if a violent conflict
ensued. The clouds were rent by incessant flashes, or rather streams,
of lightning. At one time they were piled up high in the sky, at
another they descended to the earth, filling the air with a baleful
darkness, more impenetrable than the obscurity of midnight. Wherever
the hurricane passed, whole tracts of forest were shivered and stripped
of their leaves and branches; and trees of gigantic size, which resisted
the blast, were torn up by the roots and hurled to a great distance.
Groves were torn from the mountain-precipices, and vast masses of earth
and rock precipitated into the valleys with terrific noise, choking the
course of the rivers.

"The fearful sounds in the air and on the earth, the pealing thunder,
the vivid lightning, the howling of the wind, the crash of falling trees
and rocks, filled every one with affright, and many thought that the end
of the world was at hand. Some fled to caverns for safety, for their
frail houses were blown down, and the air was filled with the trunks and
branches of trees, and even with fragments of rocks, carried along by
the fury of the tempest. When the hurricane reached the harbour, it
whirled the ships round as they lay at anchor, snapped their cables, and
sunk three of them to the bottom with all who were on board. Others
were driven about, dashed against each other, and tossed mere wrecks
upon the shore by the swelling surges of the sea, which in some places
rolled for three or four miles upon the land. This tempest lasted for
three hours."

The China seas are the most frequently visited by severe tempests, or
typhoons; yet of all vessels, the Chinese junks, as they are called,
seem to be least adapted by their build for encountering such storms.

A terrible hurricane burst upon the China seas in the month of January
1837, as we learn from the "United Service Journal" of that year. An
English vessel was exposed to it. The sea, rising in mountains around
and over the ship's sides, hurled her rapidly on her passage homeward,
when suddenly a wreck was discovered to the westward. The order to
shorten sail was given, and promptly obeyed; and when they neared the
wreck they found her to be a Chinese junk without mast or rudder--a
helpless log on the breast of that boiling sea.

There were many Chinamen on deck vehemently imploring assistance. The
exhibition of their joy on beholding the approach of the stranger was of
the wildest and most ex