, however, affirms that the
climate is not unhealthy); T. H. Hood, _Notes of a Cruise in
H.M.S. "Fawn" in the Western Pacific_ (Edinburgh, 1863), pp. 144
_sq._; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 16, 35 _sqq._

[11] Ch. Wilkes, _Narrative of the United States
Exploring Expedition_, ii. 124 _sq._; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_,
pp. 165 _sq._, 169 _sq._; G. Brown, _Melanesians and
Polynesians_, pp. 180 _sqq._

[12] S. Ella, "Samoa," _Report of the Fourth Meeting of
the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science,
held at Hobart, Tasmania, in January 1892_, p. 622.

During the stormy season, which lasts from December to April, hurricanes
sometimes occur, and are greatly dreaded by the natives on account of
the havoc which they spread both among the crops and the houses. A
steady rain, the absence of the sun, a deathlike stillness of the birds
and domestic animals, and above all the dark and lowering aspect of the
sky, are the premonitory symptoms of the coming calamity and inspire
general consternation, while the thunderous roar of the torrents and
waterfalls in the mountains strike on the ear with redoubled
distinctness in the prevailing silence which preludes the storm. Warned
by these ominous signs, the natives rush to secure their property from
being swept away by the fury of the blast. Some hurry their canoes
inland to places of comparative safety; others pile trunks of
banana-trees on the roofs of their houses or fasten down the roofs by
hanging heavy stones over them; while yet others bring rough poles,
hastily cut in the forest, and set them up inside the houses as props
against the rafters, to prevent the roof from falling in. Sometimes
these efforts are successful, sometimes futile, the hurricane sweeping
everything before it in its mad career, while the terrified natives
behold the fruits of months of toil, sometimes the growth of years, laid
waste in an hour. On such occasions the shores have been seen flooded by
the invading ocean, houses carried clean away, and a forest turned
suddenly into a bare and treeless plain. Men have been forced to fling
themselves flat on the ground and to dig their hands into the earth to
save themselves from being whirled away and precipitated into the sea or
a torrent. In April 1850 the town of Apia, the capital of the islands,
was almost destroyed by one of these cyclones. When the rage of the
tornado is spent and calm has returned, t