the twenty-first; about two o'clock, the wind suddenly shifted to the north and north-west, blowing with increased violence. On the twenty-second, there was a gale all day, from the north-east and east, with heavy and incessant rain. The gale The gale increased in the evening, continuing until four o'clock the next afternoon, though most violent at nine o'clock the same forenoon, the wind being north to north-west.

At New London, Connecticut, the storm commenced on Friday, the twenty-second, a heavy rain falling during that day and night, the wind north-east. Next morning, the twenty-third, the wind became very violent, and soon after almost a hurricane. The tide, which commenced flood about six o'clock, had, by ten, risen three or four feet higher than was ever known before. The rise was so rapid, too, that some of the dwellings were deluged before the inhabitants knew of their danger, and not more than thirty minutes elapsed after they thus realized their peril, before the waves rose four to six feet in the streets! Stores were soon seen falling before the terrible power of the tempest, buildings were unroofed, giant trees fell. But this awful scene of destruction was short. Soon after eleven o'clock, the wind shifted to the westward and abated; the sea returned with the velocity it came in, though it should have run flood until twelve; and the storm ceased. The showers which fell over the city and neighborhood were of salt water; and the leaves of the tender fruit-trees and shrubs and of many forest trees, without frost, shrunk in a few hours after the gale as though they had been scorched. Brooks and wells in the town and neighborhood became brackish; and during the strength of the wind, in the eddies, the air was extremely hot and suffocating.

Far into the interior, the tempest swept and raged with unparalleled fury. Early on Saturday morning, the wind became very violent, and torrents of rain descended, continuing with but short intermissions until about half-past ten in the forenoon; at this time, the rain abated, and the wind,

suddenly shifting to the south-east, blew a hurricane, the terrible devastation of which covered a column or area of sixty miles in width. A suffocating current of air as, from a hot bath, accompanied the middle stage of the tempest. Flocks of gulls, from the far-off ocean, were seen after the storm in the Worcester meadows, and, as evening approached, they flew toward the

sea.

Along the seaboard, the effect of the tide upon the soil and its productions was very marked. Grass was entirely killed. There was not a green blade to be seen, in any place, over which the flood had passed. In a few spots, near running springs, some new shoots appeared in the course of the autumn; but on uplands, none grew until another season, and then it was not the same kind of grass which grew there before, excepting in a very few instances. Several cedar-swamps were filled with sea water, which, having no outlet, soaked into the ground. The trees in these swamps perished forthwith, the leaves withering and falling off in a very short time. In the trees cut from these swamps during the winter following the storm, the sap-wood had turned nearly black; and there was scarcely an instance in which a cedar-tree survived the effect of the flood, Pine and oak trees suffered a similar fate, excepting a very few, which stood near the shore, these latter, perhaps, having grown accustomed to the influence of salt water, and could better endure the ordeal, -though a very great proportion even of these perished in a short time. Most of the shrubs and bushes, over which the tide passed, perished similarly. It was observed, however, that one or two species. of laurel, and the common bayberry, were but little if at all injured, and some of the swamp whortleberry-bushes survived. Apple trees were, generally, on such high ground, that the tide did not reach them; only a few were surrounded by the water, and none of them were so situated that the water could remain about them for any length of time. They were, nevertheless, as much exposed as many of the cedars

which died; but the apple trees continued. to live, though considerably stinted in their growth. With these exceptions, the destruction of vegetable life in localities of this exposure, was very general, if not universal.

Wherever the cultivated lands were in low places near the shore, they were of course overflowed. In fields where Indian corn was standing, the roots were, in most cases, torn out of the ground; and where this did not take place, the stalks were wrenched and twisted, and the spikes broken off. The corn, where it had previously grown hard or ripe, was fit for food, but where the grain had not already hardened, it failed to do so, and either perished in the husk, or very soon after it was taken out. It was a common remark, that no part of the plant could be dried by any means, and therefore by far the greater part of the harvest was lost, not being yet ripe. Potatoes, and other vegetable roots, if left in the ground, perished; but, where they had ripened, and were taken up within a few days after the flood, and well dried, they were good.

which the tide water did not run, were so infected with the taste and qualities of sea water, as to be totally unfit for domestic purposes. The inhabitants were obliged therefore to transport this necessary article for household uses, from a great distance; and travelers who needed it were glad to receive it in a measure of the smallest capacity. In some wells near the shore, the water formerly rose and fell with the tide, still remaining fresh; but the severe and peculiar discipline of this flood so changed their habit, that the water in them became of a fixed height, and saltish.

When the vast and tremendous tide was sweeping over the land, the spray arising from it was very great, over a wide surface of country, extending to the furthermost of the interior of the northern states. It is spoken of as having resembled a driving snow-storm, through which objects could be discerned only at short distances. In the more northerly regions, it was observed, immediately after the storm, that a singular effect had been produced upon the leaves of the trees by the spray; their vitality was destroyed, and they exhibited an appearance similar to that which

the flood, bore every mark of death, but not of having been burnt,-neither was there any thin coating of salt on the windows in these regions, as on those in the neighborhood of Boston and elsewhere.

In multitudes of instances, the saltness of the wells and watering-places continued unabated for six months, or until the first week of the following March. The winter had been severe, and the ground frozen very deep until the middle of February, when there were several weeks of moderate weather, with soft rains, which dissolved. the snows and opened the ground; shortly after which, it was discovered that several of the wells and ponds were fresh. As the water in these had been tasted but a few days previously and was found still to retain its disagreeableness, the freshness must have taken place suddenly. After successive spells of dry weather, these wells grew salt again, but not to the same degree as before; and, on the other hand, they would be fresh, after heavy rains, and then become salt again after dry weather, the degree of saltness diminishing from time to time. This peculiarity continued for several years, in some localities, being, of course, a great inconvenience to man and beast.

The center or the limits of this great and memorable tempest, scientific investigators were unable to determine. It was very violent at places separated by a considerable interval from each other; while the intermediate region suffered much less. Its course through forests was, in some instances, marked almost as definitely, as where the trees have been newly cut down for a road. In these cases, it appears to have been a moving vortex, and not the rushing forward of the great body of the atmosphere. There seems to have been no part of the coast of New England which escaped its fury, though in Vermont and the western parts of New Hampshire its severity was much less; yet still further west, on the St. Lawrence, the gale was so great as to render it extremely dangerous to be upon the river. And what is still more remarkable, the storm began to grow

violent at this place about the same time that it commenced near the Atlantic, and subsided about the same time.

As to the direction of the wind, at the several places where the storm prevailed, Professor Farrar's account states, that, on the twenty-second, the wind was pretty generally from the north-east. The storm commenced to the leeward; but when the wind shifted from north-east to east and south, along the coast of New England, it veered round in the opposite direction at New York, and at an earlier period. It reached its greatest height at this latter place about nine o'clock on the morning of the twenty-third, when it was from the north-west; whereas, at Boston, it became most violent and devastating about two hours later, and blew from the opposite. quarter of the heavens. At Montreal, the direction of the wind was the same as at New York, but did not attain its greatest height so soon by several hours. The barometer descended very fast during the morning of the twenty-third, and, when the wind was highest, had fallen about half an inch. It began to rise as the wind abated, and recovered its former elevation by the time the air was restored to its usual tranquillity.

According to the investigations made by others, and the observations recorded at the time, in different places, the following facts are believed to be established, namely: That the hurricane commenced in the West Indies, and moved northward at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour. Its course from St. Barts was about west-north-west to Turks Island, and thence to Boston-nearly on the same meridian—it was a curve convex to the west. Previous to the arrival of the hurricane in New England, a north-east storm had prevailed along the Atlantic coast for more than twenty-four hours. For some hours previous to the hurricane, there was a great and rapid condensation of vapor, producing a heavy fall of rain in the line of the north-east storm. The hurricane, or violent blow, was mostly from the southeast, blowing into and at right angles to

the north-east storm, at its southern termination. As the south-east wind approached the line of the north-east storm, it was deflected into an east wind. The general form of the hurricane, in and about New England, was that of an eccentric ellipse, with its longest diameter northeast and south-west; wind blowing northeast on the north-west side; north-northwest, and west-north-west, at its south end; south-east on its south-east side, curving into an east wind at its junction with the north-east current; wind blowing from south at the easternmost part of the hurricane. The whole body of the hurricane, in the form thus described, moved to the north nearly on the meridian.

It is universally admitted, that there is no account of a storm or gale in all respects so remarkable in its phenomena as this, to be found in the history of the United States. Other hurricanes there have been, laying waste whatever came in their way, but they have been comparatively limited in their extent and destructiveness. Morton, in his New England Memorial, gives a description of the violent tempest that took place soon after the first settlement at Plymouth. It began on the morning of August fifteenth, 1635, very suddenly, "blew down houses, uncovered. divers others, divers vessels were lost at sea; it caused the sea to swell in some places so that it arose to twenty foot right up and down, and made many Indians to climb into trees for their safety; blew down many hundred thousands of trees," etc. The tremendous gales of 1723, 1804, 1818, 1821, 1836; 1841, 1851, 1859, 1860, 1869, and some others, will long

be remembered in certain localities, for their severity and the loss of life and property, on land and sea, which attended them; but neither the memory of man, nor the annals of the country, from its first settlement down to the present time, furnish any parallel to the peculiar character of the great gale of September, 1815.

Of the storms and floods which occurred during the last half of the century, those of September and October, 1869, were perhaps the most memorable. The devastation by the latter embraced the whole country between the Nova Scotia coast and the Mississippi, and from the north limits of the Canadas to the cotton states. The rain fell in torrents for about forty consecutive hours, the dense clouds descending in vast sheets, and a moaning wind accompanying the powerful outpouring. A stronger storm was beyond conception. In some places, the rain-gauge showed that four inches of rain fell in the course of twenty-nine hours, and, during the succeeding six hours, 3.34 inches additional, -the total fall of water during the storm, over a vast region of country, reaching the enormous amount of 8.05 inches. The resulting floods on all the streams were beyond any ever recorded. The storm was so sudden and unexpected, that no precautions could have been taken, and none were. Railroads, telegraph wires, streets, bridges, dams, manufactories, houses, lands, crops, were utterly or partially ruined, over a wide extent of country; and such an embargo on travel was never known before. The pecuniary losses reached millions of dollars, and many lives were lost.