"These phenomena terrified us greatly, and our sailors, instead of being bolder, fomented their fears by the dismal tales they told each other. If these spouts, said they, fall on our vessel, they will lift her up, and then she will sink by the violence of her fall. Others contended in a decisive tone, that they would not raise the vessel up, but if they met it in their course, being full of water, the ship would break the communication they had with the sea, and the whole body of the water would fall perpendicularly on the deck of the vessel and split her to pieces. "To prevent this misfortune the cannon was loaded, the sailors pretending the report of a cannon, by agitating the air, dissipated these phenomena; but we had no need of having recourse to this remedy, for when they had run about ten minutes about the ship, some at a quarter of a league, others at a less distance, we perceived the canals to grow narrower by degrees, till they got loose from the surface of the sea and then dissipated." It appears from the description given by these two travellers, that water-spouts are produced, at least in part, by the action of a fire or smoke which rises from the bottom of the sea with great force, and that they are quite different from those produced by contrary winds. "The water-spouts, says Mr. Shaw, which I had an opportunity of seeing, appeared as so many cylinders of water, which fell from the clouds, although by the reflection of the columns which descend, or by the drops which detach themselves from the water they contain, it sometimes seems, especially when we are at some distance, that the water is drawn up from the sea. To render a reason for this phenomena we may suppose that the clouds being collected in one part by opposite winds, they force them by pressing them with violence to condense and descend in this manner." There still remain many facts to be acquired before we can give a complete explanation of these phenomena; it appears to me, that if there are under the waters of the sea, at particular places, soils mixed with sulphur, bitumen, and minerals, these matters may be inflamed and produce a great quantity of air, which being newly generated and prodigiously rarefied, ascends with rapidity, and may raise these water-spouts from the sea to the sky; so likewise if, by inflammation, the sulphurous matters which a cloud contains, a current of air is formed, which descends perpendicularly from the clouds towards the sea, all its water may follow the current of air, and form a water-spout which will fall from the sky upon the sea; but it must be allowed that the explanation of this kind of water-spout, no more than that we have given of those produced by contrary winds, is not satisfactory; and it might be asked why these kinds of water-spouts, which fall perpendicularly from the clouds, are not as often seen on the land as on the sea?