File:The African sketch-book (1873) (14781069482).jpg

Identifier: africansketchboo01read (find matches)
Title: The African sketch-book
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Reade, William Winwood, 1838-1875
Subjects: Africa, West -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, Smith, Elder & co.
Contributing Library: Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston University

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; * you no seethat tree ? I looked, and saw a tree torn in half by the wind, theupper part falling to the ground, while the lower partremained standing, gaunt and bare as a sepulchral stone.The tree must have been cut half way through, inthe manner above described, and the woodmans workcompleted by the wind. This explanation did notoccur to me at the time, and an incident which seemedat defiance with natural laws was startling enough. The thunder was terrific. Sometimes it encircled thehorizon with a long, continuous, booming sound, as ifsomething was rolling round the firmament. Some-times it burst into sharp, stunning reports, with a soundlike the whizzing of shot and shell a few yards aboveour heads, or as if ten thousand cartloads of stones hadbeen thrown down in mid air. These awful crashesof the clouds, unlike anything one hears in England,made me tremble in spite of myself, and the natives,flin^ine their clenched hands towards the sky, ex-claimed : Njambi! Njambi! let us live !
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Book I) THE TORXADO 83 Abauhi was not the less sedulous of the two in thesepagan prayers. In fine weather a good Christian, hereturned to heathenism when it blew tornadoes. The air was one great flame. The lightning seemedto stay in the sky. It was of all colours, white, red,,yellow, blue, and of all kinds. Sheet lightning in abroad lurid blaze ; chain lightning in its most fantasticforms ; forked lightning, as it carried, livid death fromsky to earth—all these we saw in several parts of theheavens at the same time. Abauhi, who feared thunder,looked at the lightning with indifference ; but his terroron finding blue sparks in his companions wool defiesdescription. Tornadoes happily do not last long, and we soonreturned to our hut. Then the men took off their waist-cloths, wrung them out, rubbed themselves down, andwere as well as ever. But I shivered in my wet clothes. We waited for the dawn. At times a sturdy branchwould fall to the ground, yielding only when the foehad passed. Then

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