Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/157

146 146 COMPARISONS There is sometliiri.:? wonderful about this power: It resembles a heavy freight train, which will ^c thundering down a grade at a fearful pace, and God help anything coming in contact with it; but on reach- ing the foot of the hiil, it wUl then begin to climb up,, gradually slackening its force, so that a boy could, board it; then it climbs over the apex and again rushes down. And so does a tornado; it wiU swoop down on a point, then it Will ascend and pass over considerable space doing no damage, then it wUl rush down, devastating whatever comes in its way. There is another peculiarity about this demonstration of nature's power: After the demon of destruction has passed over there is a peculiar suction which will throw a person down even when the twister itself is a mile away. This theme is one that could be spun out interminably, fOr, is it not marvellously strange the wonderful things it wiU do? It wiU drive a piece of two-by-four scantling into the ground three or four feet. Such a force would empale one if he came in contact with it. A splinter of wood has been seen stuck through a railroad sign, "Look Out for the Cars"; locomotives and whole trains have been rolled over and over many feet from the track. But here is what Castaneda said about the storm they encountered: "While the army was resting in this ravine, as we have related, a tempest -came up one afternoon with a high wind and hail, and in a very short space of time a great quantity of hail-stones, as big as bowls, or bigger, feU as thick as rain drops, so that in places they covered the ground two or three spans or more deep. And one hit the horse^ — or, I