exist only in the Antilles, broke over Martinique. The historians of
that period know not how to depict the awful and calamitous events
of this hurricane, which, at the same time, seemed to shake the
whole earth with its convulsions. In Naples, in Sicily, in the
Molucca Islands, volcanoes broke out in fearful eruptions; for three
days the earth trembled in Constantinople. But it was over
Martinique that the hurricane raged in the most appalling manner. In
less than four hours the howling northwest' wind, accompanied by
forked lightning, rolling thunder, heavy water-spouts, and
tremendous earth-tremblings, had hurled down into fragments all the
houses of the town, all the sugar-plantations, and all the negro
cabins. Here and there the earth opened, flames darted out and
spread round about a horrible vapor of sulphur, which suffocated
human beings. Trees were uprooted, and the sugar and coffee
plantations destroyed. The sea roared and upheaved, sprang from its
bounds, and shivered as mere glass-work barks and even some of the
larger ships lying in the harbor of Port Royal. Five hundred men
perished, and a much larger number were severely wounded. Distress
and poverty were the result of this astounding convulsion of nature.

The estate of M. Tascher de la Pagerie was made desolate. His
residence, his sugar-plantations, were but a heap of ruins and
rubbish, and as a gift of Providence he looked upon the one refuge
left him in his sugar-refinery, which was miraculously spared by the
hurricane. There M. Tascher saved himself, with Josephine and her
younger sister, and there his wife bore him a third child. But
Heaven even now did not fulfil the long-cherished wishes of the
parents, for it was to a daughter that Madame de la Pagerie gave
birth. The parents were, however, weary with murmuring against fate,
which accomplished not their wish; and so to prove to fate that this