to abridge. In this dreary spot they were weather-bound for more than a week. "There is," writes Johnson, "literally no tree upon the island; part of it is a sandy waste, over which it would be really dangerous to travel in dry weather, and with a high wind." The sight of these hills of sand struck him greatly. "I heard him," writes Boswell, "after we were in the house, repeating to himself, as he walked about the room,
'And smothered in the dusty whirlwind dies.'"
Over this low-lying island the Atlantic blasts swept in all their
COL.
fury. On Sunday October 10, Boswell recorded:—"There was this day the most terrible storm of wind and rain that I ever remember. It made such an awful impression on us all, as to produce, for some time, a kind of dismal quietness in the house."
The rough weather spread far. In London, as the old weather tables tell us, it was "a stormy day with heavy rains and with little intermission night and day."[1] On the previous Friday Horace Walpole had come home in a tempest from Bushey Park. "I
- ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, 1774, p. 394.
