Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/88

 80 HURRICANE after them. These iled to Wisconsin, and are also called Hurons, but after their removal to Sandusky they assumed the name Wyandot. (See WYANDOTS.) A grammar of the Huron lan- guage, compiled by Pere Chaumonot, founder of Lorette, was published at Quebec in 1831. HURRICANE (Span, huracan), a word of un- determined origin, signifying a violent storm of wind and rain, generally accompanied with intense displays of lightning and thunder. Al- though this term was originally special in its application, it is now frequently used to desig- nate not a peculiar class of storms, but in gen- eral the strength of the most violent winds known to mariners ; thus we may have storms in any part of the world whose severest winds may attain to the force either of a gale, a storm, or a hurricane, according to the circum- stances that attend their development. The hurricanes of the Pacific ocean, the China sea, and the northern portions of the Indian ocean are called typhoons, and are from a scientific as well as a practical point of view to be classed in the same category with the hurri- canes proper; but in what follows we shall give only such facts and theoretical views as belong specially to the hurricanes of the Atlan- tic and southern Indian oceans. The gen- eral subject of storms in their various aspects wall be' treated under that title. To a per- son occupying a stationary position toward which a hurricane is approaching, it is said that the storm is frequently heralded a day beforehand by a peculiar haziness of the at- mosphere, a cessation of the regular trade winds, a lassitude perhaps induced by the hy- grometric condition of the air, and an ominous stillness. Then follow a steady slow fall of the barometer, light breezes increasing to high winds from some new quarter of the compass, generally in the West Indies between S. E. and N. E., and the obscuration of the entire heavens by a uniform sheet of cloud of increasing den- sity. When the storm has, in the course of from 4 to 24 hours, finally arrived at ita great- est severity, the fury of the wind and the con- fusion of the scene become indescribable ; in the midst of a drenching rain and a steady wind that fills the air with a deafening roar, there occur prolonged gusts whose violence equals or excels the force of the strongest waves ; in such gusts the largest trees are uprooted, or have their trunks snapped in two, and few if any of the most massive buildings stand unin- jured. In the midst of the confusion incident to the general destruction of property and life, there occurs a mysterious calm, while a break in the clouds and the diminished rainfall seem to denote the end of the storm. But in the course of from five minutes to five hours the wind bursts with additional force from a direc- tion opposite to that which had before pre- vailed ; whatever had escaped the destructive force of the first half of the hurricane is likely to yield to its subsequent fury, and the ship- ping which before perhaps had been blown out to sea, is now driven back upon the shore. If now, instead of watching the storm from a fixed standpoint, we take a general survey of the ocean over which it rages, we shall observe that the interval of calm in the midst of the storm, as observed at the fixed station, corre- sponds to a central spot in a large region of violent winds and heavy rain ; these winds are found to blow in spiral lines toward and around the central region of calms, increasing in force as they approach that centre. It will also be seen that the whole system of winds moves bodily over the surface of the earth. It is thus easily understood why the stations over which the centre of the hurricane passes should ex- perience, after the central lull, a wind from the opposite quarter to that which prevailed immediately before. In the " Philosophical Transactions" for 1698 Langford represents the hurricanes of the West Indies as whirlwinds advancing in a direction opposite to that of the trade wind. Dampier (1701) says the West Indian hurricanes and the Chinese typhoons are of the same nature. In 1801 Capper pub- lished a work on winds and monsoons, in which he advanced the opinion that the hurricanes at Pondicherry (1760) and Madras (1773) were of the nature of whirlwinds whose diameter would not exceed 120 miles. In 1820 and 1826 Brande broached the theory that the currents of air in great storms flow from all directions toward a central point. Dove (1828), in con- troverting the views of Brande, explained the observed directions of the winds on the as- sumption of general rotary currents or whirl- winds. In 1831 Mitchell expressed the opinion that the phenomena of storms are the result of a vortex or gyratory motion. The scanty observations accessible to the authors previous- ly mentioned were supplemented in 1831 by Mr. Redfield of New York, who then published the first of a series of remarkable papers on the phenomena of storms, in all which he main- tained that hurricanes were progressive vorti- cose whirlwinds. His views were for a long time controverted in America by Espy and Hare. Sir William Reid published his first papers on hurricanes in 1838, and subsequently other works, in which he developed views simi- lar to those of Mr. Redfield. Of the authors previously mentioned, some laid a special stress on the tangential, and others on the centripetal movements of the winds ; at present, however, following the studies of Redfield (18S9-'56), Espy (1840-'57), Thorn (1845), Piddington (1839-'54), Reid (1888-'50), Ferrel (1858), Mel- drum (1851-'73), Mohn (1870), Reye (1872), and many others, it is generally acknowledged that the combination of both these movements with an upward one is an essential feature of every hurricane, so that the movement of the surface wind is more correctly described as an ascending spiral. Concerning the direction of this movement, Dove, and independently of him Redfield, concluded that in the storms of Europe and the American coast the winds move