1806.
March.
the whole tour of the compass; and as during this of February it made little more than half, the apprehension of a second hurricane was entertained, and became verified about a fortnight afterwards. The wind began at E.S.E. with rainy weather, and continued there twenty-four hours, with increasing force; it then shifted quickly to north-east, north, north-west, and on the third evening was at W.S.W., where it gradually subsided. This was not so violent as the first hurricane, but the rain fell in torrents, and did great mischief to the land, besides destroying such remaining part of the crops as were at all in an advanced state: at Bourbon it did not do much injury, the former, it was said, having left little to destroy. The wind had now completed the half of the compass which it wanted in the first hurricane; and the unfortunate planters were left to repair their losses without further dread for this year: maize and manioc, upon which the slaves are principally fed, rose two hundred per cent.
An opinion commonly entertained in Mauritius, that hurricanes are little to be apprehended except near the time of full moon, does not seem to be well founded. In 1805 indeed, there was a heavy gale on April 14 and 15, a few days after the full; but the first of the two hurricanes above-mentioned took place a day or two before the new moon, and the middle of the second within twenty-four hours of the last quarter; whence it should appear that the hurricanes have no certain connexion with the state of this planet. January, February, and March are the months which excite the most dread, and December and April do not pass without apprehension; for several years, however, previously to 1805, no hurricane had been experienced; and the inhabitants began to hope, that if the clearing of the country caused a dearth of rain at some times of the year, it would also deliver them from these dreadful scourges; for it was to the destruction of the woods that the dryness of preceding years and the cessation of hurricanes were generally attributed.
On the 21st, His M. ship Russel came off the island upon a cruise, and chased into Port Louis La Piémontaise, a French frigate