Sumach

“ The real moroccos are tanned in sumach, but the cheaper sorts are tanned in India with babool or turwar bark and re-tanned in sumach in the countries to which they are exported, chiefly Great Britain, Germany, France, and America.
157 One of the best methods of sumach-tanning goat and calf skins is that known as the "bottle" tannage. Each skin is doubled over and sewn by machine round the edge, leaving part of the neck unsewn. The skins are then turned inside out and filled with a strong infusion of sumach, and floated in a tub containing sumach liquor. ”

“ The terror and mystery of a cataclysm so unparalleled, so far beyond all explanation or imagination, fell like a black pall upon the United States, and horrified the whole cvilized world. The dust from the storm, which was analyzed at once, was found to consist of partially disintegrated molecules; and it required no great reach of fantasy for scientists, reporters and the general public to associate the upheaval with the Saharan sand-storm that had given birth to a terrain of unearthly strangeness. ”

“ Perhaps the full blast of the simoom may last an hour—perhaps two or even three hours. In lighter strain it may continue a whole day. When, finally, it ceases the air is thick with fine dust; one can see scarcely a rod away. Sun and sky are hidden, and the blackness of a tornado or of a London fog prevails. The fine dust floating in the air may not settle for several days. Perhaps a week afterward there may be a haze that partly obscures the sun. The dust, finer than the finest flour, pervades everything in the desert. One's clothing is full of it; one's hair becomes harsh and matted ”

“ Now those plains and slopes yonder lay bare and brown for many months: everything on them was scorched up and covered with thickening dust. The sumac, to be sure, kept its greenness, and even sent out tender shoots, just to remind us perhaps that Nature was not really dead, [139] but slumbering beneath her ugly garment of dust and withered growth, even as elsewhere she takes her time of rest beneath a lovelier covering of purest white. ”

“ When a cloud of dust, on a hot summer's day, rises and flies along the thirsty road, making the passenger close his eyelids, and dusting the leaves of wayside vegetation,—it is a miniature of the terrible simoom, which blows from the desert sands, scattering death and devastation in its track.
When steam issues from the tea-urn, and becomes condensed in minute drops upon the window-pane,—the miniature is of the earth's heat, evaporating the waters, and the cold air of night condensing the vapours into dew.
When grass and corn bend before the wind, and are beaten down by its force ”

“ At this place the mountain seems to be smouldering, as sulphur fumes and steam issue at many points, and the ground is covered with a friable white alkaline substance. In many a hollow the water bubbles with clouds of vapor and sulphuretted hydrogen; here the soil is hot and evidently underlaid by active fires. It is not safe to go very near, as the crust is thin and crumbling. The water running down the hills has a refreshing sound and a tempting clearness, but the thirsty tongue at once detects it to be a very strong solution of alum. ”

“ At last, on the 29th of the said month, about two hours in the night, the earth opened near the lake, and discovered a horrid mouth, from which were vomited furiously, smoak, fire, stones, and mud composed of ashes; making, at the time of its opening, a noise like very loud thunder: the fire, that issued from this mouth, went towards the walls of the unfortunate city; the smoak was partly black and partly white; the black was darker than darkness itself, and the white was like the whitest cotton: these smoaks, rising in the air, seemed as if they would touch the vault of heaven ”

“ Then I crawled to the fire outside, hauled two fresh logs into the blaze, swathed myself in my blankets, lighted a fresh pipe, and sat down with my feet to the heat and my back against a sapling.
Outside the wavering ring of firelight the blackness was so profound, so hopelessly impenetrable, that I wondered whether a storm was rolling up behind the Scaur. Trees, brush, rocks, and ledges—the whole huge forest, root and branch—seemed woven together into curtains of utter darkness, which wavered, advanced, and receded with the ever-dying, ever-leaping flames. ”

“ And across all the Harmattan was blowing hard, that terrible wind that carries the Saharan dust a hundred miles to sea, not so much as a sand-storm, but as a mist or fog of dust as fine as flour, filling the eyes, the lungs, the pores of the skin, the nose and throat; getting into the locks of rifles, the works of watches and cameras, defiling water, food and everything else; rendering life a burden and a curse. ”

“ At the instant he threw the tobacco into the fire, the blackness of the clouds was intensest, and a grim silence, as if nature were waiting in anxious expectation of some grand event, brooded over the earth interrupted only by the shout of the cataract; then, a thunderbolt blazed almost in the eyes of the Indian, followed, instantly, by a crash, as if the solid rocks were splintered into fragments, and by a torrent of rain, pouring, not in drops, but, in one continuous flood. ”

“ The mornings and evenings, cooled by breezes from the mountains, were deliciously soft and pure. The abundant electricity was proved, as in Sindh and Arabia, by frequent devils or dust-pillars, like huge columns of volcanic smoke, that careered over the miraged plains, violently excited where they touched the negative earth, and calm in the positive strata of the upper air, whence their floating particles were precipitated. Dust-storms and thunder-storms are frequent and severe. ”

“ We can see Mont Pelee from the rear windows of our house, and although it is fully four miles away, we can hear the roar of the fire and lava issuing from it.
“The city is covered with ashes and clouds of smoke have been over our heads for the last five days. The smell of sulphur is so strong that horses on the streets stop and snort, and some of them are obliged to give up, drop in their harness and die from suffocation. Many of the people are obliged to wear wet handkerchiefs over their faces to protect them from the fumes of sulphur. ”

“ Disturbed by the initial quake, the people of the city fled to the cathedral or local shrines, sought refuge in fancied strongholds, or ran aimlessly about; when caught by the black cyclone, they were thrown against walls and amidst wreckage, bruised and burned by the red-hot rocks pouring from above, and suffocated by sulphurous fumes; then, when the gas-cloud caught fire from its own lightning or from molten rock, every living thing was scorched, seared or baked according to the local conditions of the burning. ”

“ No cooling breeze passes across it, no shelter is found from the scorching heat. The pools are dried-up, the surface of the swamps becomes cracked and dry—the brown stalks of the tall reeds alone marking the nature of the ground. Here, occasionally, when the blast sweeps across the plain, columns of dust are set in motion, like those of the African Sahara, overwhelming and stifling the incautious traveller, who is hurled senseless to the ground. ”

“ In less time than it takes to describe, the whole city and harbour were completely obscured by a tremendous cloud of dust, blown on at a great pace, roaring like a furnace, and carrying before it sticks, paper, and even small gravel, which strike with the force of hailstones. During the twenty minutes which the hurricane lasts umbrellas are perfectly useless, and every person and thing becomes completely covered with dust. ”

“ When the storm reached the low point dividing the river, the house shook in the wind, and the rain pattered loudly on the palm-leaf roof, the thunder spoke in one prolonged roll, and the incessant lightning disclosed a turmoil of leaping waters, driving logs, and the big trees bending before a brutal and merciless force.
Undisturbed by the nightly event of the rainy monsoon, the father slept quietly, oblivious alike of his hopes, his misfortunes, his friends, and his enemies ”

“ It is very true that many of them in going up could not be seen, on account of the dark smoak; but, when they returned from the smoaky heat, they shewed plainly where they had been, by their strong smell of fetid sulphur, just like stones that have been thrown out of a mortar, and have passed through the smoak of inflamed gunpowder. The mud was of the colour of ashes, and at first very liquid, then by degrees less so; and in such quantities, that in less than twelve hours, with the help of the abovementioned stones, a mountain was raised of a thousand paces in height. ”

“ Thunder and lightning are there so very frequent as scarcely to attract the attention of persons long resident in the country. During the north-west monsoon the explosions are extremely violent; the forked lightning shoots in all directions, and the whole sky seems on fire, whilst the ground is agitated in a degree little inferior to the motion of a slight earthquake. In the south-east monsoon the lightning is more constant, but the coruscations are less fierce or bright, and the thunder is scarcely audible. ”

“ The disturbance of the sea and consequent flooding of the shores, both those of Sumatra to the north and those of Java to the east of the volcanic outbreak, had the most destructive effects upon the Dutch settlements at Telok Betong, at the head of the bay in Sumatra, and likewise in Java, at the well-known commercial port of Anjer, where all homeward-bound ships of every nation were accustomed to call in passing the straits to obtain needful supplies for the voyage across the Indian Ocean ”

“ Then, several centuries ago—the exact time is uncertain, for no written records are kept on Mercury—came the Great Storms. Their cause was unknown—some widespread atmospheric disturbance. These storms temporarily parted the clouds in many places, allowing the direct rays of the sun to fall upon the planet's surface. The resulting temperature destroyed all life, withered all vegetation, with its scorching blast. The inhabitants of the Fire Country were killed by hundreds of thousands, their cities deserted, their land laid a desert waste. ”

“ Urged by the blasts of the devious wind, it spread this way and that until it widened out like an extended fan. The distant houses were immersed in smoke, while the nearer ground was completely covered with the sparks blown on to it. The ashes, driven aloft into the sky, and illumined by the flames, formed a ruddy background against which the sparks might be seen, continually detached by the gusts, and as it were flying over a space of several hundred yards to some new quarter. Imagine the distracted state of the inhabitants! Some there were who fell down, stifled by the smoke ”

“ Volcanic outbreaks are merely the explosion of steam under high pressure—steam which is bound in rocks buried underneath the surface of the earth and there subjected to such tremendous heat that when the conditions are right its pent up energy breaks forth, and it shatters its stone prison walls into dust. ”

“ The ground sounds hollow underfoot, and the awful subterranean thunder shakes one’s mind as the ground is shaken, especially at night in the pale moonlight, or when the sky is overcast with storm-clouds. In the solemn gloom, the geysers, dimly visible, look like monstrous dancing ghosts, and their wild songs and the earthquake thunder replying to the storms overhead seem doubly terrible, as if divine government were at an end. ”

“ These were gales of wind, called in the Chinese seas Tay-Foung. At several periods of the year, particularly at the moment of the change of the monsoon,1 we beheld still more terrifying phenomena than our storms—I allude to the earthquakes. These fearful convulsions of nature present a very different aspect in the country from what they do in cities. If in towns the earth begins to quake, everywhere we hear a terrible noise; the edifices give way, and are ready to fall down; the inhabitants rush out of their houses, run along the streets, which they encumber, and try to escape. ”

“ But this was a cloudburst of steel, an avalanche of iron; the pouring upward of the earth in sudden geysers, choked with trees and rocks and the fragments of houses; a continuous, mighty thunder in which [47] were mingled the throaty roar of multiple discharges, the moan of the shells through the air, and the shock of the explosions at contact with the objective. It was an overwhelming noise filling all spaces.
Seicheprey! It was then a jagged scar. It must be now, after this fresh surge of the human flood, an open wound. There I saw heaven touch hell. ”

“ We know that at the time of earthquakes bitumen seems to be detached from the bottom of the lake. Every thing leads to the conclusion that the agency of fire was at work. The kindling of such a mass of combustible material, either by lightning from heaven, or by other electrical agency, combined with an earthquake ejecting other bitumen or sulphur from tho lake, would soon spread devastation over the plain, so that the smoke of the country would go up as the smoke of a furnace. ”

“ But almost as suddenly as it had been formed the vacuum was filled by a cyclonic rush of air. There was a detonation as of a hundred vicious thunderclaps made one, and, through the howling, shrieking blasts of wind, there rained down upon the valley, plain and metaled mountain a veritable avalanche of debris: bent, twisted, and broken rails and beams, splintered timbers, masses of concrete, and thousands of cubic yards of soil and rock. ”