Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

each other, of two air-currents unequally warmed, develop elec tricity; and then we have thunder and lightning.

3. Rain, being elicited by heat from water, will, of course abound most where the sun is hottest. The average yearly fall of rain between the tropics is ninety-five inches, but in the temperate zone only thirty-five. The greatest rain-fall, however, is precipitated in the shortest time; tropical clouds like to get it over and have done with it. Ninety-five inches fall in eighty days on the equator, while at St. Petersburg the yearly rain-fall is but seventeen inches, spread over one hundred and sixty-nine days. Again, a tropical wet day is not continuously wet. The morning is clear; clouds form about ten o'clock, the rain begins at twelve, and pours till about half-past four; by sunset the clouds are gone, and the night is invariably fine. That is a tropical day during the rainy season.

4. What does the "rainy season" mean?—At a point twentythree and a half degrees north of the equator, at the tropic of Cancer, the vertical sun appears to stop when it is midsummer with us. As it moves southward, our summer wanes; it crosses the equator, and appears to travel on until it has reached twentythree and a half degrees on the other side of the line, - the tropic of Capricorn; then six months have passed; it is midwinter with us, and midsummer with people in the southern hemisphere. The sun turns back (and the word tropic means the place of turning), retraces its course over the equator, and at the expiration of a twelvemonth is at our tropic again, bringing us

summer.

EI

5. Now, the rainy season is produced between the tropics by the powerful action of the sun, wherever it is nearly vertical, in sucking up vast quantities of vapor, which become condensed in the upper colder regions of the atmosphere, and dash to earth again as rain. The rainy season, therefore, follows the sun. When the sun is at or near the tropic of Cancer, both before and after turning, all places near that tropic have their rainy season, when the sun makes a larger angle with their zenith, it has taken the rainy season with it to another place. It is here obvious that a country between the tropics, and far from each, is passed over by the sun, in its apparent course, at two periods in the same year, with a decided interval between them. Such a country must have, therefore, and does have, two rainy and two dry seasons.

80

6. The trade-winds, blowing equably, do not deposit much of their vapor while still flowing over the Atlantic. These winds called from being favorable to commerce-blow constantly, one in a north-east and the other in a south-east direction, within about

twenty-eight degrees on each side of the equator. Out at sea it seldom rains within the trade-winds; but when they strike the east coast of America rain falls; and the rain-fall on that coast, within the limits of the trade-winds, is notoriously excessive. The chain of the West India Islands stands ready to take (in the due season) a full dose; the rain-fall at St. Domingo is one hundred and fifty inches. But the winds, having traversed the breadth of the continent, deposit their last clouds on the western flanks of the Andes, and there are portions, accordingly, of the western coast, on which no season will expend a drop of rain.

ΕΙ

7. Thus in Peru it rains once, perhaps, in a man's lifetime; and an old man may tell how once, when he was quite a boy, it thundered. The cold Antarctic current, slipping by the Peruvian shores, yields a thick vapor, which serves instead of rain. Upon the table-land of Mexico, in parts of Guatemala and California, for the same reason, rain is very rare. But the grandest rainless districts are those occupied by the great desert of Africa, extending westward over portions of Arabia and Persia, to a desert province of the Belooches; districts presently continued ir the heart of Asia, over the great desert of Gobi, the table-land of Thibet, and part of Mongolia. In all these are five or six millions of square miles of land that never taste a shower. Elsewhere the whole bulk of water that falls annually in the shape of rain is calculated at seven hundred and sixty millions of millions of tons

EI

8. Winds are caused, like currents of the sea, by inequalities of temperature. The hurricane is a remarkable storm wind, peculiar to certain portions of the world. It rarely takes its rise beyond the tropics, and it is the only storm to dread within the region of the trade-winds. In the temperate zone, hurricanes do now and then occur, which, crossing the Atlantic from America, strike the coasts of Europe. It is the nature of a hurricane to travel round and round, as well as forward, very much as a corkscrew travels through a cork, only the circles are all flat, and described by a rotatory wind upon the surface of the water. Hurricanes always travel away from the equator. North of the equator, the great storm, revolving as it comes, rolls from the east towards the west; inclining from the equator, that is, northward. It always comes in that way; always describes in its main course the curve of an ellipse.

ΕΙ

9. The typhoon, a relation of the hurricane's, is of Chinese extraction. It is met with only in the China seas, not so far south as the Island of Mindana'o, nor so far north as Core'a, except upon the eastern borders of Japan'. A typhoon walks abroad not oftener than about once every three or four years;

and that is quite often enough. You may believe anything of a typhoon. Robert Fortune says, that when he was at sea in a typhoon, a fish weighing thirty or forty pounds was blown out of the water, and fell through the skylight into the cabin. That might be believed of a typhoon from a less trustworthy informant.

10. Of local storms and currents, caused, inland or out at sea, by inequalities of temperature, as, for example, by the warm current of the Gulf-stream, we need not particularly speak. The storms and the rain-torrents of Cape Horn, where one hundred and fifty-three inches of rain have been measured in forty-one days, and where the whole year is a rainy season, we can only mention. To the simoom we give a nod of recognition; verily, that is a penetrating wind which clogs with sand the works of a doublecased gold watch in the waistcoat-pocket of a traveller. We wave our hands likewise to the Italian sirocco, and the Egyptian khamsin, and the dry harmattan; and so our dry talk ends.

11. In equalizing temperature, in wafting clouds over the land, and causing them to break and fall in fertilizing showers, in creating and fostering the art of navigation, by which man is civilized, the winds perform good service. Their pure current washes out the stagnant exhalations from our homes, our fields, our persons; breaks the ripe seed from the tree, and sows it at a distance from its parent plant, where it may grow in the free air, not overshadowed. Without winds, winter would be one monot'ony of frost, and summer one monotony of sun. The crisp snow and the woolly clouds, the delightful rustle of the summer forest and the waving of the autumn corn, the glory of the sunset and the wonder of the rainbow, the world would have wanted these had not the winds been taught to do their Master's bidding After all, wind and rain prove more than the necessity of carry ing umbrellas.

12. It is raining still; raining on the just and on the unjust ' on the trees, the corn, and the flowers; on the green fields and the river; on the lighthouse bluff and out at sea. It is raining on the graves of some whom we have loved. When it rains dur ing a mellow summer evening, it is beneficently natural to most of us to think of that, and to give those verdant places their quiet share in the hope and freshness of the morrow.

DICKENS.

XCVI. THE HURRICANE.

1. LORD of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky,
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane!

And, lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,
Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails,
Silent and slow, and terribly strong,

The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come;

While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick, hot atmosphere,
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.

2 They darken fast; and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray
A glare that is neither night nor day,
A beam that touches with hues of death
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,
While the hurricane's distant voice is heard,
Uplifted among the mountains round;

And the forests hear and answer the sound.

3 He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail!

How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale!
How his huge and writhing arms are bent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,

And fold, at length, in their dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain, the visible space!

4 Darker still darker! the whirlwinds bear

The dust of the plains to the middle air:
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels wherever they dart,
As the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
And flood the skies with a lurid glow.

5 What roar is that? 't is the rain that breaks
In torrents away from the airy lakes,

Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.

Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies
With the very clouds, ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place

The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space
A whirling ocean that fills the wall

Of the crystal heaven, and buries all.
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.

BRYANT

XCVII. THE BEST KIND OF REVENGE.

1. SOME years ago, a warehouseman in Manchester, England, published a scurrilous pamphlet, in which he endeavored to hold up the house of Grant Brothers to ridicule. William Grant remarked upon the occurrence that the man would live to repent what he had done; and this was conveyed by some tale-bearer to the libeller, who said, "O, I suppose he thinks I shall some time or other be in his debt; but I will take good care of that."— It happens, however, that a man in business cannot always choose who shall be his creditors. The pamphleteer became a bankrupt, and the brothers held an acceptance of his which had been endorsed to them by the drawer, who had also become a bankrupt.

2. The wantonly-libelled men had thus become creditors of the libeller! They now had it in their power to make him repent of his audacity. He could not obtain his certificate without their signature, and without it he could not enter into business again. He had obtained the number of signatures required by the bankrupt law, except one. It seemed folly to hope that the firm of "the brothers" would supply the deficiency. What! they, who had cruelly been made the laughing-stocks of the public, forget the wrong and favor the wrong-doer? He despaired. But the claims of a wife and children forced him at last to make the application. Humbled by misery, he presented himself at the counting-house of the wronged.

[ocr errors]

3. Mr. William Grant was there alone, and his first words to the delinquent were, "Shut the door, sir!". sternly uttered. The door was shut, and the libeller stood trembling before the libelled. He told his tale, and produced his certificate, which was instantly clutched by the injured merchant. "You wrote a pamphlet against us once!" exclaimed Mr. Grant. The supplicant expected to see his parchment thrown into the fire. But this was not its destination. Mr. Grant took a pen, and writing something upon the document, handed it back to the bankrupt. He, poor wretch, expected to see "rogue, scoundrel, libeller," inscribed, but there was, in fair round characters, the signature of the firm.

4. "We make it a rule," said Mr. Grant, "never to refuse signing the certificate of an honest tradesman, and we have never heard that you were anything else." The tears started into the poor man's eyes. "Ah," said Mr. Grant, "my saying was true' I said you would live to repent writing that pamphlet. I did not mean it as a threat. I only meant that some day you would know us better, and be sorry you had tried to injure us.

I see

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »