North wind

“ On days when the South Wind and the North Wind wrestle together, and when the Wind from the East smites the West Wind in shame before him, thou mayst see him raise his snowy head and long white beard above the grey-green waves of the sea, and lash the white-maned, unbridled, fierce sea-horses into fury before him. ”

“ South Wind. Your North Wind hears, and Spirit of the Winds is hurrying him back to his home. Wrap you up warm while yet the snowdrifts cover the earth path, and flee to your lodge in the north sky. I am here now, and you shall know me. I, too, am powerful!
“When I lift my hand, the sky opens wide and I waken the sleeping Sun, which follows me warm and glad. I touch the earth and it grows soft and gentle, and breathes strong and swift as my South Wind ploughs under the snows to loosen your grasp. The trees in the forest welcome my voice and send out their buds to my hand. ”

“ The lowland wind, at first a mere breeze playfully teasing the north wind, like a child that kicks the bed-sheets before falling asleep, increased its force and swiftness, and scattered huge mountains of snow, but the steadily rising drone of the north wind soon mastered the situation. ”

“ The North Wind is the most hated wind that blows!"
"Indeed, Dame Grumble!" the North Wind would reply. "How would the boys and girls ever skate if I did not blow in winter time? How would the forest and orchards ever have time to make their new green leaves and flowers for the springtime, if I did not lock the earth tight each winter? ”

“ When the north wind, which blows continuously for months, comes into conflict with currents from the south, or yields them the mastery, the traveller suddenly sees the sand become alive, rising in huge pillars as thick as they are high, which whirl more or less rapidly over the plain. The sun’s rays sometimes lend them the ruddy gleam of flames, at another time they seem almost colourless, yet again, portentously dark, the furious storm weakens them and strengthens them, splits them and unites them, sometimes merging two or more into one huge sand-spout which reaches to the clouds. ”

“ The wind is howling too shrilly over the barren ice-plains; there are 33 degrees of cold, and summer, with its flowers, is far, far away. I would give a year of my life to hold them in my embrace; they loom so far off in the distance, as if I should never come back to them.
“But the northern lights, with their eternally shifting loveliness, flame over the heavens each day and each night. Look at them; drink oblivion and drink hope from them: they are even as the aspiring soul of man. ”

“ The North Wind woke her betimes next morning, and puffed himself up, and made himself so big and so strong that it was frightful to see him, and away they went, high up through the air, as if they would not stop until they had reached the very end of the world. ”

“ The south wind, herald and bearer of the rain-clouds, must still be in contest with the cooling breezes from the north if the forest is to reveal all its possible magnificence, and one must penetrate to its heart by one of its arteries, the rivers, if one wishes to see the fulness of its life. ”

“ Nobody is cold with the north wind.”
“I thought everybody was,” said Diamond.
“That is a great mistake. Most people make it, however. They are cold because they are not with the north wind, but without it.” ”

“ The north-west wind, on the contrary, is the wind that brings the sense of inland spaces, the smell of warm, wet earth and the fragrance of leaf mould in sweet breathing woods. It is the wind that fills the rivers and the wells and brings the fresh purifying rain. ”

“ It gradually becomes thicker and darker, packing in the valleys and then creeping up the heights. No sooner, however, has it reached the summit of the chain, than it is caught by the north-west wind and sent back in flying streamers, like the mare's tails we are accustomed to see in our skies presaging a change of wind, but with this difference, that these streamers are viewed from above. The north wind gathering strength, as though mustering its forces against the audacious invasion of the southern vapours, rages and blusters for several days. ”

“ They nod their heads together when the North Wind comes, and nod again and agree, and furtively grow still again, and say no more awhile. The North Wind is to them like a nice problem among wise old men; they nod their heads over it, and mutter about it all together. ”

“ On to the north, steadily north, with a good wind, as fast as steam and sail can take us, and open sea mile after mile, watch after watch, through these unknown regions, always clearer and clearer of ice one might almost say! How long will this last? The eye always turns to the northward as one paces the bridge. It is gazing into the future. But there is always the same dark sky ahead, which means open sea. ”

“ This is the strongest wind we have had the whole winter. If anything can shake up the ice and drive us north, this must do it. But the barometer is falling too fast; there will be north wind again presently. Hope has been disappointed too often; it is no longer elastic; and the gale makes no great impression on me. I look forward to spring and summer, in suspense as to what change they will bring. But the Arctic night, the dreaded Arctic night, is over, and we have daylight once again. ”

“ These are the strongest winds, and the most opposed to one another, both as to direction and power. For, the north wind condenses the air, and separates from it whatever is muddy and nebulous, and renders it clearer and brighter, and so in like manner also, all the winds which arise from the sea and other waters; for they extract the humidity and nebulosity from all objects, and from men themselves, and therefore it (the north wind) is the most wholesome of the winds. ”

“ Although this wind is so very piercing in winter, yet I think the people never complain so much of cold as when the north-east wind blows; for my own part I never found the air so agreeable, let the season of the year be what it would, as with the north-west wind. The north-east wind is also cold, but it renders the air raw and damp. ”

“ If it begins to blow toward the depressed centre of the storm as a north wind, it trends to the west, and is felt as a northeaster; if it begins as a south wind, it diverges as a southwester; if as an east wind, it becomes a southeaster ”

“ To the northward was the land; the ice, as we supposed, to the southward; the compasses useless; and the sun completely obscured by a fog so thick, that the Griper could only now and then be seen at a cable's length astern. We had literally, therefore, no mode, of regulating our course but by once more trusting to the steadiness of the wind; and it was not a little amusing, as well as novel, to see the quartermaster conning the ship by looking at the dogvane. ”

“ Every year, at the time when the dark clouds in the south and the lightning which flashes from them announce the approach of spring, during days when the south wind rages over the steppe, the nomad herdsman takes a firebrand and hurls it into the waving grass. ”

“ More people die under the influence of the south wind than under the influence of the north wind, because the south winds hug the surface of the earth and become laden with impurities and are lacking in electrical stimulation. When inventive man becomes more familiar with the ocean on the bottom of which he has heretofore lived, he will not wait for the north wind to bring down to him the beneficial conditions that always exist higher up ”

“ And all at once when their inward longing kindles into flame, (in spring the rather, since in spring their vital heat returns,) they all wheel and stand facing the West on rocky heights, and snuff the light breezes, and often without bodily union, wind-impregned, wonderful to tell, over crag and cliff and deep-sunken vale they scatter in flight not to thy springs, O East, nor to the rising of the sun, but towards the north and northwest winds, or whence the South issues wrapped in gloom and saddens heaven with his chilly rains. ”

“ I HAVE been asked to tell you about the back of the north wind. An old Greek writer mentions a people who lived there, and were so comfortable that they could not bear it any longer, and drowned themselves. My story is not the same as his. I do not think Herodotus had got the right account of the place. I am going to tell you how it fared with a boy who went there. ”

“ The strong southerly and southeast winds that prevail here during the summer season are the most severe, and, strange to say, they are the ones which are the coldest and the chilliest—a [Pg 123] north wind is always warmer! ”

“ Those that are produced and come from the coolest directions, the north and northeast winds, blow in blasts that are rarefied by the great dryness in the atmosphere, but the south wind and the others that assail us from the direction of the sun's course are very damp, and always bring rain, because they reach us from warm regions after being well heated there, and licking up and carrying off the moisture from the whole country, they pour it out on the regions in the north. ”

“ A tiny wind from the north, keen as a knife blade, blew in my face as I stood there, out of the calm blue sky, and seemed to whisper to me of the terrifying nights of storm, of the deadly wind before which all life goes down like a straw, that raged here in the winter. ”

“ At the North, you have heard the wind, at midnight, after a warm rain, in winter, haul out to the north-west, and you know what a piping time we then have of it, and how the clear cold air, the next morning, and the bright sun, excite and cheer us. ”

“ And above, in the atmosphere, a warm wind, the south wind, goes continually from the equator to the pole. Through the rotation of the earth around its axis from west to east, the north wind becomes an easterly, that is, a northeast wind; and the south wind in the upper atmosphere becomes a westerly, or southwest wind. The former, coming from cold countries, carries no vapor with it; hence, during northeast wind we have clear sky, or sunshine, but without heat. If this wind occurs in winter, it brings us dry frost; in daytime the sun shines splendidly, at night the stars sparkle brilliantly ”

“ As the north wind made no ground swell, the rock could be approached on the south side, even when a moderate north wind was blowing.
They were familiar with all these facts, and had accordingly chosen the last of a norther, that had been blowing two days, and was dying away. ”

“ “Ah, but, dear North Wind, you don't know how nice it is to feel your arms about me. It is a thousand times better to have them and the wind together, than to have only your hair and the back of your neck and no wind at all.”
“But it is surely more comfortable there?”
“Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable.”
“Yes, indeed there are. Well, I will keep you in front of me. You will feel the wind, but not too much. I shall only want one arm to take care of you; the other will be quite enough to sink the ship.”
“Oh, dear North Wind! ”

“ If, now, the wind from the south, which has prevailed and driven back the northern current, continues in the same direction until the entire atmospheric area of the storm passes over the zenith northward, and the sky clears up from the south or southwest, as is generally the case in early autumn or late spring, then the next storm or change of weather will come from the north. ”

“ Northwest wind brings a short storm;
A northeast wind brings a long storm. 86Northwest Winds.
Northwest wind brings only rain showers.
If there be a change of wind from the northwest or west to the southwest or south, or else from the northeast or east to the southeast or south, expect wet weather.
If the northwest or north winds blow with rain or snow during three or four days in the winter and then the wind passes to the south through the west, expect continued rain. ”

“ One generally associates the north wind with cool and bracing air, and certainly in the Mediterranean it is the change of wind to the south, the hated sirocce, that enervates the traveller at once. But this north wind on the Marne came over a vast plain of arid land heated by two months of scorching sun, whereas the breezes of last week, though from the east, had been tempered in passing over the mountains of the Vosges. ”

“ This ever-dreaded wind, which blows as the Chamasin through Egypt, as the Sirocco towards Italy, as the Föhn through the Alps, as the Tauwind in North Europe, does not always rise into a storm; not unfrequently it is hardly noticeable, and yet it makes many a man’s heart tremble. ”

“ When this northward wind begins in unsettled weather it changes to the south, as a rule, without staying at any of the intervening points, and does so with a heavy squall or shower. When the wind from the north is a light one it generally changes to a light one from the south ”

“ The same southeasterly wind has turned into a regular storm, howling and rattling cheerily through the rigging, and we are doubtless drifting northward at a good rate. If I go outside the tent on deck, the wind whistles round my ears, and the snow beats into my face, and I am soon covered with it. From the snow-hut observatory, or even at a lesser distance, the Fram is invisible, and it is almost impossible to keep one’s eyes open, owing to the blinding snow. ”

“ The cold north wind which bows to earth
The lightness of the willow's birth
Bends not the mountain cedar trees;
Folding their branches from the breeze,
They stand as if they could defy
The utmost rage of storm and sky. ”