HURRICANE

(Span, huracan.) A violent storm, generally accompanied by thunder and lightning, and distinguished from every other kind of tempest by the vehemence o<f the wind, and the sudden changes to which it is subject. Hurricanes prevail chiefly in the East and West Indies, the Isle of France, and in some parts of China. The following graphic description of the usual phenomena attending the West Indian hurricanes, from the pen of lidmund Burke, may be interesting to the reader: — " It is in the rainy season, principally in the month of August, more rarely in July and September, that they are a aulted by hurricanes, the most terrible calamity to which they are subject from the climate. This destroys at one stroke the labour of many years, and frustrates the most exalted hopes of the planter, and often just at the moment when he thinks himself out of the reach of fortune. It is a sudden and violent storm of wind, rain, thunder, and lightning, attende<l with a furious swelling of the sea, and sometimes with an -arthqujUce; in short, with every circumstance v/hich the elements can a emble that is terrible and destructive. First they see, as a prelude to the ensuing havoc, whole fields ot sugar-canes whirled into the air, and scattered over the face of the country. The strongest trees of the forest are torn up by the roots and driven about like stubble. Their windmills are swept away in a moment. Their works, their fixtures, the ponderous copper-boilers and stills of several hundred weight, are wrenched from the ground and battered to pieces. Their hotises are no protection; the roofs are torn off at one blast, whilst the rain, which in an hour rises five feet, rushes in upon them with an irresistible violence. There are signs which the Indians of these islands taught our planters, by which they can prognosticate the approach of a hurricane. It comes on either in the quarters or at the full or change of the moon. If it will come on at the full moon, you being at the change, observe these signs. That day you will see the sky very turbulent. You will observe the sun more red than at other times. You will perceive a dead calm, and the hills clear of all those clouds and mists which usually hover about them. In the clefts of the earth, and in the wells, you will hear a hollow rumbling sound like the rushing of a great wind. At night the stars seem much larger than usual, and surrounded with a sort of burs. The north-west sky has a black and menacing look, and the sea emits a strong smell and rises into vast waves, often without any wind. The wind itself now forsakes its usual steady easterly 567 HUSTINGS. stream, and shifts about to the west, from whence It sometimes blows with intermi ions violently and irregularly for about two hours at a time. You have the same signs at the full.of the moon. The moon itself is surrounded with a great bur, and sometimes the sun has the same appearance." See Storms, Tornado. [s. 580]