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.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

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:

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.