pavilions, and all would be blown away together.  At four o’clock the wind had got round to north and began to moderate, as did the rain which afterwards came only in squalls; at nine, the rain had nearly ceased, and the wind was no more than a common gale, and after passing round to N. N. W. it died away.  At the time the wind moderated at Mauritius its fury was most exerted at Bourbon, which it was said to have attacked with a degree of violence that any thing less solid than a mountain was scarcely able to resist.  The lowest to which the mercury descended in the barometer at Vacouas. was 51/2 lines below the mean level of two days before and two days afterward; and this was at daybreak, when the wind and rain were subsiding.

Soon after the violence of the hurricane had abated, I went to the cascades of the R. du Tamarin, to enjoy the magnificent prospect which the fall of so considerable a body of water must afford; the path through the wood was strewed with the branches and trunks of trees, in the forest the grass and shrubs were so beaten down as to present the appearance of an army having passed that way, and the river was full up to its banks.  Having seen the fall in the nearest of the two arms, I descended below their junction, to contemplate the cascade they formed when united, down the precipice of 120 feet; the noise of the fall was such that my own voice was scarcely audible, but a thick mist which rose up to the clouds from the abyss, admitted of a white foam only being distinguished.

During these hurricanes in Mauritius, the wind usually makes the whole tour of the compass; and as during this of February it made little more than half, the apprehension of a second hurricane was entertained, and became verified about a fortnight afterwards.  The wind began at E. S. E. with rainy weather, and continued there twenty-four hours, with increasing force; it then shifted quickly to north-east, north, north-west, and on the third evening was at W. S. W., where it gradually subsided.  This was not so violent as the first hurricane, but the rain fell in torrents, and did great mischief to the land, besides destroying such remaining part of the crops as were at all in an advanced state:  at Bourbon it did not do much injury, the former, it was said, having left little to destroy.  The wind had now completed the half of the compass which it wanted in the first hurricane; and the unfortunate planters were left to repair their losses without further dread for this year:  maize and manioc, upon which the slaves are principally fed, rose two hundred per cent.