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On these dry and sterile plains sand-spouts are frequently seen; indeed, half a dozen were counted at the same time from the car windows. These are created just as water-spouts are formed on the ocean, and to encounter one is almost equally serious. One must visit either Egypt or Mexico to witness this singular phenomenon.
The sun shone glorious on the water while the procession advanced toward the land, under five hundred arches of ice, illuminated with coloured lights, and adorned in the most grotesque and fanciful style with sea-weed, elegant festoons, and shells of every kind; while a thousand water-spouts danced eternally before and after us, attracting the water from the sea in a kind of cone, and suddenly uniting with the most fantastical thunder and lightning.
Nearly allied to this is, "Pray remember poor Guy Faux;" which not only teaches children the art of begging, but is frequently the means of their becoming dishonest, for I have known children break down fences, and water-spouts, and, in short, any thing that they could lay their hands upon, in order to make a bonfire, to the great danger of the inhabitants near it, without producing one good effect.
Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash from pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it being in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for saying 'Good-night' to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse of his fire.
I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting water-spouts which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I had never seen.
At times the fire and smoke, on either side, torn by the wind, seemed to dance and gyrate in a Bacchanalian revel, taking monstrous forms, that exploded in showers of sparks, glittering like the fabled California sands. Above the burning district the smoke clouds changed form constantly. Sometimes they reeled along like colossal water-spouts.
It occasions water-spouts, volcanoes, and earthquakes. After much labour and research, this principle has been found embodied in a metallic substance, which is met with in the mountain in which we are, united with a very heavy earth; and this circumstance had great influence in inducing me to settle myself here.
With a crash that seemed to shake the solid rocks the gigantic billow fell, and instantly the spouting-holes sent up a gush of water-spouts with such force that they shrieked on issuing from their narrow vents. It seemed to us as if the earth had been blown up with water.
But I did not rise to the eaves of any of the houses. If there had been a telegraph-pole, or anything of the kind that I could have clung to, I would have taken off the knapsack, and would have endeavored to scramble down as well as I could. But there was nothing I could cling to. Even the water-spouts, if I could have reached the face of the houses, were embedded in the walls.
It fell, as it were, in broad heavy sheets, and its sound was a loud, continuous roar. The wind soon after burst upon the forest and added to the hideous shriek of elements. The trees bent before it; the rain was whirled and dashed about in water-spouts; and huge limbs were rent from some of the larger trees with a crash like thunder, and swept far away into the forest.
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