its water
runs off than of that which falls upon the Alleghanies. There is,
therefore, more moisture of evaporation in the atmosphere of the former to
be thus precipitated and add to the annual supply of rain upon that
valley, and it exceeds that which falls upon the Alleghanies. Those
mountains, too, are elevated but about 1,500 feet above the table-lands at
their base, and exert little influence on the counter-trade. If they, were
6,000 or 8,000 feet high, a different state of things would exist.

Second--Mr. Blodget found the quantity of rain which fell in Iowa, and to
the south and west of the lake region, to be greater than fell over the
lake region itself. This is doubtless in part owing to the same cause. The
counter-trade, in a stormy state, attracts the surface atmosphere from the
lake region, with its evaporated moisture, before it arrives over it, and
therefore more rain falls S. W. of the lake region than upon it. This
power of attracting the surface wind of the ocean in under it, produces
the heavy gales which affect our coast, and which are rarely felt west of
the Alleghanies to any considerable degree; and a storm coming from the W.
S. W., extending a thousand miles or more from S. S. E. to N. N. W., may
have the wind set in violently at S. E. on the _southern coast first_, and
at later periods, successively, at points further north, and thus induce
the belief that the storm traveled from south to north.

Mr. Redfield finding that some of the gales which he investigated,
particularly that of September 3d, 1821, did not extend far inland, and
commenced at later periods regularly, at more northern points, concluded
that the gale traveled along the line of the coast to the northward. In
this, and in relation to the storm of 1821 (and perhaps some others), he
has been deceived. My recollections of that storm are accurate and
distinct. But I shall recur to this again when I come to speak of his
theory.

Toward storms, or belts of showers which would be storms if it were not
summer and the tropical tendency to showers active in the trade, which
pass mainly to the north of us, or commence north and pass over us,
condensing south while progressing east, the wind may commence blowing
before the body of the storm reaches us, from any point between south by
west and south east, particularly in the summer season and in the
afternoon. When the rain in a storm of this character sets in, in the
night, it will sometim