A TRAVELLER’S TALE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 60, 25 October 1911, Page 7

A TRAVELLER’S TALE.

Travellers’ stories are regarded usually with grave suspicion, but an Englishman who has returned to London from Spain has taken the trouble to secure documentary proof of his account of an extraordinary hailstorm. Mr J). W. Wheeler was camped on the slopes of the Pyrenees early in August, at an altitude of about 4000 feet, and one morning he and his wife went for a walk.,, They were about half a mile, fr.di^.'.theij-: tents,, when a_ thunderstorm swept over the mountains, and while ■ they were hurrying to shelter a piece of ice /“about as large as a ..thistlerdown” fell near them. '1 hoy took refuge, under, a - tree, and presently a sound of ripping and tearing among the trees ,showed -that a hailstorm had begun; The hailstones generally were the size of marbles, but many of them wei;e as big as golf balls, and Mi;s Wheeler had her foot ;b{idly bruised by,,a blow, from, one of these missiles. The ■ sky was still overcast, though the hail had ceased to fall,- as travellers' made their way to their , tents. Then suddenly “the whole land was bombarded by great hailstones as large as tennis balls,” which fell with, a deafening roar and smashed, branches from the trees. The tents withstood the attack, or else the predicament of Mr and Mrs Wheeler would have, been serious indeed. The big stones were found afterwards to weigh nearly six minces each. They pitted the grass lands with holes about two inches deep, and seventy sheep were killed outright on the heights above the camp, while many other sheep had legs broken. Thirty-five cattle were killed in a neighbouring village, and a little child who had been wandering on the hillside lost bis life, his body being found afterwards in a stream. When the storm had passed ,iMr Wheeler found that the hailstones were , solid balls of clear ice, with a rough, surface and a white core. Not oven the oldest inhabitant could remember such a. storm, and, like a true Englishman, Mr Wheeler lost no time in writing to the London “Times” regarding his adventure.