What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africus
brings back. When the air is not full of snow, it is full of dust.
This is called one of the compensations of Nature.
This is what happened after the convention of the blackbirds: A
moaning south wind brought rain; a southwest wind turned the rain to
snow; what is called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow; a
north wind sent the mercury far below freezing. Salt added to snow
increases the evaporation and the cold. This was the office of the
northeast wind: it made the snow damp, and increased its bulk; but
then it rained a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. The
air was full of fog and snow and rain. And then the wind changed,
went back round the circle, reversing everything, like dragging a cat
by its tail. The mercury approached zero. This was nothing
uncommon. We know all these winds. We are familiar with the
different "forms of water."
All this was only the prologue, the overture. If one might be
permitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the
instruments. The opera was to come, - the Flying Dutchman of the air.
There is a wind called Euroclydon: it would be one of the Eumenides;
only they are women. It is half-brother to the gigantic storm-wind
of the equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind: it is a monster. Its
breath is frost. It has snow in its hair. It is something terrible.
It peddles rheumatism, and plants consumption.
The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into the discord of the
weather in New England. From its lair about Point Desolation, from
the glaciers of the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast,
leaving wrecks in its track, it marched right athwart the other
conflicting winds, churning them into a fury, and inaugurating chaos.
It was the Marat of the elements. It was the revolution marching
into the "dreaded wood of La Sandraie."
Let us sum it all up in one word: it was something for which there is
no name.
Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves wrecks. What does
it leave on land? Funerals. When it subsides, New England is
prostrate. It has left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and patent
medicines. This is an epic; this is destiny. You think Providence
is expelled out of New England? Listen!
Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods the hepatica
- earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently not intimidated by the wild
work of the armies trampling over New England - daring to hold up its
tender blossom. One could not but admire the quiet pertinacity of
Nature. She had been painting the grass under the snow. In spots it
was vivid green.
