land is set
apart: it is the exercise-ground of the weather. Storms bred elsewhere
come here full-grown: they come in couples, in quartets, in choruses.
If New England were not mostly rock, these winds would carry it off; but
they would bring it all back again, as happens with the sandy portions.
What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africus brings back. When the air
is not full of snow, it is full of dust. This is called one of the
compensations of Nature.

This is what happened after the convention of the blackbirds: A moaning
south wind brought rain; a southwest wind turned the rain to snow; what
is called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow; a north wind
sent the mercury far below freezing. Salt added to snow increases the
evaporation and the cold. This was the office of the northeast wind: it
made the snow damp, and increased its bulk; but then it rained a little,
and froze, thawing at the same time. The air was full of fog and
snow and rain. And then the wind changed, went back round the circle,
reversing everything, like dragging a cat by its tail. The mercury
approached zero. This was nothing uncommon. We know all these winds. We
are familiar with the different "forms of water."

All this was only the prologue, the overture. If one might be permitted
to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the instruments. The
opera was to come,--the Flying Dutchman of the air.

There is a wind called Euroclydon: it would be one of the Eumenides;
only they are women. It is half-brother to the gigantic storm-wind of
the equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind: it is a monster. Its breath
is frost. It has snow in its hair. It is something terrible. It peddles
rheumatism, and plants consumption.

The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into the discord of the
weather in New England. From its lair about Point Desolation, from the
glaciers of the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast, leaving
wrecks in its track, it marched right athwart the other conflicting
winds, churning them into a fury, and inaugurating chaos. It was the
Marat of the elements. It was the revolution marching into the "dreaded
wood of La Sandraie."

Let us sum it all up in one word: it was something for which there is no
name.

Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves wrecks. What does it
leave on land? Funerals. When it subsides, New England is prostrate. It
has left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and patent medicine