ime the last water-spout was incurvated and broke like the
others, with this difference, that its disjunction was attended with a
flash of lightning, but no explosion was heard. Our situation during
all this time was very dangerous and alarming; a phenomenon which
carried so much terrific majesty in it, and connected, as it were, the
sea with the clouds, made our oldest mariners uneasy, and at a loss
how to behave; for most of them, though they had viewed water-spouts
at a distance, yet had never been so beset with them as we were; and
all without exception had heard dreadful accounts of their pernicious
effects, when they happened to break over a ship. We prepared, indeed,
for the worst, by clewing up our top-sails; but it was the general
opinion that our masts and yards must have gone to wreck if we had
been drawn into the vortex. It was hinted that firing a gun had
commonly succeeded in breaking water-spouts, by the strong vibration
it causes in the air; and accordingly a four-pounder was ordered to be
got ready, but our people, being, as usual, very dilatory about it,
the danger was past before we could try the experiment. How far
electricity may be considered as the cause of this phenomenon, we
could not determine with any precision; so much however seems certain,
that it has some connection with it, from the flash of lightning,
which was plainly observed at the bursting of the last column. The
whole time, from their first appearance to the dissolution of the
last, was about three quarters of an hour. It was five o'clock when
the latter happened, and the thermometer then stood at fifty-four
degrees, or two and a half degrees lower, than when they began to make
their appearance. The depth of water we had under us was thirty-six
fathom."--G.F.

The description which Mr F. has given, is very similar to the
preceding. Both these gentlemen seem to concur in opinion with Cook,
in maintaining Dr Franklin's theory. Mr Jones, in his Philosophical
Disquisitions, mentions a circumstance which is no less curious in
itself, than strongly demonstrative that the tube, as it has been
called, is formed from below, and ascends towards the clouds, and not
the contrary, as the appearances would indicate. "In the torrid zone,
(says he,) the water-spout is sometimes attended with an effect which
appe