Show THE CYCLONE IN MAURITIUS ath on thea SS th of 1 apri APO 1892 mauritius the theold old 11 ile e do de abe atland d of prance france till vied tied with the ceylon for pride of place a beautiful and most fertile colony of tire british bastean crown in the sphere its if h cane crops T weathered ed the which on petrue Feb summer eummer gales fief february ft roary ry and a gain after after fter ft er had budd intoner in as poets very YZ put had antly and planters who for low prides nd ad valiantly beetroot fought against were ly competition rO vOlling in the th prospect hurricane ux yet yea 1892 season bebow being over of was wa likely to mark a new sa prosperity the garden of h to were t M b 0 t m n 1 e a ders 1 and with j jat ustice loethe the ved bardou in the w wa ro s p i e u d e u world 15 with tr tropical legeta begets alon while that of which had been nursed with love and pride by very every successive governor for upwards of a hundred years was looking its ite best beat in its luxuriant display of palms kalmn and flowers and gorgeously colored foliage at 8 p in on the all this was wae no more the island had lost its beauty the cane its promise the planter his hid hopes and the gardens their charms A short twenty four hours had sufficed to perpetrate this en end and fortunate had bad it been could the mischief have stopped there for the soils fertility canno cannot be affected by a storm and the soil of mauritius is preeminently fertile and recuperative but 1100 people had been killed 2000 had been wounded one third of the capital bad been levelled bevelled level led to the ground thirty out of fifty churches and chapels had bad been demolished or rendered use useless sugar mills had been wrecked crushing mercilessly men women and children who had sought refuge tinder their solid walls wall every indian but had been blown away whole villages swept from the place where they stood and some homeless people were left to seek for shelter and food which a few hours before they were quietly enjoy enjoying ln through their own exertion and nd labur labor nothing could withstand in placeit the terrible force of the wind on that fatal day of the of april it it will wil be for scientific men to explain how tr trees firmly planted more than a oen century back and of eight and twelve ve feet diameter were felled fe I 1 led to the ground how the iron like jike teakwood branches were snapped and out and broker as mere brushwood brush cooil how of iron eighteen inches thick were indented and twisted so as to become useless as in the case of the great pulley ladders of a ries ba dredge bowld fine a column ut of stones each weighing more than a ton and fad riveted with iron girders and with cement was thrown down like a pack of cardi card and it willbe will be tor for to explain how bow an irland ifland of thirty three miles by thirty one in extent through which the center of a cyclone is pass passing can escape at all from a wind so violent as the above denotes in the of observations the velocity of the wind to ie set down at miles at its ita maximum which corresponds to a pressure of sixty seven pounds to the square foot it does seem as ai if this moved at double the rate of an express train must render house habitation useless as a a place of refuge in a storm yet in my inspection of the island I 1 have seen a house destroyed the wallis surrounding its if yards crushed to stoma and a house houe en an four miserable posters maeo why everything was wai unexpected singular in gular and aad unprecedented in this calamitous stroke dealt by na ha tare with a viciousness that savored of a woma use vengeance galen in mauritius have been known in may and even in june notably in 1785 when the torm storm lasted twenty hours but no hurricane and though thore have been three hurricanes in april since 1773 none were later than the of that months month so go that even as a to date the hurricane of 1892 was waa exceptional and will probably on these theae modify many accepted prin olp caplea so of the students of the laws law of storms unless indeed the now new interest in the thea spots poto on the auns diso oan can ex plain lain by their number and their degree degree of magnitude the exceptional variations la in the air currents our rente which revolve about the earth in its whirl wind course coune around the sun gun |