GRAPHIC NOTINGS

Otago Witness, Issue 3808, 8 March 1927, Page 5

GRAPHIC NOTINGS

By LENS.

(Specially Written for thA Otaclo Witness.)

Now and again we see printed cables that strike us as deficient renderings, a little said where there might be much, and sometimes reading like a foreword and sometimes like a rear. As the desire this week is to speak of wind storms, take that printed cable recently that referred to an unusual blow across England and Scotland, which .would suggest south to north. It certainly mentioned that there had been a number of casualties, and that a' good deal of damage had been done, particularising Glasgow. But ; after saving that the velocity was from 90 to 100 miles an hour it stopped! Now’ a blow of from 90 to 100 miles an hour would be a terrific one, and if, as is always possible, the course were punctuated with swirlings the damage would .be. stupendous. Gales and hurricanes are different things, and tornadoes and cyclones are likewise. How shall, we distinguish with the* straightout thing? If the old rule, is also the-present, there it is in the scale. A light breeze.. and-how ’delightful; a steady one, and how invigorating; but a gale, well, it all depends; and as for a hurricane, it causes the artist, to-picture Boreas, who, although only the god of the- north-west wind, has come to. stand for the blast no -natter what the direction—the wind god, and a veritable king of disasters when really m the mood. The most distinguished of the sons of Aurora, goddess of the morn, he was given a dozen fiegy mares, and this is their reputation—when fully stretched they can take any sea that rolls at n bound. For spac e reasons we reduce his team to four, and then indulge in the whim of \a chariot -with a lawn mower. Imagine it — an hour! At that speed thope untamable mares dash past, roaring like thunder, and we fancy we hear the god shouting: “You may have conquered the air, but not the wind.”. And we bow in submission—no, we shall never do that, and so at times a prayer for some mercy. Boreas is no selector of places, and yet it happens that it is generally in the northern hemisphere that he does ,his fellest work. This is when he punctuates his mad hurricane course with tornadic swirlings, when he twists buildings off their foundations, rips trees up by the roots, hurls stones about like pebbles, and if he kills any poor mortals, as he generally does, often strips them, too. Stephens, an entertaining poet of- the eighteenth century, refers to him in “The Storm” —- Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer, List, ye landsmen, all - to me. Messmates, hear a brother sailor Sing the dangers of the sea. But we, ourselves, here are far more interested in the land side. That great blow in England and Scotland the other dav has been described as unusual. Yes, but it would have to have been phenomenal to link it up with the tornadic hurricane that struck England in

Queen Anne’s time. That terrible blow came across as though from Holland, and this is what it did —reaching, the coast it scattered, the craft there in all directions, 'and for the special thing took Eddystone Lighthouse with its . designer.. who happened to be in it; it destroyed everything it found in the rivers, including the Thames, and strewed the streets of London with what-it tore down in the wav of buildings; and, stripping forests, wrecking orchards, etc., and destroying many stock, it killed some thousands of people and injured as many more 20 times told. A book called “The Casket of Literature” has a full description of it. and tells how a Royal Proclamation followed, calling the nation to prayer, and how in a certain church in. London an anniversary sermon Jias been preached ever since. Yet, even so, Europe is not where Boreas has his chief stables, not yet in Asia, for all che visitations in the China seas. Where he loves to harness up for a great’ excursion is in the vicinity of the Gulf of Mexico, and where he often chooses his road is through the United States on the western side of the Mississippi. ■ Thus we have before us at this moment the reported record issued some little time ago by the Bureau of Weather, Washington, for the information of the public, and it says that in the years from 1916 to 1923 inclusive there were 752 tornadoes, claiming almost 2000 victims, without counting the merely injured, and doing damage to a value of 62,000,000 dollars, which would be, say, £12,500,000. A man’s life, of course, is his most precious possession, and vet “Shylock” was not wholly wrong when he said to the court that fined him his all: “Nay, take my life. You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.” For who pays for the damage done? Whatever the rule in America there are places in this cautious world where no insurance company will carry a storm risk. Boreas in the United States is a god to reckon with. There was that excursion that took in Florida, halfwrecked a great city, and killed 300 people. And there was a continuation outburst that was not far short of it. Yet now and again the god gives other places in the double continent a turn, as when a few weeks later he struck .Brazil destroying a town and killing 200. And then there are these islands 1 Thus about the same time he hit Cuba, wrecked three towns,’ and killed 600. They sav in America that the Boreasan steeds are at their wildest when the sun-spots are active—that they and the sun-spots synchronise. Well, although it is-not for a layman to cross, swords with a scientist, w’e should say that if the two’things really synchronise it is some evidence of a coincidence. The sun is so very, so .very far ■ away. do not dread the hurricane so much as they do the swirlings that so

often go with it—the “twisters,” as they call them. Suppose the reader opens his atlas, and follows this for a champion hurricane with the maddened steeds every now and again doing a “circus”—the “twister” against whicli nothing can stand. We have the officially-issued chart before us. and this was Die course run. The god harnessed up far south-east- of Cuba, and then for two whole days ran rings at a pace that spelt death for everything afloat that was caught. He then dashed across the northern end- of Cuba at something like 100 miles an hour, and reaching the Florida coast, Gulf side,, put in another day going round and round .as though possessed. Next he wheeled-his -team to the west, and with swirl after swirl crossed the Gulf, to Texas. And ha then turned landwards and raced, through that State, Oklahoma above' it, and ' Indiana. Having reached that point 'he pulled the right rein, and cut across Wisconsin and Michigan, taking, the lake iir a jump. And he only drew , Iris tea’iri up when near Maine, and so ~ close to the mouth, of the St. Lawrence, and tlieri only after one final all-injuring swirl. It took the god just 11 davs. to do all this, and two were spent in the first flourish,, so really making nine. Six were the tornadic outbursts he indulged in after ,reaching Florida, and four were the collections, he took up in. life, limb, and. property. . The “twister!” According to a San Francisco paper privileged Americans, .wit’ll: their hair on end, have seen Boreas “spiralise” strong buildings, and scatter them .like torn twisted cards, have seen him.in passing over what, by the description, would appear to’ have been a graveyard; launch the headstones as though - chips on the way, and glancing in at a pen of pigs drag them out, : and verily give , them wings by carrying them off. Fearfully’sharp are th a blades of the lawn mower we have given him at all times, but when the god is doing a tornado they are sharper than thorns, and woe to whatever they reach. Alongside which our own great blows seem to make rather tame reading, and over in Australia it is the same. _ . But stay— Boreas, really did harness lip these for. a wild excursion once. It was in the ’fifties of last centui-y, and there is a fairly good account of it in the “Picturesque Atlas.” This was a work got up in Sydney many years ago, to write which thev engagxf the best brains of the day, and to illustrate which thev imported several remarkably talented artists to lead more local ones. It was in Victoria that Boreas had his jaunt, and if he: lacked anything in speed at all it was amply made up for him with fire. No one attempted to associate it with sun-spots. They associated it with an extraordinarily warm summer. With “Death and Desolation” as the subheading. it is known in the historical pagO as “Black Thursday.”