This is but a simple description of the appearance of the sky for
several minutes during a storm which happened on the island
where the verses of the text were written, either in the year 1823
or 1824. I lay under a transparent mosquito-net, listening to the
pleasing noise made by the trees and shrubs around the principal
dwelling of the Cafétal San Patricio, and watching the flashes of
lightning that darted through the green blinds of an unglazed win
dow. It was about midnight when the loudness of the thunderpeals
increased, and the flashes became more continued than any I
had ever seen. A crash was soon heard from without, and the
whole room seemed deluged, as it were, with flame.
Thinking the building on fire, I arose, and succeeded in waking
a negress, who still slept soundly by the door of my apartment.
Going into the hall, and getting a window opened which looked
into a broad piazza, I was surprised to see it occupied by those
fierce dogs which were accustomed to be let loose at ten or eleven
o'clock at night, in order that they might prowl about till sunrise,
and guard the plantation. They had sought shelter from the elements:
and, as they ran in a distressed manner from one side of the
piazza to the other, it seemed as if they moved in fire; for the
whole firmament continued to be, at long intervals, like a vast sea
of light. Some glazed windows on the slant roof of the building
were torn from their hinges, and whirled over the secaderos;
and
the rain then descended in cataracts.
The sun rose brightly next morning; and the scene, though
rather sad, was delightful. The Bermuda grass-plats were strewn
with leaves, twigs, and broken flowers: and numbers of those
black birds which the Spanish inhabitants of the island call judeos
were hovering over a dark clump of bamboos which had been torn
up by the roots, and uttering the most piteous cries; for many of
them were unable to find again their nests, constructed amidst the
almost impervious foliage of those vast and beautiful reeds which
now lay prostrate.
The palm thatching was torn from some of the out-houses of
San Patricio. One mansion on a neighboring estate, belonging to
Don José Martinez, was taken by the tempest from an insecure
foundation, and set in another place. One estate, several leagues
distant, and near a river, was deluged. But no human lives, that I
heard of, were lost.
