The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1878-07-13
Aistooinral.
STORMS OF WIND.

r r.5
tul SIMEON which overwhelmed in tn
desert the $4,000 men whom Cambyse
had sent against the Ammonites, to thi
present day, when every year has its tall
OF elemental disaster, and every eountr,
contributes to the melancholy record. Blu
no tempests ever worked for England lik,
those of 1888. When the Armada sailed
it met a violent storm which scattered th,
whole feet, sunk many Of the smaller YES
sells, and compelled the rest to take refug,
in 'Corunna. They set sail again, but OF
the 18th the gale rose to hurricane, an6
"then strange cloud of mystery settled
down for weeks upon that tempest stricken
feet. Whittier was it gone before the
wrath and storm of God 2 And here and
there, and now and then, like the cry o.
some wild sea-bird, from the mist and
foam of tbs storm came strange and sad
tales of their weird, untoward faten But
the cliffs and rocks and strands of Scot
land and ireland knew what had become
Of the distracted feet, tossed so helplessly
hither and thither, amid fog and mist, BY
the fierce gusts of the ~ W. wind, as gale
succeeded gale. Ship after ship was
driven ashore on the lnhospitable Irish
coast, and the Spaniards who escaped the
Irish waves reached land only to fall vic
tins to the savage Irishmen. So they
died by thousands, and on one five miles
Of the seabOard Of Sligo alone / 100 corp
ses were counted. Thus persisted the
Armada In the words of Mr. Froude
"The elements, which were deemed
Gods peculiar province, as if to disea.
chant Christendom-wWere dIsenchantment
possible-Of 50 fond an illusion, whirled
them upon shore which the waves Of
past ages had made the most dangerous in
the world, there, as they crawled hall
drowned through the surf, to fall into the
jaws of the Irish wolves a
ac 0ne hundred and fifty vessels set sail
from Spain-one hundred and twenty
we're driven into the norther seas; but there
came back to Spain, shattered and sinking,
no more than ffty-six. Well might the
rescued English trace their rescue to the
Almighty 7 Well might Elizabeth give
Him the glory by inscribing on the med
ais struck to commemorate this great de-
liyerance tempest-tossed feet and the
words, "Afiavit Deus ct dissipantur.
Exactly a hundred years later the
Protestant east wind brought the feet
of William of Orange to Torbay, while it
delayed the feet of James in its station
near Harwick. And, strangely enough,
when William i'd reached his destination
and the royal ships at length were follow
ing fast, the east wind that had done its
work gave place to a gale from the south,
which James admiral, lord Dartmouth,
dared not face, and so the forces destined
to rescue the land from Stuart despotism
landed uRhindered. t-
Few storms in English history have be-
come more memorable than that which
attended the death of Cromwell. Nearly
every contemporary historian mentions
this great tempest, and all who do so en-
deavor to draw some augury therefrom.
In the Ms. diary of a sturdy old royalist
it is written, "Cromwell, vt great Rebel,
went to ye divele in tempest" and Bull
strobe AYERS that therein the prince of the
air showed his power, thinking it not fit
that one should depart out of this world
quietly who had 'made such combustion.
trouble, aud misery in it." But there
were others who held that ''Nature sym
pathised herein with the death-throes of a
great Master in Israel" All saw con-
nection between the storm and the death.
however they might interpret its meaning;
and such connection, as in the case of
Napoleon to be noted hereafter, there GER
tainly was. All the writer's who allude to
this storm bear testimony to its violence.
Clarendon calls it "the greatest storm of
wind that had ever been known-which
overthrow churches and houses and made
great wrecks at sea" Its effects were felt
not only all over England, but in France,
and in Flanders, and in other parts of
Europe, so that the people trembled at its
fury, aud the coasts were strewn with
wrecks and the bodies of the drowned.
Echard likewise terms it "the most tre-
storm that had ever been known" !"
and Bulstrode speaks of the trees in st.
James's Park being torn up by the roots,
nnd.of shipwrecks and disasteTs all over the
country, @l'he aforementioned storms we're
very furious, but are not to be compared
with the formidable one in 1903, either in
extent, or desolation caused
thereby" Such are the words in which
Defoe commences his vivid account of
''the Great Storm" of November 26, 1903.
'The storm carried direct line clear
over the continent Of Europe, traversed
England, France, Germany, the Baltic
Sea; and passing the northern continent of
Sweden, Finland, Muscovy, and part of
Tartary, lost itself in the Northern Ocean,
among vast mountains of ice and huge
drifts of SNOW" A hundred churches
were stripped Of their leaden roofs; score
of steeples were blown down; a thousand
houses laid in ruins. Tens of thousands
Of trees were uprooted; multitudes of sheep
and cattle were drowned by the succeed
ing foods l23 persons we're killed by the
falling of dwellings; hundreds more we're
MANNED This was on land. At sea the
effects were still more sadly disastrous.
The harbors were full of shipping. Three
hundred merchant vessels, at the lowest
computation, were lost, With all their
crews. Twelve men-of-war were wrecked:
and so the loss of life on the water was