along which he struggled and staggered, was frequently
obliged to crouch himself and hold by the projecting crags about him,
lest the strength of the blast might hurl him over the rocky precipices
by the edges of which the road went. With great difficulty, however, and
not less danger, he succeeded in getting into the open highway below,
and into a thickly inhabited country. Here a new scene of terror and
confusion awaited him. The whole neighborhood around him were up and in
alarm. The shoutings of men, the screams of women and children, all in
a state of the utmost dread and consternation, pierced his ears, even
through the united rage and roaring of the wind and thunder. The
people had left their houses, as they usually do in such cases, from an
apprehension that if they remained in them they might be buried in their
ruins. Some had got ladders, and attempted, at the risk of their lives,
to secure the thatch upon the roofs by placing flat stones, sods, and
such other materials, as by their weight, might keep it from being borne
off like dust upon the wings of the tempest. Their voices, and! screams,
and lamentations, in accordance, as they were, with the uproar of the
elements, added a new feature of terror to this dreadful tumult. The
lightnings now became more vivid and frequent, and the pealing of the
thunder so loud and near, that he felt his very ears stunned by it.
Every cloud, as the lightnings flashed from it, seemed to open, and to
disclose, as it were, a furnace of blazing fire within its black
and awful shroud. The whole country around, with all its terrified
population running about in confusion and dismay, were for the moment
made as clear and distinct to the eye as if it were noonday, with this
difference, that the scene borrowed from the red and sheeted flashes a
wild and spectral character which the light of day never gives. In fact,
the human figures, as they ran hurriedly to and fro, resembled those
images which present themselves to the imagination in some frightful
dream. Nay, the very cattle in the fields could be seen, in those
flashing glimpses, huddled up together in some sheltered corner, and
cowering with terror at this awful uproar of the elements. It is a very
strange, but still a well-known fact, that neither man nor beast wishes
to be alone during a thunder-storm. Contiguity to one's fellow creatures
seems, by some unaccountable instinct, to lessen the apprehension of
danger to one individ