FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 84: Washington Irving estimates the value of the "gold peso"
of the sixteenth century at $3 Spanish money of our day.]
CHAPTER XLI
WEST INDIAN HURRICANES IN PUERTO RICO FROM
1515 TO 1899
Whoever has witnessed the awful magnificence of what the primitive
inhabitants of the West Indian islands called _ou-ra-can,_ will never
forget the sense of his own utter nothingness and absolute
helplessness. With the wind rushing at the rate of 65 or more miles an
hour, amid the roar of waves lashed into furious rolling mountains of
water, the incessant flash of lightning, the dreadful roll of thunder,
the fierce beating of rain, one sees giant trees torn up by the roots
and man's proud constructions of stone and iron broken and scattered
like children's toys.
The tropical latitudes to the east and north of the West Indian
Archipelago are the birthplace of these phenomena. According to Mr.
Redfield[85] they cover simultaneously an extent of surface from 100
to 500 miles in diameter, acting with diminished violence toward the
circumference and with increased energy toward the center of this
space.
In the Weather Bureau's bulletin cited, there is a description of the
most remarkable and destructive among the 355 hurricanes that have
swept over the West Indies from 1492 to 1899. Not a single island has
escaped the tempest's ravages.
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