United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Such is the miserable and precarious state of an anemocracy, of a people who put their trust in hurricanes, and are governed by wind. In August, 1798, three forty-gun frigates landed 1,100 men under Humbert, making the passage from Rochelle to Killala without seeing any English ship.
The technicians came, commanded by General Max Shorter, sixty-three years old. Men wearing the circle whose diameter was etched in ruby steel enclosing a background of gleaming ebon the emblem was a silver D over a sunburst of hammered gold. The surface of Miracastle roiled with unfamiliar storms and tornados and hurricanes.
What Savonarola had foreseen, here too happened; but not in the way he would have wished, nor by the means he would have used. It is one thing to be a prophet in the sense of discerning the catastrophe to which circumstances must inevitably lead, another thing to trace beforehand the path which will be taken by the hurricanes that change the face of the world.
These perfect calms are often succeeded by sudden and violent storms, often by hurricanes; and though we may have sea-room and stout craft, in such a commotion as I have more than once witnessed, it will require all our seamanship to keep afloat."
Next morning at daybreak, about one hundred men arrived at my house, and in answer to my query why they came armed they replied, "We are now going to that village where the men of wicked conduct are gathered together. We will find out why they sought your life, and we will rebuke their Sacred Man for pretending to cause hurricanes and diseases. We cannot go unarmed.
Such, in spite of the size of our stout ship, might be our fate should the anchors not hold. Suddenly the wind dropped; still the sea continued to leap and foam around us. "It will be all right, I hope," I said to Mr Tarbox. "These hurricanes seldom last long, I fancy." "Not quite so certain of that, Walter," he observed. "I don't like the look of the sky even now."
Such was the description given me of the circumstances under which the crowd of vessels that lay at anchor in Port Louis had arrived. I had anticipated that I should here be enabled to make some important additions to the notices of hurricanes that have occasionally appeared in this work; and certainly ample opportunity now presented itself.
After the cessation of the gold produce, when the colonists were forced by necessity to dedicate themselves to agriculture, they met with many adverse conditions: The incursions of the Caribs, the hurricanes of 1530 and 1537, the emigration to Peru and Mexico, the internal dissensions, and last, but not least, the heavy taxes.
The Pacific is not more calm on the shores of Peru, than the Caribbean Sea from Porto-cabello, and especially from Cape Codera to the point of Paria. The hurricanes of the West Indies are never felt in these regions. The only danger in the port of Cumana is a shoal, called Morro Roxo.
It could figure out a perihelion or a Latin bill-of-fare in a minute, but you ought to hear it stutter when it tried to map out the daily relaxations of a college full of husky young hurricanes, who had come to school to learn what life looks like from the inside.
Word Of The Day