The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-03-26
VICTOR HUGO's NEW NOVEL.

81 SVohe, anu also as new evidence of the
power Of the great author in painting word
PICTURES. 1t will appear from week to week
In Appleton's Journai:-
THE OUTER LAWS.
The snow storm is one of the unknown
quantities OF the sea. II is the most obscure
oi meteors, obscure in every sense of the word;
mixture OF fog and tempest, a phenomenon
not yet well explained. This uncertainty
causes many disasters.
Men try to explain everything by the wind
and the current. Now, there is in the air
iofce which is not wind, and in the water
iorce which is not current. This force, the
same In the air as in the water, is effiuvium.
The air and the water are two masses of liquid,
nearly identical, and changing mutually into
each other by condensation and dilation, SO
much so, that breathing is species of drink
Ing; the efiuvium alone is fluid. The wind
and the current are orly impulses, the efilu
vlum Is steady stream. The wind is visible
in its clouds, the current in its foam; the
effiuvium is invisible. Yet from time to time
1t says, there am, and its way of saying SO is
q thunder clap.
The snow storm presents problem analo-
gous to that of the dry fog. II an explanation
of the Spaniard's caIiind and the Ethiopian's
quobar be possible, this explanation will GER
tainly be made by attentive observation Of the
magnetic eflluvium.
main engmatie. The altered velocity of the
wind, changing in storm from three feet to
220 feet a second may possibly cause the al
teration of the waves, rising from three
inches in a CAIN to SO feet in stormy sea;
the horizontalness Of the blasts, even in
equall, may possibly make us understand how
wave 80 feet high can be 1900 feet long, but
why the waves Of the Pacific are four times
higher near America than near Asia, that is
to say, higher at the west than at the east
why ii is the contrary in the Alantic-why,
under the Equator, it is the middle of the sea
which is highest-why these ocean swells
change their place-that is what the magnetic
effiuvium, combined with the rotation of the
earth and the attraction Of the heavenly bodies,
can alone explain.
Does 1t not require this mysterious compli-
cation to understand an oscillation of the wind,
, going, for instance, by the west, from south
east to southeast, then returning abruptly by
the same great round, from northeast to
southeast, so as to make, in thirty-six hours,
the prodigious circuit Of five hundred and
: sixty degrees, which was the course run over
by the snow storm of March IL, 1867
The storm-waves of Australia reach eighty
feet in height; Australia is near the pole. A
tempest in our latitude is due less to the dis
turbance of the winds than to continuous
electric submarine discharges; in 1865, the
transatlantic cable was regularly impeded in
its workings two hours out of the twenty
four, from noon till P. NJ, by a sort of inter-
mittent fever. Certain compositions and de-
compositions of forces cause phenomena, and
thrust themselves on the sailors calcula-
tions, under pain of shipwreck. The day
when navigation, now routine, shall
become q mathematical science; the
day, for instance, when men will try to find
out why, in our climate, hot winds sometimes
Acome from the North and cold ones from the
south; the day when we shall understand that
the diminutions of temperature are proper
Dti0ned to the depths of the sea; the day when
we shall have before our minds the fact that
the globe ia great magnet, larized in space,
having two axes, one OF rotation, one of efflu-
vium, emitting each other at the centre of the
earth, and that the magnetic poles revolve
round the geographic; when those who risk
their lives shall choose to risk them scientif-
cally; when the unstable medium of naviga-
tion shall have been studied; when every
captain shall be a meteorologist, every
pilot chemist - then will many catas-
trophies be avoided. The sea is as
much magnetic as watery; an
ocean of forces floats, unknown, in the ocean
of currents: down stream, we may say. To
see in the ocean only mass of water is not
to see II all: the ocean is a coming and going
of fluid as much as a fiux and reflux of liquid,
affected even more by attraction than by hur.
ricanes. Molecular adhesion (shown by Ca
pillary attraction, among other phenomena)
Shares, in the ocean, the grandeur of the
oceans volumes and the waves of effluvium
sometimes assist, sometimes oppose, the waves
of the air and the water. He who knows moi
the electric laws knows not the hydraulic, fol
they interpepetrate. True, no study is more
difficult or more doubtful; it borders on i'm
posture, as astronomy borders on astrology
4 But without 1t there is no real navigation.
This said, let us pass on.
The snow storm is one of the most dangerous
compounds of the sea. It is above all mag
4 etic. The pole produces it, as it produces
the aurora borealis, inspiring the fog of tn
one and the gleam of the other; the efiuviun
Is perceptible in the snowflake as well as II
the striated flame.
Shapeless, in all sorts of swellings, the TO
gathered at once upon every point of tn
boyizon as though invisible mouths wer
occupied in putting mp the leather-bags of tn
tempest. The form of the clouds becam
threatening.
The blue cloud held all the lower part of th
skv. There was as much of it now in tn
/, west as in the east. 1t worked up agains
the gale. These contradictions belong TO th
law of winds.
The sea, which, a moment before, ha
scales. now had skin. Such is this dragon
Twas no longer the crocodile; it was the bo'
This skin, livid and foul, appeared thick, an
wrinkled itself heavily. At the surface, but
bles of spume, isolated and resembling pui
tules, rounded themselves, then burst. Th
scum was like leprosy.
The sombre chastisement of the water
n eternally tormented, was about to begin.
L. of Ill oOt