the electric fluid was distinctly pictured on her thigh.” She carried the mark to her grave.

Lightning is one of the most useful purifiers of the atmosphere. There can be no doubt that large quantities of noxious exhalations are destroyed by electrical discharges. Its beneficial effects in this respect have been long noted. “Both Hippocrates and Galenus remark that the water which falls during a thunder storm is more healthy to drink than that which proceeds from a uniformly clouded sky: and Plutarch mentions that the rain from a thunder cloud is considered as more favorable to vegetation, and communicates to plants a particular flavor.” There are also on record a number of instances in which persons long in poor health, on receiving light shocks, have greatly improved in health and appearance. Similar results have been noticed in plant life. Doubtless such cases as these gave rise to the belief of the ancients, that to be struck by lightning was to be favored by the gods.

This opinion was especially noted in the case of Mithridates. Slightly wounded in the forehead by lightning when a child, he escaped unhurt later in life, when his sword was totally destroyed. These facts caused him to be held in superstitious fear by the Romans. And Quintus Julius Eburnus became consul, B. C., mainly because of a similar mark of divine favor. Those who were killed by a flash were believed to be not subject to decay, and were robed in white and buried where they fell. So also those whose tombs lightning struck were peculiarly honored of Heaven. Lord Byron alludes to this in his stanza upon the bust of Ariosto on the poet’s tomb at Ferrara, which had been struck by lightning:

“The lightning rent from Ariosto’s bust The iron crown of laurel’s mimicked leaves, Nor was the ominous element unjust, For the true laurel wreath which glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet, still, if fondly superstition grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies below Whate’er it strikes—yon head is doubly sacred now.”

The identification of electricity with lightning is a comparatively recent occurrence. The story of Benjamin Franklin, patron saint of the devout lightning-rod agent, is too familiar to require repetition. Yet, the idea was first broached in the latter part of the seventeenth century by two students of the new force, more than fifty years before Franklin’s experiments.

Thunder clouds usually float from two thousand to five thousand feet from the earth; but there is one case on record of two priests being killed by lightning from a cloud only thirty yards from the ground; while another thunder storm is noted as having occurred eighteen thousand feet from the earth. As sound travels about one thousand and ninety feet per second, any one may ascertain the distance of a flash by noting the time that elapses ere the thunder is heard. All existing records fail to tell of thunder heard more than four miles; while the cannonading at Paris in 1871 could be heard one hundred and five miles; and Waterloo could be heard one hundred and fifty miles.

The action of lightning is instantaneous, and when near by the report is at first a single sharp crack; but it is always followed by a long rolling, so characteristic that every name given the thunder in a measure endeavors to imitate it. The reason of the continued roll from a single flash is simple, and is to be found in the fact that a flash usually travels several miles; and as sound travels as stated above, the sounds generated at different distances come to the ear in rapid succession, resulting in a continuous roar.

As the flash is due merely to the attraction between two bodies charged with opposite kinds of electricity, the discharge may pass either up or down. Cases are on record of persons on a mountain side being killed by lightning from a cloud below them, and of people on the ground killed by lightning dashing from them toward the sky.

Among the more notable fatalities resulting from lightning may be mentioned the terrible thunder storm of 1793, at Buenos Ayres, when the lightning struck thirty-seven times within the city, and killed nineteen people. A number of persons were killed on June 18, 1872, in England, at different places; and numerous others perished within the month from similar discharges.

Electricity seems to kill by destroying nervous power. Cardanus tells of eight reapers being killed while taking their meal under an oak. When the witnesses of the occurrence ran to the spot, they saw a strange sight. The victims “seemed to be still busy with their frugal repast. One of them held his glass, another was putting some bread into his mouth, a third had his hand in the dish. The angel of death had struck them so violently that the whole surface of their bodies bore the marks of his black wings. They seemed so many statues sculptured in black marble.”

“In another case where ten reapers were killed under a hedge, one of them had a dog on his knee at the time when he was struck. The unfortunate man was caressing with one hand his little companion, and with the other giving him a piece of bread. Both master and dog were merely inert masses of rigid muscle and stiffened sinew, and yet the bread was still held by the lifeless hand. The dog, with his mouth expressively open, seemed still to beg for the proffered morsel.”

A peasant woman in the suburbs of Nancy was struck while gathering flowers. She was found standing, holding in her hand the daisy she had been plucking. A French soldier took refuge under a tree during a storm; a peasant sheltered himself in a copse near by. The soldier was killed by lightning. The storm over, the peasant crept out and called to the soldier to come on. Receiving no answer, he

HARVESTERS KILLED BY LIGHTNING.

went up and touched the erect, motionless figure. It at once melted away. Only a little dust remained. A similar result occurred not long since in a powerful electric light plant. A large rat endeavored to cross some of the machinery, and at once became rigid, as though an image of stone. One of the employes, taking a stick, endeavored to push the carcass off; it at once disappeared in a cloud of impalpable dust.

Terrible results have followed from lightning striking into powder magazines. August 18, 1769, the powder vault in the tower of St. Nazaire, at Brescia, was struck. The explosion destroyed one-sixth of the city completely, and damaged all buildings more or less. Three thousand persons were killed, while the property ruined amounted to over $3,000,000. June 26, 1807, the lightning struck a magazine in the fortress of the Luxembourg, ruining the lower town, and killing or wounding two hundred and thirty people. In 1856 the powder vaults in the church of St. John, in the island of Rhodes were struck. More than two hundred people were instantly killed.

The lightning often shows in itself a sort of explosive power. Every one is familiar with the blasting of trees, and the throwing of fragments to a great distance. Some unusually violent effects of this class have been noticed. In 1762, stones weighing one hundred and fifty pounds, were flung from a church in Cornwall, to a distance of one hundred and eighty feet. In the Shetland Isles, during the last century, a rock of mica schist, one hundred and five feet long, ten feet broad, and from three to five feet thick, was in an instant torn by a flash of lightning from its bed, and broken into three large and several smaller fragments. One piece twenty-six feet long, ten feet broad, and four feet thick, was merely inverted. A second, twenty-eight feet long, seventeen feet broad, and five feet thick, was hurled over a high point to a distance of fifty yards: another mass, forty feet long, was hurled still further in the same direction, quite into the sea.

Certain localities seem to have peculiar attractive power for lightning. On the Norwegian coast is a narrow channel between two dark rocky headlands, where the lightning seems often to play almost incessantly. The gloomy chasm, so frequently reverberating with the roll of the thunder, is viewed with superstitious fear by ignorant sailors; and the boldest heart is filled with awe in the forbidding presence of the Lyse Fiord. By many he is thought a venturesome captain who will dare take his vessel through this frowning gateway.

But after a careful consideration of the topic, it is clear that lightning is less to be feared than almost any other of the atmospheric phenomena. Comparatively rare are the cases where more than one or two persons are killed at once. Statistics hitherto collected show that scarcely one death in two thousand is occasioned by it. And yet no force seems to be so universally feared. Every people in every age have taken precautions against it, while the hurricane and the flood pass almost unheeded.

The ancient Thracians were wont to shoot their arrows at the sky during a storm, to remind the fire-gods to be a little more careful in their sport. A similar practice is found among certain South African tribes: while the South Sea Islanders, far more fearless, tell of Ina, a woman whom the moon stole for his wife, while she was beating bark-cloth. She may be seen in the moon to-day—the figure we call the “man in the moon.” Continually at work, she spreads out her cloth on the sky to dry—(clouds)—fastening it down with blue stones, of which the sky is built. When done, she gathers it up, throwing down the stones, which, falling upon the earth, produce the sound of thunder. The lightning is the torch the moon holds to aid her in her work.

Augustus was wont to retire to a subterranean vault during a storm, and it is said the Japanese emperors had a similar custom, having the additional precaution of large reservoirs of water over the grottos. When away from home, Augustus usually wrapped himself in sealskin, believed, not only by the Romans, but by many others, to be lightning-proof. In some portions of France, the peasants believe snake skins to be an efficient anti-lightning charm. And among not a few of the ancients there was a belief prevalent that lightning never injured a person in bed.

In the passage quoted from Byron on the bust of Ariosto, allusion is made to the belief that lightning never strikes the laurel-plant sacred to Apollo. Firm in this opinion, Tiberius, during thunder storms, put on a laurel crown; and similar virtue is to-day ascribed by the Chinese to peach and mulberry trees. Not a few persons to-day believe glass to be a safeguard, and that a person is safe beside a closed window. Seamen, and not a few of the peasantry of different regions, believe the firing of guns will break up a thunder storm. Tolling of church-bells is another powerful protection against the fires of the sky, which has cost many a bell-ringer his life; a tall steeple being unusually liable to be struck, and a damp bell-rope forming a good conductor. One authority tells us of three hundred and eighty-six steeples struck within thirty-three years, and one hundred and twenty-one bell-ringers killed. The preventive was all right; but these tollers had sinned away all right to protection, and perished as victims of Divine wrath, instead of an absurd custom.

Such are some of the many illusory modes of protection in vogue in times past, and existing to no small extent in the present. Comment upon them is unnecessary. We know to-day that the higher objects are most liable to be struck, and that metals are the best conductors; and on these facts the whole system of lightning-rod protection is based.

But in regard to even the best conductors, a witty German has found much room for ridicule. “While I am writing this, symptoms of dysentery are showing themselves with us in Gottingen. Six persons are said to have died of this complaint—that is more than twice as many in a few days as the lightning has killed in our town in half a century—and yet the public seems remarkably easy upon the subject. I do not even find that the cheapest dysentery conductors have been resorted to. People still go about in light clothing, although the wind is already blowing over the stubble, and I have even perceived, within the last few days, that some persons sleep with open windows, which are very carefully closed during a thunder storm, and yet there is not a single instance known that lightning has ever made its way through an open window, while dysentery very easily strikes into a bedroom, particularly when, after a warm day, it makes its appearance in company of rain and a cool wind. Is not this singular? How would people conduct themselves in these days if the dysentery was to rise above the horizon in the form of a low black cloud, changing day into twilight, and whenever it selected a victim, explode with a violent thunder clap, which made the house shake? I believe there would be no end of singing and praying. And yet this storm is now impending on our heads—but without thunder claps and black clouds, which are, after all, only accessories—and we go about our affairs as if nothing were happening.”

The fact that objects reaching much above the general surface are most liable to be struck, places ships at sea in a peculiarly dangerous position; and considering the relative number of the two, ships are more frequently struck than houses. The packet boat New York, was struck some years since: the chain which was attached to the mainmast as conductor was entirely volatilized, not being large enough to act as conductor.

The fact that electricity passes most readily from elevated points, renders the ship the scene of the most beautiful of the more common electric phenomena. Any one who has visited an electric plant knows how sparks and flashes of light accumulate on the brushes; and a similar spectacle may at times be seen on the wires of electric lights at night. So at sea during cloudy weather, the yards, masts, spars and other more prominent points often glow with pale lambent flames, of greenish or bluish tint. One who clambers up to them may find upon near approach that they almost disappear; while to one a short distance away they are as distinct as ever. A hand plunged into the flame glows with the same spectral light. This phenomenon is popularly known among sailors as “St. Elmo’s fire;” but there is much difference of opinion as to what it may forebode. Some sailors believe the ghost of a dead comrade is accompanying the ship. Others consider that St. Elmo has taken the ship under his protection. A more common, and the rational view, is thus given by Longfellow:

“Last night I saw St. Elmo’s stars With their glimmering lanterns, all at play, On the tops of the masts, and the tips of the spars, And I knew we should have foul weather to-day. Cheerily, my hearties!—yo-heave-oh! Brail up the mainsail and let her go, As the winds will, and St. Antonio.”

This phenomenon has been noticed from the earliest times. Shakespeare wrote three centuries ago, in “The Tempest:”

Prospero.—“Hast thou, spirit, Performed, to point the tempest that I bid thee?”

Ariel.—“To every article. I boarded the King’s ship: now on the beak, Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flamed amazement: sometimes I’d divide, And burn in many places: on the topmast, The yards and bowsprit would I flame distinctly; Then meet and join.”

When Lysander was about to set sail from Lampsacus to attack the Athenian fleet, “Castor and Pollux” appeared upon each side of the Lacedemonian admiral’s vessel, greatly encouraging him. Such were the names of the strange lights among the ancients: and ever and anon we find record of their appearance.

This title needs explanation. This peculiar halo is not confined to the sea, nor to inanimate objects. The electric aureole has been frequently observed upon persons, and has always been considered a good omen. The Spartan Gylippus on his march to raise the siege of Syracuse, saw a star upon his lance and rejoiced at the token of divine favor. Nearly every tyro in Latin is familiar with the tale that Servius Tullius, when a child, was found asleep in his cradle with flames playing about him, and was in consequence educated like a prince, and became king of Rome. Stories of halos about Constantine the Great, and the Visigoth emperor Wamba, are also told. It is said that during Cæsar’s African war, flames sprang from the standards of the fifth legion during a stormy night: and at a time when Rome, almost in despair at the triumphs of Carthage and the death of two Scipios in Spain, was seriously meditating the abandonment of the contest, Lucius Marcius ventured upon a harangue to encourage the dispirited legions. While he spoke, a flame rested upon his helmet. Roused by the wonderful mark of divine favor, the Romans went forth yet again, and gained one of their greatest victories. What might have been the fate of the world if Carthage, not Rome, had prevailed? Who dare assert that an electric flame has not changed the destinies of the universe?

But the earliest story of this sort comes from the famed expedition of the Argo, in search of the Golden Fleece. During a fearful storm Orpheus invoked the gods of Samothracia; and immediately divine lights appeared upon the heads of Castor and Pollux, two members of the party, and the storm ceased. So after death the two mythical heroes were promoted a place among the demi-gods, and became the especial patrons of sailors: and the strange lights on shipboard were supposed to indicate their presence. A single light, however, was supposed to bode evil, and to be the work of the mischief-making Helena.

Since the extension of travel and scientific research, this phenomenon has been so frequently observed as to be no longer considered remarkable; and it is supposed to be due to electric clouds or currents coming in direct contact with objects, so that instead of the flash of lightning from a distance, there is a steady discharge, often with some hissing or crackling sound, noticeable at the brushes of any electric machine; in fact, the noise is seldom absent. It almost invariably appears before or after a thunder storm: and has hardly ever been observed during one. To this same cause must be attributed the occasional showers of luminous rain and dust.

But no amount of science can rob such appearances of their terrors for the uninitiated. Of scores of instances we might name, a single one will suffice. Prof. Siemens tells of an unusual electric disturbance during a Khamsin, while his party and his Arab guides were upon the summit of the great pyramid. Hearing a hissing noise as the wind rose, he at length concluded it must be due to electricity: and “holding up a full wine-bottle, the head of which was coated with tin foil,” the same hissing was increased. The bottle was then wrapped with moist paper, to increase its capacity. Even before this, a severe shock could be obtained from the head of the bottle.

“The Arabs, who for some time had been looking on with astonishment at our proceedings, came to the conclusion that we were practicing magic, and insisted upon our leaving the pyramid. Their remonstrances being of no avail, they now wanted to use the right of the stronger, and to make us descend by force. I retreated to the highest stone block and loaded my bottle as strongly as possible, while the leader of the Arabs seized me by the other hand and was endeavoring to drag me down. At this critical moment, I touched him with the neck of the bottle, and the effects of the shock it produced were such as to surpass my keenest expectations. The son of the desert, whose nerves had never before felt a similar commotion, fell flat down upon the ground, as if struck by lightning; and then springing up with a dreadful howl, soon vanished out of sight, followed by all his comrades.”

These cases of halos and electric aureoles thus far mentioned, have clearly played a far more important part in the history of nations than the more frequently occurring lightning stroke, merely because of the wonderful hold they have had upon the superstitious tendency of man. Leave Servius Tullius out of the history of Rome, or leave out the speech and aureole of Marcius, and who can say how different the face of the earth might be?

More frequently observed, and because of its frequency, comparatively unheeded in northern climes, is the aurora, which in the temperate zone has frequently inspired terror equal to the earthquake, though absolutely harmless. The writer recalls that a bright aurora not so very many years ago caused not a few superstitious folk to believe the end of the world was at hand. They believed the red streamers to be the chariot of fire in which the Lord was speeding earthward. This was the great aurora of September 3, 1859, which was visible from the United States to Siberia, from the Cape of Good Hope and Australia to the north of Europe. It was the most tremendous ever known, and well calculated to terrify the superstitious.[A]

[A] And even so late as 1872, the brilliant aurora which was seen as far south as Alexandria, was believed by the intelligent Parisians to forebode terrible wars, and the speedy overthrow of the hated Germans, who had so lately trampled their capital and their pride. And in earlier days the northern light had been deemed the harbinger of war, famine or pestilence.

Humboldt, and others since, have supposed the aurora to be light emitted by the earth itself; but to-day its electric character is proven beyond a doubt. Electric discharges passed through a tube containing greatly rarefied dry air produce the same effect on a small scale; and every aurora produces a powerful disturbance of magnetic instruments. In most cases, they are attended by a hissing, crackling noise: so the Siberians are wont to say that “the raging host is passing.”

We find occasional references to the aurora among ancient writers, but little attempt to explain it. So we have even few myths, it not being common enough in warmer climes to hold a place in popular tales. But in Iceland, and more northern regions, it is of constant and brilliant occurrence, merely because it requires dry air, and the coldest air is the driest. So among Scandinavian races appears the myth embodied by Longfellow in the “Saga of King Olaf.” The war god, Thor, speaks:

“The light thou beholdest Stream through the heavens In flashes of crimson, Is but my red beard, Blown by the night wind, Affrighting the nations.”

And Scott has told us of the belief in Scotland and the northern isles, of spirits abroad in the upper air:

“The monk gazed long on the lovely moon, Then into the night he looked forth: And red and bright, the streamers light, Were dancing in the glowing north. So had he seen, in fair Castile, The youth in glittering squadrons start, Sudden the flying jennet wheel, And hurl the unexpected dart. He knew by the streams that shot so bright, That spirits were riding the Northern light.”

The light emitted by the aurora varies much in intensity. Ordinarily it is not greater than that of the moon in her first quarter; but a few instances are recorded where it was powerful enough to make itself perceptible by day; and on one occasion it was strong enough at night to cast a shadow in the midst of a Newfoundland fog. As the phenomenon has been carefully studied only within a century, it is not safe to affirm with certainty what records of the past three hundred years have induced many to believe; that it is of special frequency at periods of one hundred and fifty years. This can only apply to the temperate zones; for in the polar world it is to be seen on almost every clear still night.

M. Martins has given us a striking picture of the auroras. “At times they are simple diffused gleams or luminous patches; at others, quivering rays of pure white which run across the sky, starting from the horizon as if an invisible pencil were being drawn over the celestial vault. At times it stops in its course: the incomplete rays

LAND OF THE AURORA.

do not reach the zenith, but the aurora continues at some other point; a bouquet of rays darts forth, spreads out into a fan, then becomes pale and dies out. At other times long golden draperies float above the head of the spectator, and take a thousand folds and undulations, as if agitated by the wind. They appear to be at but a slight elevation in the atmosphere, and it seems strange that the rustling of the folds, as they double back on each other, is not audible. Generally a luminous bow is seen in the north; a black segment separates it from the horizon, its dark color forming a contrast with the pure white or red of the bow, which darts forth the rays, extends, becomes divided, and soon presents the appearance of a luminous fan, which fills the northern sky, and mounts nearly to the zenith, where the rays, uniting, form a crown, which in its turn, darts forth luminous jets in all directions. The sky then looks like a cupola of fire: blue, green, red, yellow and white vibrate in the palpitating rays of the aurora. But this brilliant spectacle lasts only a few minutes; the crown first ceases to emit luminous jets, and then gradually dies out; a diffuse light fills the sky; here and there a few luminous patches, resembling light clouds, open and close with an incredible rapidity, like a heart that is beating very fast. They soon get pale in their turn; everything fades away and becomes confused; the aurora seems to be in its death-throes; the stars, which its light had obscured, shine with a renewed brightness; and the long polar night, sombre and profound, again assumes its sway over the icy solitudes of earth and ocean.”

In the presence of such brilliancy and beauty, both poet and artist may despair. It may be copied only by the master hand that sent it flaming through the heavens. There is naught under the sun whereunto to liken it, and it is the electric flash which men may least fear; and yet, even it has wrought evil at times; for its magnetic power disturbs the compass; and the electric storms it betokens have more than once in the past caused electric wires to set objects near them on fire. I well remember the powerful electric disturbances that attended a magnificent aurora in 1884, which was visible as far as southern Arkansas. Depots were fired in many places by electric switch-boards; one in Pennsylvania taking fire four times. During this electric storm, telegraphs and telephones were temporarily useless.

Such are the phenomena presented in the atmosphere by this most mysterious power. Dreadful in the lightning’s leap, strange and uncanny in the aureole’s glow, wildly and weirdly beautiful in the flickering flash and flow of the Northern Light, we have seen that, though it has played an important part in the history of the world because of its appeal to man’s superstition, it is notwithstanding the occasional bolt of death, to be considered, while one of the most powerful and universal, one of the least to be feared of all the forces of nature; and is practicably responsible for few great disasters.

CHAPTER XIII.

RAIN, HAIL AND SNOW.

“I bring fresh showers for the thirsty flowers, From the seas and the streams, I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet birds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under. And then again I dissolve in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores, I change, but I can not die. For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.”

HE cloud is well worth Shelley’s admiration; for though it be but a vague oppressive mist when it enwraps, yet afar it assumes either beauty or gloom, as its seeming whims may dictate. Few are they who have never paused in silent admiration of some beautiful fleecy spirit of the upper deep, changing every instant like the shifting figures of a kaleidoscope, or presenting fantastic likenesses of natural objects, or ever and anon presenting pictures of strange monsters, such as only the superstitious and timid can imagine. Often in times past have nations stood aghast at the portentous signs observed in season of some great calamity. A lurid beam of light from the hidden sun, darting through a rift in the clouds, has been reported as a flaming sword. Shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, the sky was filled with horses and chariots, rushing to battle. After the siege the wretched survivors recognized too late what was the purpose of the warning.

Wordsworth speaks of these bizarre fantasies:

“Lo! in the burning west the craggy nape Of a proud Ararat! and thereupon, The Ark, her melancholy voyage done. Yon rampant cloud mimics a lion’s shape, There combats a huge crocodile—agape, A golden spear to swallow! and that brown And mossy grove, so near yon blazing town, Stirs and recedes—destruction to escape, Yet all is harmless—as the Elysian shades Where spirits dwell in undisturbed repose, Silently disappear and quickly fades, Meek Nature’s evening comment on the shows That for oblivion take their daily birth From all the fuming vanities of Earth.”

And naught can present so sombre and terrifying an aspect as those phantoms of the air, when mailed with the lightning and flying with the storm.

Yet, upon the cloud the welfare of the human race is dependent, as much as upon any other force in nature: for rain or drouth, famine or plenty, snow or flood, all follow in its path. More than once has rain or storm decided the destiny of nations. Far different might our own lot have been, if that bitter storm of Christmas night, 1777, had not given Washington an opportunity of surprising the carousing Hessians in Trenton, and so reviving the drooping spirits of his countrymen. Hardly would he have escaped, but that the sudden frost hardened the ground and enabled him to steal away by night with his artillery, leaving the chafing Cornwallis the privilege of attacking the deserted camp on the Assanpink in the morning. It was a winter storm that enabled the bold Vermonters to surprise the frowning fortress on the upper Hudson. Napoleon could invade Russia, and drive the Cossack pell-mell before him; no mortal power could control the elements; and his splendid hosts melted away like snow in the breath of the icy storm; and once more the Cossack sang to his steed:

“Now fiercely neigh, my gallant gray; thy breast is broad and ample. Thy hoofs shall prance o’er the fields of France and the pride of her heroes trample.”

Again the “Man of Destiny” was conquered by the elements.

“There was a sound of revelry by night”

as the dread combat of Waterloo prepared. The plan of the “Genius of War” was superb. But all his contests were problems of artillery. “The Lord is on the side of the strongest battalions and heaviest artillery"—bold manner of saying that “when one seeks for the reason of the successes of great generals, one is surprised to find that they did everything necessary to insure them.” But he who would insure success must have the clouds at his beck. That night it rained. The mud crippled his artillery and left the contest to the rifle and bayonet. Waterloo was lost. A shower of rain changed the face of Europe—the history of the world.

Scriptural narrative and the sage Josephus tell us how the Philistine host were cut down by the motley rabble of almost unarmed Israelites, routed mainly by a terrific thunder storm that beat in their faces, flamed upon their weapons, and transformed the disciplined army into a panic-stricken multitude. What might have been the future of Israel and the Jewish faith, but for the intervention of that storm? We need not multiply instances.

FIELD OF WATERLOO.

The causes that produce the different phenomena of condensation in rain, hail and snow, are not known. Rainfall is the most indefinite of all the atmospheric phenomena in location, quantity, frequency, and distribution. The winds do not vary greatly, one year with another; but such is not the case with the rain. Sometimes the condensation is slow and the moisture falls on the earth as mist. Some suppose that the rainfall is due merely to the cold of great elevations: and this would seem to be well supported by the prevalence of fogs on the Newfoundland banks, where the constant cold current and the occasional icebergs produce a similar degree of cold at sea level, condensing the moisture from the warm seas southward. Others urge that two masses of saturated air of different temperature combine, necessarily condensing the surplus; and the Newfoundland banks are again referred to as an illustration.

Light on fog-banks often presents peculiar and beautiful illusions. The writer remembers having seen a whole town apparently wrapped in flames, the effect being produced by the lights from many windows shining through a light mist that was curling and twisting before a light breeze. Similar causes produce the peculiar halos and mock-suns and mock-moons not infrequently seen in the sky. These, and the beautiful rainbow, all depend upon the reflection and refraction of light in passing through vapor masses. These curious spectacles once had no little terror for the ignorant and superstitious. Shakespeare doubtless alludes to some such case in the dialogue between Hubert and King John, making Hubert narrate an exaggerated version of the facts, as the superstitiously inclined rabble reported it:

Hubert.—“My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night; Four fixed; and the fifth did whirl about The other four with wondrous motion.”

King John.—“Five moons?”

Hubert.—“Old men and beldams in the streets Do prophecy upon it dangerously; Young Arthur’s death is common in their mouths.”

Sometimes an appearance more terrifying to the uninitiated is seen. The traveler in Germany may hear strange myths of specters that frequent the mountains. It was long said that spirits dwelt on the summit of the Matterhorn. Gigantic phantoms roamed the Harz Mountains. One of the best known of all these apparitions is the famous “Specter of the Brocken.” The wanderer on the lonely height at sunrise may see upon a neighboring summit a gigantic shadowy figure, moving about, and mimicking every motion of the traveler. Of course, it is but his shadow on a neighboring fog-bank; but the solution remained a mystery long enough to terrify many a simple peasant into needless invocations of the saints. But similar appearances are occasionally observable in many localities. The Spaniard Ulloa records that on the mountain Pambamarca, in Peru, he saw his shadow on the cloud surrounded by three complete circular rainbows. The same peculiarity has been frequently noticed elsewhere, but never on so grand a scale. We find no peculiar myths concerning halos in general, it being generally considered that they announce the approach of rain; and the fog-bank is of no especial danger save to the seaman, or the traveler overtaken and blinded by one in mountain fastnesses; though their depressing influence has led one writer to exclaim:

“Fly, fly, profane fogs! fly hence far away, Taint not the pure springs of the springing day With your dull influence; it is for you To sit and scowl upon night’s heavy brow.”

And the fog, though not ornamental—unless we except that dry haze, the Indian summer—may be useful in preventing a frost, or in keeping a parched earth from drying too rapidly. But for this last, all the world prefers the rain, and sings with Longfellow:

SPECTER OF THE BROCKEN.

“How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain! How it clatters along the roofs Like the tramp of hoofs! How it gushes and struggles out, From the throat of the overflowing spout, Across the window pane it pours and pours, And swift and wide, With a muddy tide, Like a river, down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain.”

Not always welcome; for we find the same poet moaning:

“The day is cold, and dark, and dreary, It rains, and the rain is never weary.”

And certainly, the farmer who looks through the driving rain at his ruined crops has little sentiment left to expend upon its beauty. But the world over, after a rain every feature of a landscape stands out with singular clearness; the haze commonly prevalent has for the nonce disappeared.

The amount of rainfall varies so vastly in different countries, that it would be tedious to the reader to enter upon a detail of the different amounts. In general it is greatest upon those portions of the land first reached by regular incoming sea winds. So in South America, Peru and southern Ecuador are practically without rain, as the Andes and the Amazon forests deprive the trade winds of their moisture ere they reach the Pacific coast; while southern Chili seldom sees the sun; lying in the track of the return trades, whose moisture is at once precipitated by the Andes. So in India the monsoon which pours deluges of water along the southwestern coasts, brings but twenty-three inches a year to the central plateau; and by the time Central Asia is reached, it is so dry the steppes of Tartary must remain almost a desert. And in our own land, we find in general the heaviest rain from the eastern coast to the central region: while the western plateau along the eastern slopes of the Rockies is unusually dry, and liable to protracted drouths: and in the Mojave desert, and in southeastern California, the rainfall is less than two inches per year. On the North Pacific coast the rainfall increases rapidly, as in the southern Andes; but in general our highest mean rainfall is in the southern portion of the Gulf States. The highest average in the world is so far credited to Sumatra, one hundred and thirty inches. This, of course, refers to tracts of considerable size; for a small tract in Assam, on a mountain slope, where is the town of Cherrapungee, has a rainfall of four hundred and ninety-three and two-tenth inches per annum—more than forty-one feet! Twenty-two feet of rain have fallen there in a single month! A better idea of this may be obtained by observing that our average rainfall, from Missouri eastward, is about three feet a year. The rains of the Amazon and Congo basins are enormous, and would suffice to swell our Mississippi to as great volume as either of them. On the other hand, the lowest recorded rainfall for a large tract is that of Greenland—fifteen and five-tenth inches; while Australia, with fifteen and seven-tenth inches, is but little better off. It may be mentioned here, that the term “mean rainfall” includes snow also: ten inches of snow being ordinarily estimated as one inch of rain.

A point long mooted, now considered as definitely settled, was, the influence of forests upon rainfall. There was no doubt that forests retarded the descent of water into the streams, and so lessened the danger of floods; and observations of late years have shown that the forest also increases the amount of rainfall, aiding in the work of condensation. In the northern lumber regions, the rainfall in the cleared tracts is less than in the time of the forests, while floods are more sudden and dangerous.

These general features being noticed, mention of a few extraordinary rainfalls may be of interest. The most remarkable rain in one day occurred September 13, 1879, at Purneah, in Bengal, when thirty-five inches fell; about as much as Illinois gets in a year. At Nagina, thirty-two and four-tenth inches fell. Some extraordinary showers have been recorded in our own country, the most rapid being one and one-half inches in five minutes: the most rapid long one, ten inches in three hours; but no record of a day in anywise approaches the Bengal rain.

A peculiar phenomenon of occasional occurrence in the Western States is that of “cloud-bursts,” or “water-spouts” as they are sometimes called, when immense masses of water fall in a few minutes. As the entire amount of moisture that can be held by the atmosphere at ordinary temperature would make but two inches of rain, it must follow that to produce such downpours as are here recorded, immense quantities of moisture from a wide area must be drawn in and condensed rapidly at a single point. Perhaps this is done by a reverse cyclonic movement, the atmosphere rapidly descending in a “spout,” instead of ascending.

August 11, 1876, a tremendous downpour occurred at Fort Sully, Dakota: “and on the opposite side of the Missouri River, the water draining from a canon was reported to have moved out in a solid bank three feet deep and two hundred feet wide.” Two others of nearly equal violence occurred during the same month: one in Utah, and one in Kansas. “June 12, 1879, on Beaver Creek, ninety miles south of Deadwood, Dakota, there was a cloud-burst, which, without a gradual rise of water, in a few minutes covered the country and drowned eleven persons.” A cloud-burst in June, 1884, sent a torrent eight feet deep from the hillside into Jefferson, Montana, drowning several persons. Another one in June, 1885, destroyed a town in Mexico, drowning over one hundred and seventy of its eight hundred inhabitants. Cloud-bursts near Pittsburg, on the night of July 25, 1874, destroyed $500,000 worth of property, and drowned or crushed in the wrecks, one hundred and thirty-four persons. A cloud-burst in Arizona, August 6, 1881, changed the Hassayampa River from a dry ravine at sunset to a river a mile wide and from two to fifteen feet deep by 11 P.M.; by noon next day the river was again dry. Two days later a downpour at Central City, Colorado, suddenly left from four to six feet of water in the two principal streets.

Snow is practically unknown over two-thirds of the land surface of the earth, and the damage done by it is confined largely to the inland regions of the temperate zone. And even then heavy snowfalls do no great injury unless followed by extremely cold wind. The blizzard laden with “icy sand” is fearful.

“The night sets in on a world of snow, And the air grows sharp and chill, And the warning roar of a fearful blow Is heard on the distant hill. And the Norther! See! On the mountain peak, In his breath, how the old trees writhe and shriek! He shouts on the plains, Ho-ho! Ho-ho! He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow, And growls with a savage will.”

The extreme ranges of temperature produced suddenly by high area or anti-cyclonic storms are the most dangerous features of the blizzard; while the only damage done by snow is to blind the person caught away from home, and cause him to lose his way. The past ten years have been marked by severe storms in our own winter season, the most terrible being that of January 11, 1888, when the wind blew from thirty to fifty miles an hour, and large numbers of persons in the west were frozen, and thousands of cattle perished. At Helena, Montana, the thermometer fell fifty degrees in four and one-half hours. The snow-laden wind reached a speed of forty miles an hour at Galveston, Texas. At Brownsville, Texas, the temperature fell forty degrees in eight hours. Two months later came an exceedingly heavy snow attended by high winds, in the eastern Middle States. This is popularly known as the “New York blizzard.” Snow drifted in many places ten or fifteen feet deep.

“The fence was lost, and the wall of stone, The windows blocked, and the well-curb gone, The haystack had grown to a mountain lift, And the woodpile looked like a monstrous drift, As it lay by the farmer’s door.”

The chief damage in all snow storms results from the temporary obstruction of roads and cessation of business. No very great destruction of human life has ever resulted, save in case of armies overtaken by the storm. Napoleon lost four hundred and fifty thousand men on his Russian expedition. Both armies suffered terribly in the recent Russo-Turkish war, as they lay facing each other at Shipka Pass.

The constant accumulations of snow in the colder regions of the earth produce those immense rivers of ice known as glaciers, the fragments breaking from which as they enter the sea are known as icebergs. These, borne by currents to the southward, have no small influence in modifying the climate. In mountainous regions the accumulations of snow and ice produce snow-slides and avalanches; but owing to their entirely local character, the damage wrought by them is comparatively insignificant, not even approaching the lightning in the total.

Hail has been far more destructive. As stated elsewhere, the cause of hail is hitherto unexplained. The storm usually travels in narrow belts. Many are the wonderful tales told of it. It is said that May 8, 1802, a mass of ice weighing eleven hundred pounds fell in Hungary. Again, we hear of an ice-block the size of an elephant, which fell near Seringapatam, in the reign of Tippoo Sahib. The good father Huc, in his travels in Tartary, reported the fall of an ice-block the size of a millstone, which, in very warm weather, required three days to melt. And we are told that in the time of Charlemagne, there fell hailstones fifteen feet long, eleven feet wide and six feet thick. All these we steadfastly do not believe.

Yet, there are well authenticated records of many disastrous hail storms and enormous hailstones. A storm in France, in 1788, traveled in two bands: one, four hundred and twenty by ten miles; the other, five hundred by five miles. Five million dollars worth of property was destroyed. In 1865 a severe storm swept a wide path from Bordeaux to Belgium, accumulating in such masses that it was not all melted in one or two localities for four days. One bed was one and one-fourth miles long and two-fifths of a mile wide, containing twenty-one million cubic feet. Doubtless similar accumulations in depressions, adhering together, gave rise to the tales of enormous blocks mentioned above.

An enormous hail storm in India, in 1853, is said to have killed eighty-four persons and three thousand cattle. During a storm at Naini Tal, in 1855, hailstones weighing one and one-half pounds fell. Our own land has had a number of severe hail storms within the past ten years, that have done immense damage to crops, and occasionally killed cattle, while smaller animals have perished by hundreds. Frequent are the records of hailstones as large as oranges, goose-eggs, and occasionally as large as a fist, with gathered drifts two or three feet deep. Europe has also had several of her smaller towns nearly destroyed by combined flood and hail. Yet, none of these equal in fatality the great hail storm of two years since at Moradabad, India.

It smashed in windows, glass doors and the lighter roofs, “The verandas were blown away by the wind. A great part of the roof fell in, and the massive pucca portico was blown down. The walls shook. It was nearly dark outside, and hailstones of enormous size were dashed down with a force which I have never seen anything to equal. * * * There were long ridges of hail one or two feet in depth. * * * Not a house in the civil station that did not receive the most serious injury.

“Two hundred and thirty deaths in all have been reported up to the present time. The total number may be safely put as under two hundred and fifty. Men caught in the open and without shelter, were simply pounded to death by the hail.”

Spain and southern France have on record some showers of extremely large hailstones. In 1829, masses of ice weighing four and one-half pounds fell at Cazorta, Spain. Houses were stove-in by them. During a hurricane in the south of France, in 1844, there fell ice-masses weighing eleven pounds.

Mysterious and ominous to those ignorant of their cause have been the many showers of “ink, blood, sulphur,” falls of red or green snow, and similar phenomena. Such things were believed to betoken the wrath of God, and to forebode war, famine, pestilence, flood, and other dire calamities. Of course, the good people knew exactly what any shower meant—after the calamity occurred. When it didn’t occur, the shower was simply a warning.

That such phenomena are readily explained goes without saying; and not a few of the wise of days past have refused to be seriously alarmed, though they could not find a correct solution of the mystery. Some of the philosophic minds of other days endeavored to explain these occurrences by supposing blood vaporized from battle-fields was mingled with rain, not knowing that the red portion of the blood can not evaporate.

The microscope has solved these mysteries. The rains of blood are merely stained by earthy matter: sometimes organic, gathered by the wind; sometimes volcanic dust, thrown out by eruptions; and in one case, where numerous blood-spots appeared on houses and fences in Provence, in 1608, and the priests asserted it was the work of the devil, the spots at length proved to be the excrement of butterflies. Rains of melted sulphur have been found to owe their color to the yellow pollen of pine trees. Ink is merely sooty rain-water. Showers of this character are more frequent than might be supposed. More than a score have occurred in Europe in the present century; and a number in this country. Red and green snow owe their color to microscopic vegetable life, and are quite commonly met with in the Arctic world. One bold headland has long been known as Crimson Cliff, from the extensive deposits of red snow there.

CHAPTER XIV.

FLOODS IN THE SOUTH.