CHAP. VI - WHIRLWINDS AND VISITORS

Summary

The N.E. storm of the 1st of August, though exhausted of its greatest force in a few hours, was still dragging its slow length along through the following day. Every now and then a stray puff of wind came hurrying up, like a conspirator too late for the concerted rising, and throwing itself wildly against the northern cliffs of Gruajara, came spinning over their summits in the form of a little whirlwind. Sometimes, even our stone walls were enough to produce the effect; and then we saw an ordinary gust of wind blowing over the dry ground outside, raising a cloud of sand before it, and at the instant that it struck our wall, it eddied round the corner in a fine little revolving pillar of dust, occasionally entering our tent door in a most inconvenient manner. Amongst numerous young hurricanes which were thus generated before our eyes, one of them was remarkable for a regular increase in its diameter, as it travelled on, in a curving line; and for its diminishing velocity at the same time in the whirl. Mr. Redfield's theory, and Col. Reid's plates, of the West Indian storms, could not have been better illustrated.

Occasionally something more powerful came by; and one day, a heavy piece of canvas, ten feet square, spread out on the rock, was suddenly lifted up, whirled round and round in a horizontal plane, and then deposited again, as flat as before, almost in its former position.