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
