This climate is subject to violent thunder-storms, accompanied by vivid
forked lightning and heavy rain, which greatly tend to cool the air and
make the country more healthy. Fatal accidents, however, sometimes
occur, and houses and barns are burnt down by the electric fluid, and I
have no doubt that, were it not for the proximity of the woods, a great
deal more damage would be done.

The lofty trees serve as conductors, particularly the pine and hemlock,
the former, from its great height above all the other trees of the
forest, being much more likely to be struck by the lightning than any
other. It is a curious fact that the electric fluid invariably follows
the grain the wood. I have often noticed in pines which had been
struck, that the fluid had followed the grain in a spiral form,
encircling the tree three or four times in its descent to the earth. I
have myself witnessed some extraordinary effects produced by lightning.
I remember that, not more than two years since, I had occasion to go
out into the township of Douro to attend the sitting of the Council of
which I was then a member, and I had, on my way, to pass through a
small clearing occupied by an Irish settler, one James Lynch.

This man, to save trouble, had left several large hemlock trees near
his house. These trees had been dead for some years, consequently the
wood was tolerably dry.* The day before, there had been a terrific
thunder-storm which struck the largest, which was fully four feet in
diameter, shivering it from top to bottom, and throwing the pieces
around for upwards of sixty yards in every direction. If a barrel of
gunpowder had been placed under the tree, greater devastation could not
have been made. Lynch told me that the storm had been very severe in
that neighbourhood.