Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/405

Rh Such a meteor has been shown to resemble an eddy moving in the current of a rapid river. The latter may be large or small, while it does not determine, but is determined by, the course of the on-flowing stream. It is true the centre of an eddy or water-hollow may soon be filled up and the whirl disappear; but it is because the depression is not maintained. If the depression could be maintained, it is easy to see that the eddy would continue, and pursue its way, as long as the current in which it is embodied continues to flow: it might be through the length of an Amazon or a Mississippi River. In the case of a cyclonic eddy or whirl, we know the atmospheric depression is maintained as long as the centre moves in a region sufficiently supplied with aqueous vapor to feed it. It is a physical impossibility, as has been often shown, that any storm, however vast or however violent, can prolong its advance or sustain its fury over a dry and desiccated surface. The most extended typhoons of the East, upon entering the dry and rainless continental regions, dwindle into the well-known and diminutive dust-whirlwind, such as Sir S. W. Baker describes as witnessed in Nubia, and as here illustrated. The Sahara is a more formidable barrier to the



passage of a storm than the majestic mountain-wall of the Alps, and the simoom is, notwithstanding the stories of travellers and the legend of swallowing up of the army of Cambyses on the African desert, a wasted and worn-out cyclone. In his "Desert World," Mangin, compiling the more accurate observations of the phenomenon says: "It never prevails over any considerable area, and beyond its limits the atmosphere remains serene and calm; the phenomenon is of brief duration, the atmospheric equilibrium is speedily restored; the heavens recover their serenity; the atmosphere grows clear, and the sand-columns, falling in upon themselves, form a number of little hills or cones,