In the month of March, 1774, a very beautiful luminous arch was seen at Buxton. It was white, inclining to yellow: and its breadth in the crown was apparently equal to that of the rainbow. As it approached the horizon, each leg of the arch became gradually broader. It was stationary and free from any sensible coruscations. Its direction was from north-east to south-west; and its crown or most elevated part, not far from the zenith. This phenomenon lasted about half an hour.
The grandest spectacle of this kind which appears to have been seen in Great Britain, was observed at Leeds, in Yorkshire, on the twelfth of April, 1783, between the hours of nine and ten at night. A broad arch of a bright pale yellow, and having an apparent breadth of about fifteen degrees, arose in the heavens, and passed considerably south of the zenith. Such was its varied density, that it appeared to consist of small columns of light, having a sensible motion. After about ten minutes, innumerable bright coruscations shot out at right angles from its northern edge, elongating themselves more and more till they had nearly reached the northern horizon. As theydescended, their extremities were tipped with an elegant crimson, such as is produced by the electric spark in an exhausted tube. After some time this beautiful northern light ceased to shoot, and, forming a line of bright yellow clouds, which extended horizontally about the fourth of a circle, its greatest portion, which darted from this arch toward the north, as well as the cloudlike and more stationary aurora, became so dense as to hide the stars from view. The moon was eleven days old, and shone brightly during this scene, but did not eclipse the splendor of these coruscations. The wind was in the north, a little inclined to the east. A similar phenomenon was observed at Leeds on the twenty-sixth of the same month. From a mass or broad column of light in the west, issued three luminous arches, each of which made a different angle with the horizon. They had not been viewed many minutes when they were rendered invisible by a general blaze ofaurora borealis, which possessed the space just before occupied by these arches.
These meteors, denominated by the vulgar, Will-with-a-wisp, and Jack-with-a-lantern, and at sea or on the coast, mariner’s lights, or St.Helmo’sHelmo’sfires, are now considered as real exhalations from the earth, produced by gas, vapor, or some other attenuated substance, emanating from vegetable, animal or mineral materials, and combined with the matter of light or heat, or both. Instead of being dense or solid, they are uniformly rare and subtile; and, instead of originating in the loftiest regions of the atmosphere, or beyond its range, are generated for the greater part in low, marshy plains or valleys. To the fearful and superstitious, they are a source of as much terror as the nobler and sublimer meteors which have just been contemplated; and it is probable that they have occasionally been the source of real and extensive damage, when in a state of actual combustion, and that they have still more frequently seduced a timid and benighted traveler into dangerous bogs and quagmires.
In Italy, in the Bolognese territory, they are so frequent, in the morassy grounds, that they are to be seen every night, some of them affording as much light as a kindled torch, and others not being larger than the flame of a candle, but all of them so luminous as to shed a luster on the surrounding objects. They are constantly in motion, but this motion is various and uncertain. They sometimes rise and at other times sink, sometimes suddenly disappearing, and appearing again in an instant in some other place. They usually hover about six feet from the ground, differing both in figure and size, and spreading out and contracting themselves alternately. Sometimesthey break to appearance into two parts, soon after uniting again in one body, and at intervals float like waves, letting fall portions of ignited matter, like sparks from a fire. They are more frequently observed in winter than in summer, and cast the strongest light in rainy and moist weather. They are most friendly to the banks of brooks and rivers, and to morasses; but they are likewise seen on elevated grounds, where they are, however, of a comparatively diminutive size.
In the month of March, 1728, a traveler being in a mountainous road, about ten miles south of Bononia, perceived, as he approached the river Riovedere, between eight and nine in the evening, a light shining very brightly on some stones which lay on the banks. It was elevated about two feet above them; its figure describing a parallelopiped, more than a foot in length, and about six inches high, its longest side lying parallel to the horizon. Its light was so strong that he could distinguish by it very plainly a part of a neighboring hedge, and the water in the river. On a near approach, it changed from a bright red to a yellowish color, and on drawing still nearer, became pale; but when the observer reached the spot it vanished. On his stepping back, he not only saw it again, but found that the further he receded, the stronger and more luminous it became. This light was afterward seen several times, both in spring and autumn, precisely at the same spot, and preserving the same shape.
On the twelfth of December, 1776, several very remarkableignes fatuiwere observed on the road to Bromsgrove, five miles from Birmingham, in England, a little before daylight. A great many of these lights were playing in an adjacent field, in different directions; from some of which there suddenly sprang up bright branches of light, somewhat resembling the explosion of a rocket, filled with many brilliant stars, if, in the case of the latter, the discharge be supposed to be upward, or vertical, instead of taking the usual direction. The hedge, and the trees on each side, were strongly illuminated. This appearance continued a few seconds only, when theignes fatuiplayed as before. The spectator was not sufficiently near to observe whether the apparent explosions were attended with any report.
In the month of December, 1693, between the twenty-fourth and thirtieth, a fiery exhalation, without doubt generated in the same way with the meteors described above, set fire to sixteen ricks of hay, and two barns filled with corn and hay, at the village of Hartech, in Pembrokeshire. It had frequently been seen before, proceeding from the sea, and in these instances lasted for a fortnight or three weeks. It not only fired the hay, but poisoned the grass, for the extent of a mile, so as to induce a distemper among the cattle. It was a weak blue flame, easily extinguished, and did not in the least burnany of the men who interposed their endeavors to save the hay, although they ventured, not only close to it, but sometimes into it. All the damage sustained happened constantly in the night.
Belonging to this class of meteors is thedraco volans, a fiery exhalation, frequent in marshy and cold countries. It is most common in summer; and, although principally seen playing near the banks of rivers, or in boggy places, still it sometimes mounts up to a considerable hight in the air, to the no small terror of the amazed beholders. Its appearance is that of an oblong (sometimes roundish) fiery body, with a long tail. It is entirely harmless, frequently sticking to the hands and clothes of the spectators, without doing them the least injury.
This is one of those curious and interesting atmospheric phenomena, or deceptions, which proceed from one common cause, an irregularity in the tenuity of the atmospheric fluid. This fluid is commonly of an homogeneous or equable tenuity, and consequently suffers the rays of the sun to penetrate it without any obstruction or change; but is at times irregular, and composed of parts of bodies of a denser medium than its general texture and constitution. Under these circumstances, the fluent ray, if it do not enter the denser medium in a direct or perpendicular line, will be either reflected, or refracted, or both; and the object surveyed through it, will assume a new, and, not unfrequently, a grotesque or highly magnified appearance.
The specter of the Brocken is an aerial figure which is sometimes seen among the Hartz mountains in Hanover. The phenomenon has been witnessed by various travelers, and among them by M. Haue, from whose relation the following particulars are extracted. “Having ascended the Brocken [mountain] for the thirtieth time, I was at length so fortunate as to have the pleasure of seeing this phenomenon. The sun rose about four o’clock, and the atmosphere being quite serene toward the east, its rays could pass without any obstruction over the Heinrichshohe mountain. In the south-west, however, toward the mountain Achtermannshohe, a brisk west wind carried before it thin transparent vapors. About a quarter past four, I looked round, to see whether the atmosphere would permit me to have a free prospect to the south-west, when I observed, at a very great distance toward the Achtermannshohe, a human figure of monstrous size! A violent gust of wind having almost carried away my hat, I clapped my hand to it; and in moving my hand toward my head, the colossal figure did the same.
“The pleasure which I felt at this discovery can hardly be described; for I had already walked many a weary step in the hope of seeing this shadowy image, without being able to gratify my curiosity. I immediately made another movement, by bending my body, and the colossal figure before me repeated it. I was desirous of doing the same once more, but my colossus had vanished. I remained in the same position, waiting to see whether it would return; and in a few minutes it again made its appearance on the Achtermannshohe. I then called the landlord of the neighboring inn, and having both taken the position which I had taken alone, we looked toward the Achtermannshohe, but did not perceive anything. We had not, however, stood long, when two such colossal figures were formed over the above eminence, [as represented in the cut,] which repeated their compliments by bending their bodies as we did, after which they vanished. We retained our position, kept our eyes fixed on the spot, and in a little time the two figures again stood before us, and were joined by a third, [that of a traveler who then came up and joined the party.] Every movement made by us, these figures imitated; but with this difference, that the phenomenon was sometimes weak and faint, sometimes strong and well defined.”
SPECTER OF THE BROCKEN.
SPECTER OF THE BROCKEN.
SPECTER OF THE BROCKEN.
In Clarke’s “Survey of the Lakes,” a phenomenon similar to that of the specter of the Brocken, is recorded to have been observed in the years 1743and 1744, on Souter-Fell, a mountain in Cumberland. It excited much conversation and alarm at the time, and exposed to great ridicule those who asserted they had witnessed it. It is, however, too well attested not to deserve a short notice here, and may be referred to the same causes by which the above aerial images on the Brocken mountain were produced. The relation is as follows. Souter-Fell is a mountain about half a mile in hight, inclosed on the north and west sides by precipitous rocks, but somewhat more open on the east, and easier of access. At Wilton Hall, within half a mile of this mountain, on a summer’s evening, in the year 1743, a farmer and his servant, sitting at the door, saw the figure of a man with a dog, pursuing some horses along Souter-Fell side, a place so steep that a horse could scarcely travel on it. They appeared to run at a very great pace, till they got out of sight at the lower end of the fell. On the following morning the farmer and his servant ascended the steep side of the mountain, in full expectation that they should find the man lying dead, being persuaded that the swiftness with which he ran must have killed him, and imagining also that they should pick up some of the shoes which they thought the horses must have lost, in galloping at so furious a rate. They were, however, disappointed in these expectations, as not the least vestige of either man or horses could be discovered, not so much, even, as the mark of a horse’s hoof on the turf.
On the twenty-third of June, of the following year, 1744, about half past seven in the evening, the same servant, then residing at Blakehills, at an equal distance from the mountain, being in a field in front of the farm-house, saw a troop of horsemen riding on Souter-Fell side in pretty close ranks, and at a brisk pace. Having observed them for some time, he called out his young master, who before the spot was pointed out to him, discovered the aerial troopers; and this phenomenon was shortly after witnessed by the whole of the family. The visionary horsemen appeared to come from the lowest part of Souter-Fell, and were visible at a place called Knott: they then moved in regular troops along the side of the fell, till they came opposite to Blakehills, when they went over the mountain. They thus described a kind of curvilinear path, and their first as well as their last appearance, was bounded by the foot of the mountain. Their pace was that of a regular swift walk, and they were seen for upward of two hours, when darkness intervened. Several troops were seen in succession, and frequently the last, or last but one in the troop, would quit his position, gallop to the front, and then observe the same pace with the others. The same change was visible to all the spectators; and the sight of this phenomenon was not confined to Blakehills, but was witnessed by the inhabitants of the cottages within amile. It was attested before a magistrate by the two above-cited individuals in the month of July, 1745. Twenty-six persons are said in the attestation to have witnessed the march of these aerial travelers.
It should be remarked that these appearances were observed on the eve of the rebellion, when troops of horsemen might be privately exercising; and as the imitative powers of the specter of the Brocken demonstrate that the actions of human beings are sometimes pictured in the clouds, it seems highly probable, on a consideration of all the circumstances of this latter phenomenon on Souter-Fell, that certain thin vapors must have hovered round the summit of the mountain when the appearances were observed. It is also probable that these vapors may have been impressed with the shadowy forms which seem to “imitate humanity,” by a particular operation of the sun’s rays, united with some singular but unknown refractive combinations then taking place in the atmosphere.
This very curious phenomenon, which was remarked by M. Monge, one of the French savans belonging to the institute of Cairo, in the hot and sandy desert between Alexandria and that city, is described by him as resulting from an inverted image of the cerulean sky intermixed with the ground scenery, the neighboring villages appearing to be surrounded with a most beautiful sheet of water, and to exist, like islands, in its liquid expanse, tantalizing the eye by an unfaithful representation of what the thirsty traveler earnestly desires.
Doctor Clarke, in his interesting travels, introduces the following animated description of this phenomenon. “Here [at the village of Utko] we procured asses for our party, and, setting out for Rosetta, began to recross the desert, appearing like an ocean of sand, but flatter and firmer as to its surface, than before. The Arabs, uttering their harsh, guttural language, ran chattering by the side of our asses; until some of them calling out‘Raschid!’we perceived its domes and turrets, apparently upon the opposite side of an immense lake or sea, that covered all the intervening space between us and the city. Not having in my own mind, at the time, any doubt as to the certainty of its being water, and seeing the tall minarets and buildings of Rosetta, with all its groves of dates and sycamores, as perfectly reflected by it as by a mirror, insomuch that even the minutest detail of the architecture and of the trees might have been thence delineated, I applied to the Arabs to be informed in what manner we were to pass the water. Our interpreter, although a Greek, and therefore likely to have been informed ofsuch a phenomenon, was as fully convinced as any of us, that we were drawing near to the water’s edge, and became indignant, when the Arabs maintained, that within an hour we should reach Rosetta, by crossing the sands in the direct line we then pursued, and that there was no water. ‘What!’ said he, giving way to his impatience, ‘do you suppose me an idiot, to be persuaded contrary to the evidence of my senses?’ The Arabs, smiling, soon pacified him, and completely astonished the whole party, by desiring us to look back at the desert we had already passed, where we beheld a precisely similar appearance. It was, in fact,the mirage, a prodigy to which all of us were then strangers, although it afterward became more familiar. Yet upon no future occasion did we ever behold this extraordinary illusion so marvelously displayed. The view of it afforded us ideas of the horrible despondency to which travelers must sometimes be exposed, who, in traversing the interminable desert, destitute of water, and perishing with thirst, have sometimes this deceitful prospect before their eyes.”
This appearance is often seen, when the sun shines, upon the extensive flat sand upon the shores of the Bristol channel, in Somersetshire, and probably on the sea-shore in other parts of England.
“As when a shepherd of the Hebride isles,Placed far amid the melancholy main,(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,Or that aerial beings sometimes deignTo stand embodied to our senses plain,)Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,The whilst in ocean Phœbus dips his wain,A vast assemblage moving to and fro;Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.”—Thomson.
“As when a shepherd of the Hebride isles,Placed far amid the melancholy main,(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,Or that aerial beings sometimes deignTo stand embodied to our senses plain,)Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,The whilst in ocean Phœbus dips his wain,A vast assemblage moving to and fro;Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.”—Thomson.
“As when a shepherd of the Hebride isles,Placed far amid the melancholy main,(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,Or that aerial beings sometimes deignTo stand embodied to our senses plain,)Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,The whilst in ocean Phœbus dips his wain,A vast assemblage moving to and fro;Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.”—Thomson.
“As when a shepherd of the Hebride isles,
Placed far amid the melancholy main,
(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,
Or that aerial beings sometimes deign
To stand embodied to our senses plain,)
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
The whilst in ocean Phœbus dips his wain,
A vast assemblage moving to and fro;
Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.”—Thomson.
These optical appearances of figures in the sea and air, in the Faro of Messina, are the great delight of the populace, who, whenever the vision is displayed, run about the streets shouting for joy, and calling on every one to partake of the glorious sight. To produce this pleasing deception, many circumstances must concur which are not known to exist in any other situation. The spectator must stand with his back to the east, in some elevated place behind the city, that he may command a view of the whole bay, beyond which the mountains of Messina rise like a wall, and darken the background of the picture. The winds must be hushed, the surface of the water quite smooth, the tide at its hight, and the waters pressed up by currents to a great elevation in the middle of the channel. All these events coinciding, assoon as the sun surmounts the eastern hills behind Reggio, (on the Calabrian coast opposite,) and rises high enough to form an angle of forty-five degrees on the water before the city, every object, existing or moving at Reggio, will be repeated a thousand-fold in this marine mirror, which, by its tremulous motion, is, as it were, cut into facets. Each image will pass rapidly off in succession, as the day advances, and the stream carries down the wave on which it appeared. Thus the parts of this moving picture will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Sometimes the air is at this time so impregnated with vapors, and undisturbed by winds, as to reflect objects in a kind of aerial screen, rising about thirty feet above the level of the sea. In cloudy, heavy weather, they are drawn on the surface of the water, bordered with fine prismatic colors.
Swinburne, in his travels, cites Father Angelucci as having been the first to describe this phenomenon accurately. His relation is as follows. “On the fifteenth of August, 1643, as I stood at my window, I was surprised with a most wonderful and delectable vision. The sea which washes the Sicilian shore, swelled up, and became, for twelve miles in length, like a chain of dark mountains; while the waters near our Calabrian coast grew quite smooth, and in an instant appeared as one polished mirror, reclining against the aforesaid ridge. On this glass was depicted, inchiar-oscura, a string of several thousands of pilasters, all equal in altitude, distance and degree of light and shade. In a moment they lost half their hight, and bent into arcades, like Roman aqueducts. A long cornice was next formed on the top, and above it rose castles innumerable, all perfectly alike. These soon split into towers, which were shortly after lost in colonnades, then in windows, and at last ended in pines, cypresses, and other trees, even and similar. This was the Fata Morgana, which, for twenty-six years, I had thought a merefable.”fable.”
A surprising instance of atmospherical refraction occurred at Hastings, England, on the twenty-sixth of July, 1798. W. Latham, Esq., sitting in his dining-room, situated on the parade, close to the sea-shore, and nearly fronting the south, about five in the afternoon, had his attention suddenly drawn by a great number of people running down to the seaside. On inquiring the reason, he was informed that the coast of France was plainly to be distinguished by the naked eye. On going down to the shore, he was surprised to find that, even without the assistance of a telescope, he could very plainly see the cliffs on the opposite coast; which, at the nearest part,are between forty and fifty miles distant, and are not to be discerned, from that low situation, by the aid of the best glasses. They appeared to be only a few miles off, and seemed to extend for some leagues along the coast. Pursuing his walk along the shore to the eastward, close to the water’s edge, and conversing on the subject with the sailors and fishermen, they could not, at first, be persuaded of the reality of the appearance; but soon became so thoroughly convinced, by the cliffs gradually appearing more elevated, and approaching nearer as it were, that they pointed out and named to him the different places they had been accustomed to visit, such as, the Bay, the Old Head or Man, the Windmill, &c., at Boulogne; together with St. Vallery, and other places on the coast of Picardy. This they afterward confirmed, when they viewed them, thus refracted, through their telescopes, observing that the above places appeared as near as if they had been sailing, at a small distance, into the harbors. From the eastern cliff, which is of a very considerable hight, a most beautiful scene presented itself to Mr. Latham’s view, for there he could at once see Dungeness, Dover cliffs, and the French coast, all along from Calais, Boulogne, &c., to St. Vallery; and, as some of the fishermen affirmed, as far to the westward even as Dieppe. By the telescope, the French fishing-boats were plainly to be seen at anchor, and the different colors of the land on the hights, with the buildings, were perfectly discernible. This curious phenomenon continued in the highest splendor till half past eight o’clock, notwithstanding a black cloud for some time totally obscured the face of the sun, and then vanished gradually. So remarkable an instance of atmospherical refraction had not been before witnessed by the oldest inhabitant of Hastings. It was likewise observed at Winchelsea, and other places along the coast. The day was remarkably hot, without a breath of wind stirring.
As another instance of this refracting power of the atmosphere, Dr. Vince, an English philosopher, was once looking through a telescope at a ship, which was so far off, that he could only see the upper parts of the masts. The hulk was entirely hidden by the bending of the water, but between himself and the ship he saw two perfect images of it in the air. These were of the same form and color as the real ship; but one of them was turned upside down. And when Captain Scoresby was in the polar sea with his ship, he was separated by the ice from that of his father for some time, and looked out for her every day with great anxiety. At length, one evening, to his utter astonishment, he saw her suspended in the air, in an inverted position, traced on the horizon in the clearest colors, and with the most distinct and perfect representation. He sailed in the direction in which he saw this visionary phenomenon, and actually found his father’s vessel by its indication.He was separated from the ship by immense masses of icebergs, and at such a distance that it was impossible to have seen her in her actual situation, or to have seen her at all, if her spectrum had not been thus raised several degrees above the horizon in the air by this most extraordinary refraction. It is by this bending of the rays of light that the images of people are often seen at a distance, and sometimes magnified to a gigantic size. We have given an account of such an appearance in the Hartz mountains, in Germany.
Another singular instance of the refracting power of the atmosphere, was witnessed within the present year, (1854,) by Mr. Elliott, the aeronaut, while ascending in his balloon from Petersburg, Virginia. After he had ascended about three thousand feet he discharged some five pounds of ballast, when he shot onward and upward with amazing rapidity till he began to approximate to the clouds. He then discharged about five pounds more of sand, the remainder of the bag, when he again darted upward among the clouds, which were so dense as to wholly exclude all terrestrial objects from his view, and of course he was lost to all observers below. These discharges were distinctly seen by persons watching him, and on the first occasion some one exclaimed that the balloon had burst. While among the clouds, it seemed to him as if he was in the midst of a large ground-glass globe, some two or three hundred feet in diameter, against the side of which opposite to the sun, the shadow of his balloon rested, some five or six times larger than the corporeal one. About half-way between him and the shadow, which seemed as if resting on the glass wall, another balloon was seen, of a size between the shadow and the real one, resting as if in a vacuum, which displayed every color of the original faithfully. He then saw another Elliott, clad and with features like himself, and seemingly self-like. He then extended his own fingers, when he was mimicked by his image; and whether he extended one finger or more, or whatever he did, this figure duplicated exactly. When he would cause his balloon to oscillate, this balloon would move exactly like his. When he threw out more ballast to elevate himself, this figuresank downinstead of rising with him; and when he arose above the clouds into the rays of the unclouded sun, he left the mimic aeronaut below him.
In the rays of the sun above the clouds he found it so warm as to cause him to perspire freely, a state of heat never before experienced at this hight, nearly twenty-four thousand feet, where the air is very rarefied and generally very chilly. He then opened the valve for the purpose of descending, and as soon as he had sunk one or two thousand feet, which he ascertained by barometrical indications, he felt as if he had entered an ice-house, and a cold chill seized his whole person. Here he again met his mimic aerial voyager,whom he kept in company for some time, from philosophical motives. Whenever he moved sideways, thismumgentleman would move in the same direction. But when he moved up or down, the duplicate would move in a directly opposite way; and when he concluded to descend, the image moved upward until the tricolored flag was out of sight, when he could see the car and the aeronaut still standing in it as if in a basket attached to nothing. He continued to look until his head was Robespierred, and finally, piece by piece, his body, and, at last, his feet and basket, ascended out of his sight. Mr. Elliott said that he had been up a hundred and one times, but never had seen anything in the form of an illusion like this before.
SHIP REFRACTED IN THE AIR.
SHIP REFRACTED IN THE AIR.
SHIP REFRACTED IN THE AIR.
But one of the most remarkable cases of atmospheric refraction of which we have any record, is that which occurred at New Haven, Connecticut, in the early settlement of the colony. The colonists had built a ship, and freighted her for England with a valuable cargo, with which she sailed from their harbor in the winter of 1647, having several of their principal men on board. They were obliged to cut their way through the ice to get out of the harbor; and the ship, never being heard of afterward, was supposed to have foundered at sea. No tidings arriving of the ship or of her fate, the colonists were deeply distressed, and “were very earnest in their prayers, both publicand private, that God would in some way make manifest to them what had become of their friends.” In the following June, a violent thunder-storm arose out of the north-west, after which the atmosphere being very calm and serene, about an hour before sunset, a ship of the dimensions and form of the one they had lost, with all her canvas set and flags flying, appeared in the air, coming up the harbor, her sails filled as though by a fresh gale, and sailing against the wind, for the space of half an hour.
At length, as she came nearer, her maintop seemed to be blown off, though left hanging in the shrouds; then, her mizzen-top; then all her masting seemed blown away by the board; quickly after, her hulk careening, she overset, and seemed to sink and vanish in the clouds, and as these clouds passed away, the air where she was seen, was, as before, perfectly clear. The crowd of spectators could distinguish the appearance of the various parts of the ship, the principal rigging, and such proportions as made them satisfied that this was indeed their ship; and Mr. Davenport, the minister, declared, in public, that God, for the quieting of the hearts of the people, had given them this extraordinary exhibition and account of what he had done with their property and friends. But science gives us a more natural and less miraculous explanation of the matter, in the refracting power of the air when in certain states; and the probability is, that the ship, thus seen in the air, was some strange vessel (which they imagined looked like their own) coming up the harbor before the breeze, and then driven off and wrecked by the storm, which reached her after it had passed New Haven; or else that it was, indeed, their own ship, which after being driven about for months, was now coming back to her port, when she was thus caught in the tempest and destroyed. And as confirming this view of the matter, it may be added, in conclusion, that within the present century, it is said, a similar refraction of a ship in the air, has been witnessed in the same place.
On the fifth of February, 1674, near Marienberg, in Prussia, the sky being everywhere serene, the sun, which was still some degrees above the horizon, was seen to lance out very long and reddish rays, forty or fifty degrees toward the zenith, notwithstanding it shone with great luster. Beneath this planet, toward the horizon, there hung a somewhat thin small cloud, at the inferior part of which there appeared a mock sun, of the same apparent size with the true sun, and of a reddish color. Soon after, the true sun descending gradually to the horizon, toward the said cloud, the spurious sun beneath it grew clearer and clearer, in so much that the reddish color in this apparentsolar disk vanished, and it put on the genuine solar light, in proportion as it was approached by the genuine disk of the sun. The latter, at length, passed into the lower counterfeit sun, and thus remained alone. This phenomenon was considered the more wonderful, as it was perpendicularly under the sun, instead of being at its side, as parhelia usually are; not to mention the color, so different from that which is usual in mock suns, nor the great length of the tail cast up by the genuine sun, of a far more vivid and splendid light than parhelia commonly exhibit. This appearance was soon followed by an exceedingly intense frost, which lasted till the twenty-fifth of March, the whole bay being frozen up from the town of Dantzic to Hela in the Baltic sea.
On the twenty-eighth of August, 1698, about eight o’clock in the morning, there was seen at Sudbury, in Suffolk, England, the appearance of three suns, which were then extremely brilliant. Beneath a dark, watery cloud, in the east, nearly at its center, the true sun shone with such strong beams, that the spectators could not look at it; and on each side were the reflections. Much of the firmament was elsewhere of an azure color. The circles were not colored like the rainbow, but white; and there was also, at the same time, higher in the firmament, and toward the south, at a considerable distance from the other phenomena, the form of a half-moon, but apparently of double the size, with the horns turned upward. This appearance was, within, of a fiery red color, imitating that of the rainbow. These phenomena faded gradually, after having continued about two hours.
Two mock suns, an arc of a rainbow inverted, and a halo, were seen at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, on the twenty-second of October, 1621, at eleven in the morning. There had been anaurora borealisthe preceding night, with the wind at west-south-west. The two parhelia, or mock suns, were bright and distinct, and in the usual places, namely, in the two intersections of a strong and large portion of a halo, with an imaginary circle parallel to the horizon, passing through the true sun. Each parhelion had its tail of a white color, and in direct opposition to the true sun; that toward the east being some twenty or twenty-five degrees long, and that toward the west from ten to twelve degrees, both narrowest at the remote ends. The mock suns were evidently red toward the sun, but pale or whitish at the opposite sides, as was the halo also. Still higher in the heavens, was an arc of a curiously inverted rainbow, about the middle of the distance between the top of the halo and the vertex. This arc was as distinct in its colors as the common rainbow, and of the same breadth. The red color was on the convex, and the blue on the concave of the arc, which seemed to be about ninety degrees in length, its center being in or near the vertex. On the topof the halo was a kind of inverted bright arc. This phenomenon was seen on the following day, and, again, on the twenty-sixth. On the eleventh of the preceding month, September, a very splendid and remarkableaurora borealis, presenting truly unaccountable motions and removals, was witnessed in Rutlandshire, in Northamptonshire, and at Bath.
This very rare phenomenon was witnessed at Glapwell Hall, in Derbyshire, England, on the twenty-fifth of December, 1710, about eight in the evening, with a remarkable and very unusual display of colors. The moon had passed her full about twenty-four hours, and the evening had been rainy; but the clouds were dispersed, and the moon then shone quite clear. Thisiris lunarishad all the colors of the solar iris, exceedingly beautiful and distinct, only faint in comparison with those which are seen in the day; as must necessarily have been the case, both from the different beams by which it was occasioned, and the disposition of the medium. What most surprised the observer was the largeness of the arc, which was not so much less than that of the sun, as the different dimensions of their bodies, and their respective distances from the earth, seemed to require; but the entireness and beauty of its colors furnished a charming spectacle.
This extraordinary phenomenon, which is seen at sunrise on the Andes, in South America, was first witnessed by Ulloa and his companions in the wild heaths of Pambamarca, and is thus described by him. “At day-break the whole of the mountain was enveloped in dense clouds, which at sunrise were dissipated, leaving behind them vapors of so extreme a tenuity, as not to be distinguishable to the sight. At the side opposite to that where the sun rose on the mountain, and at the distance of about sixty yards from the spot where we were standing, the image of each of us was seen represented as if in a mirror, and three concentric rainbows, the last or most exterior colors of one of which touched the first of the following one, were centered on each head. Without the whole of them, and at an inconsiderable distance, was seen a fourth arc purely white. They were all perpendicular to the horizon; and in proportion as any one of us moved from one side to the other, he was accompanied by the phenomenon, which preserved the same order and disposition. What was, however, most remarkable, was this, that although six or seven persons were thus standing close together,each of us saw the phenomenon as it regarded himself, but did not perceive it in the others. This, adds Bouguer, is a kind of apotheosis, in which each of the spectators, seeing his head adorned with a glory formed of three or four concentric crowns of a very vivid color, each of them presenting varieties similar to those of the first rainbow, tranquilly enjoys the sensible pleasure of reflecting that the brilliant garland he can not discover in the others is destined for himself alone.”
A similar phenomenon is described by Mr. Hagarth, as having been seen by him in Wales, on the thirteenth of February, 1780. His relation is as follows. “In ascending, at Rhealt, the mountain which forms the eastern boundary of the vale of Clwyd, (in Denbighshire,) I observed a rare and curious phenomenon. In the road above me, I was struck with the peculiar appearance of a very white, shining cloud, which lay remarkably close to the ground. The sun was near setting, but shone extremely bright: I walked up to the cloud, and my shadow was projected into it, its superior part being surrounded, at some distance, by a circle of various colors, whose center appeared to be near the situation of the eye, and whose circumference extended to the shoulders. This circle was complete, except what the shadow of my body intercepted. It exhibited the most vivid colors, the red being outermost; and all of them appearing in the same order and proportion as they are presented to the view by the rainbow. It resembled very exactly what in pictures is termed a glory, surrounding the heads of saints; not indeed that it exhibited the luminous radiance that is painted close to the head, but an arch of concentric colors placed separately and distinctly from it. As I walked forward, this glory approached or retired, just as the inequality of the ground shortened or lengthened my shadow. The cloud being sometimes in a small valley below me, sometimes on the same level, or on higher ground, the variation of the shadow and glory became extremely striking and singular. To add to the beauty of the scene, there appeared, at a considerable distance to the right and left, the arches of a white, shining bow. These arches were in the form of, and broader than a rainbow; but were not completely joined into a semicircle above, on account of the shallowness of the cloud.”
To conceive justly of the nature of thunder and lightning, we have only to view the effects of a common electrical machine, and its apparatus, in an apartment. These experiments mimic the great, wonderful and terrificphenomena of nature. The stream, or spark, from the machine to the hand, represents the shaft of lightning from the clouds to the earth; and the snapping noise of the diminutive spark corresponds with the explosion produced by the lightning, which we call thunder. In what manner the clouds become electrified, and, in short, what is the nature of electricity itself, our present range of experiments so little qualify us to determine, that a century will perhaps elapse before a philosophical precision can be attained. At present we only know for certain that the electrical power displays itself merely on the surface of bodies; and whether it is a fluidper se, a vacuum restoring itself, or whatever its nature may be, the state of experimental knowledge does not enable us to determine.
The obvious analogy between lightning and electricity, had long been suspected, and was placed beyond a doubt by Franklin, who was the first to conceive the practicability of drawing down lightning from the clouds. Having found by previous experiments, that the electric fluid is attractedby points, he apprehended that lightning might likewise possess the same quality; although the effects of the latter would in that case surpass those of the former in an astonishing degree. Flashes of lightning, he likewise observed, are generally seen crooked and waving in the air; and the electric spark drawnfroman irregular body at some distance, when it is drawnbyan irregular body, or through a space in which the best conductors are disposed in an irregular manner, always exhibits the same appearance.
Lightning strikes the highest and most pointed objects in its way, in preference to others, as high hills, trees, spires, masts, &c.; and all pointed conductors receive and throw off the electric fluid more readily than those which are terminated by flat surfaces. Lightning is observed to take the best and readiest conductor; and this is also the case with electricity, in the discharge of the Leyden phial; whence Franklin inferred that, in a thunder-storm, it would be safer for a person to have his clothes wet than dry. Lightning burns, dissolves metals, rends some particular bodies, such as the roots and branches of trees, strikes persons with blindness, destroys animal life, deprives magnets of their virtue and reverses their poles; and these are well known properties of electricity. Lightning not only gives polarity to the magnetic needle, but to all bodies which have any portion of iron in them, as brick, &c.; and, by observing which way the poles of these bodies lie, the direction in which the stroke has passed may be known with the utmost certainty.
In order to demonstrate, by actual experiment, the identity of the electric fluid with the matter of lightning, Franklin contrived to bring lightning from the heavens by means of an electrical kite, which he raised on theapproach of a thunder-storm; and, with the electricity thus obtained, charged phials, kindled spirits, and performed all other electrical experiments, as they are usually exhibited by an excited globe or tube. This happened in 1752, a month after the French electricians, pursuing the method which he had proposed, had verified the same theory; but without any knowledge on his part of what they had done. On the following year, he further discovered that the air is sometimes electrified positively, and sometimes negatively; and that in the course of one thunder-storm, the clouds change from positive to negative electricity several times. He was not long in perceiving that this important discovery was capable of being applied to practical use; and proposed a method, which he soon accomplished, of securing buildings from being damaged by lightning, by means of conductors, or lightning-rods, the use of which is now universally known.
From a number of judicious experiments made by him, Signor Beccaria concluded that the clouds serve as conductors to convey the electric fluid from those parts of the earth which are overloaded with it, to those where it is exhausted. The same cause by which a cloud is first raised, from vapors dispersed in atmosphere, draws to it those which are already formed, and still continues to form new ones, till the whole collected mass extends so far as to reach a part of the earth where there is a deficiency of the electric fluid, and where the electric matter will discharge itself on the earth. A channel of communication being thus produced, a fresh supply of electric matter is raised from the overloaded part, which continues to be conveyed by the medium of the clouds, till the equilibrium of the fluid is restored between the two places of the earth. He further observes that as the wind constantly blows from the place where the thunder-cloud proceeds, the sudden accumulation of such a prodigious quantity of vapors must displace the air, and repel it on all sides. Indeed, many observations of the descent of lightning confirm his theory of the mode of its ascent; for it often throws before it the parts of conducting bodies, and distributes them along the resisting medium through which it must force its passage; and on this principle the longest flashes of lightning seem to be produced, by its forcing in its way part of the vapors in the air. One of the chief reasons why the report of these flashes is so much protracted, is the vast length of the vacuum made by the passage of the electric matter; for although the air collapses the moment after it has passed, and the vibration, on which the sound depends, commences at the same moment, still, when the flash is directed toward the person who hears the report, the vibrations excited at the nearer end of the track will reach his ear much sooner than those from the remote end, and the sound will, without any echo or repercussion, continue till all the vibrationshave successively reached him. The rattling noise of the thunder, which makes it seem as if it passed through arches or were variously broken, is probably owing to the sound being excited among clouds hanging over one another, and the agitated air passing irregularly between them.
Among other precautions pointed out by Franklin, he recommends to those who happen to be in the fields, at the time of a thunder-storm, to place themselves within a few yards of a tree, but not quite near it. Signor Beccaria, however, cautions persons not to depend on a higher, or, in all cases, a better conductor than their own body; since, according to his repeated observations, the lightning by no means descends in one undivided track, but bodies of various kinds conduct their share of it at the same time, in proportion to their quantity and conducting power. The late Earl of Stanhope, in his principles of electricity, observes that damage may be done by lightning, not only by the main stroke and lateral explosion, but likewise by what he callsthe returning stroke; that is, by the sudden violent return of that part of the natural share of electricity of any conducting body, or any combination of conducting bodies, which had been gradually expelled from such body or bodies respectively, by the superinduced elastic electrical pressure of a thunder-cloud’s electrical atmospheres.
Among the awful phenomena of nature, none have excited more terror than thunder and lightning. It is recorded of several of the profligate Roman emperors, who had procured themselves to be deified, that when they heard the thunder, they tremblingly concealed themselves, acknowledging a divine power greater than their own;a Jupiter thundering in the heavens.
A few instances in which the effects of these storms have been particularly characterized, will be both interesting and instructive.
That fermented liquors are apt to be soured and spoiled by thunder, is a fact well known; but that dried substances should be so acted on, is a still more remarkable phenomenon, and not so easy of explanation. It happened, however, some years ago, that in the immense granaries of Dantzic, the repositories of the corn, of Polish growth, intended for exportation, the wheat and rye, which were before dry and sweet, were, by the effect of a violent thunder-storm in the night, rendered clammy and stinking, insomuch that it required several weeks to sweeten them and render them fit for shipping.
The effects of a thunder-storm on a house and its furniture, at New Forge, Ireland, on the ninth of August, 1707, were very singular. It was observedthat the day was, throughout, close, hot and sultry, with scarcely any wind, until toward evening, when a breeze came on with mizzling rain, which lasted about an hour. As the air darkened after sunset, several faint flashes of lightning were seen, and thunder-claps heard, as at a distance; but between ten and eleven o’clock they became, in their approach, very violent and terrible, progressively increasing in their intensity, and coming on with more frequency, until toward midnight. A flash of lightning, and a clap of thunder, louder and more dreadful than all the rest, came simultaneously, and shook and inflamed the whole house. The mistress being sensible, at that instant, of a strong sulphureous smell in her chamber, and feeling a thick, gross dust fall on her hands and face as she lay in bed, concluded that part of her house had been thrown down by the thunder, or set on fire by the lightning. The family being called up, and candles lighted, both the bed-chamber, and the kitchen beneath it, were found to be filled with smoke and dust. A looking-glass in the chamber had been broken with such violence, that not a piece of it was to be found of the size of half a crown: several of the pieces were stuck in the chamber-door, which was of oak, as well as on the other side of the room. The edges and corners of some of the pieces of broken glass were tinged of a light flame color, as if they had been heated by the fire. On the following morning it was found that the cornice of the chimney next the bed-chamber had been struck off, and a breach twenty inches in breadth, made in the wall. At this part there was seen on the wall a smutted scar or trace, as if left by the smoke of a candle, which pointed downward to another part of the wall, where a similar breach was made. Within the chamber, the boards on the back of a large hair trunk, filled with linen, were forced in, and two-thirds of the linen pierced or cut through, the cut appearing of a quadrangular figure. Several pieces of muslin and wearing apparel, which lay on the trunk, were dispersed about the room, not in any way singed or scorched, notwithstanding the hair on the back of the trunk, where the breach was made, was singed. In the kitchen, a cat was found dead, with its legs extended as in a moving posture, without any other sign of being hurt, except that the fur was singed a little about the rump.
In the parish of Samford Courtney, near Oakhampton, in Devon, on the seventh of October, 1811, about three in the afternoon, a sudden darkness came on. Several persons being in the church-porch, a great fire-ball fell among them, and threw them down in various directions, but without any one being hurt. The ringers in the belfry declared that they never knew the bells go so heavily, and were obliged to desist from ringing. Looking down from the belfry into the church, they perceived four fire-balls, whichsuddenly burst, and the church was filled with fire and smoke. One of the congregation received a blow in the neck, which caused him to bleed both at nose and mouth. He observed the fire and smoke to ascend to the tower, where a large beam, on which one of the bells was hung, was broken, and the gudgeon breaking, the bell fell to the floor. One of the pinnacles of the tower, next the town, was carried away, and several of the stones were found near a barn, at a considerable distance from the church.
On the fifteenth of December, 1754, a vast body of lightning fell on the great hulk at Plymouth. It burst out a mile or two to the westward of the hulk, and rushed toward it with incredible velocity. A portion of the derrick (a part of the apparatus which served to hoist in and fix the masts of the men-of-war) was cut out, of a diameter of at least eighteen inches, and about fifteen feet in length: this particular piece was in three or four places girt with iron hoops, about two inches broad, and half an inch thick, which were completely cut in two by the lightning, as if done by the nicest hand and instrument. The lightning was immediately succeeded by a dreadful peal of thunder, and that by a most violent shower of hail, the hailstones being as large as nutmegs, and for the greatest part of the same size and shape.
Among the many fatal accidents by lightning which have befallen ships, the following is a remarkable instance. In the year 1746, a Dutch ship lay in the road of Batavia, and was preparing to depart for Bengal. The afternoon was calm, and toward evening the sails were loosed, to take advantage of the wind which then constantly blows from the land. A black cloud gathered over the hills, and was brought by the wind toward the ship, which it had no sooner reached, than a clap of thunder burst from it, and the lightning set fire to the maintopsail: this being very dry, burned with great fury: and thus the rigging and mast were set on fire. An attempt was immediately made to cut away the mast, but this was prevented by the falling of the burnt rigging from the head of the mast. By degrees the fire communicated to the other masts, and obliged the crew to desert the ship, the hull of which afterward took fire, and burning down to the powder magazine, the upper part was blown into the air, and the lower part sunk where the ship was at anchor.
In crossing the Atlantic, in the month of November, 1749, the crew of an English ship observed a large ball of blue fire rolling on the water. It came down on them so fast, that before they could raise the main-tack, they observed the ball to rise almost perpendicularly, and within a few yards of the main chains: it went off with an explosion as if hundreds of cannon had been fired off simultaneously, and left behind it a great smell of brimstone.The maintopmast was shattered into a thousand pieces, and splints driven out of the mainmast which stuck in the main-deck. Five seamen were knocked down, and one of them greatly burnt, by the explosion. The fireball was apparently of the size of a large millstone, and came from the north-east.
The ingenious and indefatigable Professor Richman lost his life on the sixth of August, 1753, as he was observing, with M. Sokolow, engraver to the royal academy of St. Petersburgh, the effects of electricity on his gnomon, during a thunder-storm. It was ascertained that the lightning was more particularly directed into the professor’s apartment, by the means of his electrical apparatus, for M. Sokolow distinctly saw a globe of blue fire, as large as his clenched hand, jump from the rod of the right gnomon, toward the forehead of Professor Richman, who at that instant was about a foot distant from the rod, observing the electrical index. The globe of fire which struck the professor, was attended with a report as loud as that of a pistol. The nearest metal wire was broken in pieces, and its fragments thrown on M. Sokolow’s clothes, on which burnt marks of their dimensions were left. Half of the glass vessel was broken off, and the metallic filings it contained thrown about the room. Hence it is plain that the force of the lightning was collected on the right rod, which touched the filings of metal in the glass vessel. On examining the effects of the lightning in the professor’s chamber, the door-case was found split half through, and the door torn off, and thrown into the chamber. The lightning therefore seems to have continued its course along the chain conducted under the ceiling of the apartment. In a Latin treatise, published by M. Lomonosow, member of the royal academy of sciences of St. Petersburgh, several curious particulars are mentioned relative to this melancholy catastrophe. At the time of his death, Professor Richman had in his left coat-pocket seventy silver coins, called rubles, which were not in the least altered by the accident which befell him. His clock, which stood in the corner, of the next room, between an open window and the door, was stopped; and the ashes from the hearth thrown about the apartment. Many persons without doors declared that they actually saw the lightning shoot from the cloud to the professor’s apparatus at the top of his house. The author, in speaking of the phenomena of electricity, observes that he once saw during a storm of thunder and lightning, brushes of electrical fire, with a hissing noise, communicate between the iron rod of his apparatus and the sides of his window, and that these were three feet in length, and a foot in breadth.
Somewhat analogous to these movements of electricity, are those connected with the electric telegraph during the violent thunder-storms that so oftentake place in the summer season. When such storms are raging, and particularly when the lightning is abundant and near, not only is the operation of the telegraph entirely suspended, but sometimes the lightning itself passes with great violence over the wires, in some cases melting and destroying them, and in others passing by them as it does by the lightning-rod, and manifesting its violence chiefly at the point of their termination. In some instances, the wires have been instantly melted by the electric fluid, and in others the machinery of the offices injured or destroyed, while at other times persons have been struck, or dwellings set on fire by its power.
On the seventeenth of July, 1666, a violent storm of hail fell on the English coast, in Norfolk and Suffolk. At North Yarmouth the hailstones were comparatively small; but at Snapebridge, one was taken up which measured a foot in circumference; at Seckford Hall, one which measured nine inches; and at Melton, one measuring eight inches. At Friston Hall, one of these hailstones, being put into a balance, weighed two ounces and a half. At Aldborough, it was affirmed that several of them were as large as turkeys’ eggs. A carter had his head broken by them through a stiff felt hat: in some places it bled, and in others tumors arose: the horses were so pelted that they hurried away his cart beyond all command. The hailstones were white, smooth without, and shining within.
On the twenty-fifth of May, 1686, the city of Lille, in Flanders, was visited by a tremendous hail-storm. The hailstones weighed from a quarter of a pound to a pound in weight, and even more. One was observed to contain in the center a dark brown matter, and being thrown into the fire, gave a very loud report. Others were transparent, and melted instantly before the fire. This storm passed over the city and citadel, leaving not a whole glass in the windows on the windward side. The trees were broken, and some beaten down, and partridges and hares killed in abundance.
In 1697, a horrid black cloud, attended with frequent lightnings and thunder, coming with a south-west wind out of Caernarvonshire, in Wales, and passing near Snowdon, was the precursor of a most tremendous hailstorm. In the part of Denbighshire bordering on the sea, all the windows on the weather side were broken by the hailstones discharged from this cloud, and the poultry and lambs, together with a large mastiff, killed. In the north part of Flintshire, several persons had their heads broken, and were grievously bruised in their limbs. The main body of this hail-storm fell on Lancashire, in a right line from Ormskirk to Blackburn, on the bordersof Yorkshire. The breadth of the cloud was about two miles, within which compass it did incredible damage, killing all descriptions of fowl and small creatures, and scarcely leaving a whole pane of glass in any of the windows where it passed. What was still worse, it plowed up the earth, and cut off the blade of the green corn, so as utterly to destroy it, the hailstones burying themselves in the ground. These hailstones, some of which weighed five ounces, were of different forms, some round, others semi-spherical; some smooth, others embossed and crenulated, like the foot of a drinking-glass, the ice being very transparent and hard; but a snowy kernel was in the midst of most of them, if not of all. The force of their fall showed that they descended from a great hight. What was thought to be most extraordinary in this phenomenon was, that the vapor which disposed the aqueous parts thus to congeal, should have continued undispersed for so long a tract as upward of sixty miles, and should, during this extensive passage, have occasioned so extraordinary a coagulation and congelation of the watery clouds, as to increase the hailstones to so vast a bulk in so short a space as that of their fall.
On the fourth of May, 1767, at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, after a violent thunder-storm, a black cloud suddenly arose in the south-west, about two o’clock in the afternoon, the wind then blowing strongly in the east, and was almost instantly followed by a shower of hail, several of the hailstones measuring from seven or eight to thirteen or fourteen inches in diameter. The extremity of the storm fell near Offley, where a young man was killed, and one of his eyes was beaten out of his head, his body being in every part covered with bruises. Another person, nearer to Offley, escaped with his life, but was much bruised. At a nobleman’s seat in the vicinity, seven thousand squares of glass were broken, and great damage was done to all the neighboring houses. The large hailstones fell in such immense quantities, that they tore up the ground, and split many large oaks and other trees, cutting down extensive fields of rye, and destroying several hundred acres of wheat, barley, &c. Their figures were various, some being oval, others round, others pointed, and others again flat.
The ruin and desolation accompanying a hurricane can scarcely be described. Like fire, its resistless force rapidly consumes everything in its track. It is generally preceded by an awful stillness of the elements, and a closeness and mistiness in the atmosphere, which make the sun appear red, and the stars of more than an ordinary magnitude. But a dreadful reversesucceeding, the sky is suddenly overcast and wild; the sea rises at once from a profound calm into mountains; the wind rages and roars like the noise of cannon; the rain descends in a deluge; a dismal obscurity envelops the earth with darkness; and the superior regions appear rent with lightning and thunder. The earth, on these occasions, often does, and always seems to tremble, while terror and consternation distract all nature: birds are carried from the woods into the ocean; and those whose element is the sea, fly for refuge to the land. The affrighted animals in the fields assemble together, and are almost suffocated by the impetuosity of the wind, in searching for shelter, which, when found, serves them only for destruction. The roofs of houses are carried to vast distances from their walls, which are beaten to the ground, burying their inmates beneath them. Large trees are torn up by the roots, and huge branches shivered off, and driven through the air in every direction, with immense velocity. Every tree and shrub that withstands the shock, is stripped of its boughs and foliage. Plants and grass are laid flat to the earth. Luxuriant spring is in a moment changed to dreary winter. This direful tragedy ended, when it happens in a town, the devastation is surveyed with accumulated horror: the harbor is covered with wrecks of boats and vessels; and the shore has not a vestige of its former state remaining. Mounds of rubbish and rafters in one place; heaps of earth and trunks of trees in another; deep gullies from torrents of water; and the dead and dying bodies of men, women and children, half-buried, and scattered about, where streets but a few hours before were, present to the miserable survivors a shocking conclusion of a spectacle, often followed by famine, and, when accompanied by an earthquake, by mortal diseases. Such is the true and terrific picture of a hurricane in the West Indies, as drawn by an actual observer.
On the Indian coast, hurricanes are both frequent and disastrous. On the second of October, 1746, the French squadron, commanded by Le Bourdonnai, being at anchor in Madras roads, a hurricane came on which in a few hours destroyed nearly the whole of the fleet, together with twenty other ships belonging to different nations. One of the French ships foundered in an instant, and only six of the crew were saved. On the thirtieth of December, 1760, during the siege of Pondicherry, a tremendous hurricane drove ashore and wrecked three British ships belonging to the besieging squadron: the crews were saved. On the twentieth of October of the following year, 1761, the British fleet, then lying in Madras roads, had to encounter a violent hurricane. The men-of-war put to sea, and were thus providentially saved; but all the vessels which still lay at anchor were lost, and scarcely a soul on board saved. On the twenty-ninth of October, 1768, another hurricanewas, on the coast of Coromandel, fatal to the Chatham Indiaman, which neglected to put to sea.
In the West Indies, a tremendous hurricane on the twenty-first of October, 1817, was particularly severe at the island of St. Lucie. All the vessels in the port were entirely lost. The government-house was blown down, and all within its walls, comprising the governor, his lady and child, his staff, secretaries, servants, &c., amounting to about thirty persons, were buried in its ruins: not one survived the dreadful accident; and still more horrid to relate, the barracks of the officers and soldiers were demolished, and all within them (about two hundred persons) lost. All the estates on the island were reduced to a heap of ashes. At Dominica, nearly the whole of the town was inundated, with an immense destruction of property.
In Great Britain, a dreadful hurricane, commonly called the great storm, set in at ten at night on the twenty-sixth of November, 1703, and raged violently until seven the next morning. It extended its ravages to every part of the kingdom. In the capital, upward of two thousand stacks of chimneys were blown down. The lead on the tops of several churches was rolled up like skins of parchment. Many houses were leveled with the ground, and by the fall of the ruins, twenty-one persons were killed, and more than two hundred wounded. The ships in the Thames broke from their moorings: four hundred wherries were lost, and many barges sunk, with a great loss of lives. At sea the destruction was still greater: twelve ships of war, with upward of eighteen hundred men on board, were totally lost, together with many merchantmen.
The setting in of the monsoon, or tropical sea-wind, in the East Indies, is thus described by Forbes in his “Oriental Memoirs.” The scene was at Baroche, where the British army was encamped. “The shades of evening approached as we reached the ground, and just as the encampment was completed, the atmosphere grew suddenly dark, the heat became oppressive, and an unusual stillness presaged the immediate setting in of the monsoon. The whole appearance of nature resembled those solemn preludes to earthquakes and hurricanes in the West Indies, from which the east in general is providentially free. We were allowed very little time for conjecture; in a few minutes the heavy clouds burst over us. I had witnessed seventeen monsoons in India, but this exceeded them all in its awful appearance and dreadful effects. Encamped in a low situation, on the borders of a lake formed to collect the surrounding water, we found ourselves in a few hoursin a liquid plain. The tent-pins giving way, in a loose soil, the tents fell down, and left the whole army exposed to the contending elements. It requires a lively imagination to conceive the situation of a hundred thousand human beings of every description, with more than two hundred thousand elephants, camels, horses and oxen, suddenly overwhelmed by this dreadful storm, in a strange country, without any knowledge of high or low ground; the whole being covered by an immense lake, and surrounded by thick darkness, which prevented our distinguishing a single object, except such as the vivid glare of lightning displayed in horrible forms. No language can describe the wreck of a large encampment thus instantaneously destroyed, and covered with water, and this amid the cries of old men and helpless women, terrified by the piercing shrieks of their expiring children, unable to afford them relief. During this dreadful night, more than two hundred persons and three thousand cattle perished, and the morning dawn exhibited a shocking spectacle.”
The south-west monsoon generally sets in very early in certain parts of India. “At Anjengo,” observes the above author, “it commences with great severity, and presents an awful spectacle; the inclement weather continues, with more or less violence, from May to October: during that period, the tempestuous ocean rolls from a black horizon, literally of ‘darkness visible,’ a series of floating mountains heaving under hoary summits, until they approach the shore, when their stupendous accumulations flow in successive surges, and break upon the beach; every ninth wave is observed to be generally more tremendous than the rest, and threatens to overwhelm the settlement. The noise of these billows equals that of the loudest cannon, and, with the thunder and lightning, so frequent in the rainy season, is truly awful. During the tedious monsoon I passed at Anjengo, I often stood upon the trembling sand-bank, to contemplate the solemn scene, and derive comfort from that sublime and omnipotent decree, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!’”