As in the equatorial regions the atmospherical precipitations are far more considerable than in the temperate zones, so also their storms rage with a violence unknown in our climes. In the Indian and Chinese Seas these convulsions of nature generally take place at the change of the monsoons; in the West Indies, at the beginning and at the end of the rainy seasons. The tornado which devastated the Island of Guadeloupe on the 25th July, 1846, blew down buildings constructed of solid stone, and tore the guns of a battery from their carriages; another, which raged some years back in the Mauritius, demolished a church and drove thirty-two vessels on the strand. On the Beagle’s arrival in Port Louis, after her long and arduous surveying voyage, a fleet of crippled vessels, the victims of a recent hurricane, might have been seen making their way into the harbour--some dismasted, others kept afloat with difficulty, firing guns of distress or giving other signs of their helpless condition. ‘On the now tranquil surface of the harbour lay a group of shattered vessels, presenting the appearance of floating wrecks. In almost all, the bulwarks, boats, and everything on deck, had been swept away; some, that were towed in, had lost all their masts; others, more or less of their spars; one had her poop and all its cabins swept away; many had four or five feet of water in the hold, and the clank of the pumps was still kept up by the weary crew.’[1] Such are the terrible effects of the tornados and cyclones of the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans; but the storms of the miscalled Pacific are no less furious and destructive. A hurricane, which on the 15th of April, 1845, burst over Pitcairn Island, washed all the fertile mould from the rocks, and, uprooting 300 cocoa-nut trees, cast them into the sea. Every fishing-boat on the island was destroyed, and thousands of fruit-bearing bananas were swept away. The celebrated missionary, John Williams,[2] describes a similar catastrophe which befell the beautiful island of Rarotonga on the 23rd of December, 1831. The chapels, school-houses, mission-houses, and nearly all the dwellings of the natives, no less than a thousand in number, were levelled to the ground. Every particle of food on the island was destroyed. Of the thousands of banana or plantain trees which had covered and adorned the land, scarcely one was left standing, either on the plains, in the valleys, or upon the mountains. Stately trees, that had withstood the storms of ages, were laid prostrate on the ground, and thrown upon each other in the wildest confusion; while even of those that were still standing, many were left without a branch, and all perfectly leafless. So great and so general was the destruction, that no spot escaped; for the gale, veering gradually round the island, did most effectually its devastating work.