We
Certainly Saw From Our Last Night's Bivouac A Dense Cloud
And Lightning In This Direction.
It is marvellous how such
strong animals as deer could thus have been killed; but I
have no doubt, from the evidence I have given, that the
story is not in the least exaggerated.
I am glad, however,
to have its credibility supported by the Jesuit Dobrizhoffen, [4]
who, speaking of a country much to the northward, says,
hail fell of an enormous size and killed vast numbers of cattle:
the Indians hence called the place _Lalegraicavalca_, meaning
"the little white things." Dr. Malcolmson, also, informs me
that he witnessed in 1831 in India, a hail-storm, which
killed numbers of large birds and much injured the cattle.
These hailstones were flat, and one was ten inches in
circumference, and another weighed two ounces. They
ploughed up a gravel-walk like musket-balls, and passed
through glass-windows, making round holes, but not cracking
them.
Having finished our dinner, of hail-stricken meat, we
crossed the Sierra Tapalguen; a low range of hills, a few
hundred feet in height, which commences at Cape Corrientes.
The rock in this part is pure quartz; further eastward I
understand it is granitic. The hills are of a remarkable
form; they consist of flat patches of table-land, surrounded
by low perpendicular cliffs, like the outliers of a sedimentary
deposit. The hill which I ascended was very small, not
above a couple of hundred yards in diameter; but I saw
others larger.
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