sing clouds were tinged at sunset with a deep copper colour; but
the moon not being near the full, it excited little apprehension at the
Refuge. The wind was fresh, and kept increasing until eleven o'clock, at
which time it blew very hard; the rain fell in torrents, accompanied with
loud claps of thunder and lightning, which at every instant imparted to
one of the darkest nights the brightness of day. The course of the wind
was from south-west to south, south-east, east, and north-east, where it
blew hardest between one and three in the morning, giving me an
apprehension that the house, pavilions, and all would be blown away
together. At four o'clock the wind had got round to north and began to
moderate, as did the rain which afterwards came only in squalls; at nine,
the rain had nearly ceased, and the wind was no more than a common gale,
and after passing round to N. N. W. it died away. At the time the wind
moderated at Mauritius its fury was most exerted at Bourbon, which it was
said to have attacked with a degree of violence that any thing less solid
than a mountain was scarcely able to resist. The lowest to which the
mercury descended in the barometer at Vacouas. was 51/2 lines below the
mean level of two days before and two days afterward; and this was at
daybreak, when the wind and rain were subsiding.

Soon after the violence of the hurricane had abated, I went to the
cascades of the R. du Tamarin, to enjoy the magnificent prospect which
the fall of so considerable a body of water must afford; the path through
the wood was strewed with the branches and trunks of trees, in the forest
the grass and shrubs were so beaten down as to present the appearance of
an army having passed that way, and the river was full up to its banks.
Having seen the fall in the nearest of the two arms, I descended below
their junction, to contemplate the cascade they formed when united, down
the precipice of 120 feet; the noise of the fall was such that my own
voice was scarcely audible, but a thick mist which rose up to the clouds
from the abyss, admitted of a white foam only being distinguished.

During these hurricanes in Mauritius, the wind usually makes the whole
tour of the compass; and as during this of February it made little more
than half, the apprehension of a second hurricane was entertained, and
became verified about a fortnight afterwards. The wind began at E. S. E.
with rainy weather, and continued there twenty-four hours, w