Last Night's Gale.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 656, 21 March 1879, Page 2

Last Night's Gale.

We can well pass over and put up with the damages which were inflicted by last night's gale, accompanied, as it was by, heavy deluging showers of rain, for the good it has done in freeing the air from its oppressiveness, and the earth from its many impurities. For three days previons to the tempest, and to the hour when the storm burst over the town, the heat had become quite insupportable. It was not only the heat, but the atmosphere was of that close, muggy kind that it told seriously upon the sick, and laid many prostrate who had not previously suffered. It had been a trying time to all — to children and to the aged more particularly. Today the air is cool, and the breezes, in contrast, invigorating. We hope it will close a most eventful and calamitous season. During the height of the gale, two standing chimney-stacks, from the late fire on Mr. Walsh's sections, blew down. One of these stacks fell upon the roof of a small lean-to, in which Mr.

Dugleaux was asleep in bed. The thundering of the bricks against the iron caused the sleeper to start from his slumbei-3, and for the moment lie was impressed with the belief that it A\?as the result of an earthquake. Mr. Dugleaux slept no more for the nisjht. The gale blew down Mr. Warren's factory chimney ; damaged some panes of glass in parts which faced the wind. Several out offices were knocked over, and paling fences which were old and rotten, yielded to the rudeness of the blast. The country will doubtless feel the benefit in growing grass and in making the land fit for early ploughing. Altogether the change is a most welcome one.