One has to see what they call a "slight" storm, in
that country, to know what a great storm there must be. Hearn surely saw
storms there, for in "Chita" he describes with terrifying vividness that
historic tempest which, in 1856, obliterated, at one stroke, Last
Island, with its fashionable hotel and all the guests of that hotel. I
have seen a "little" thunderstorm in Barataria Bay and I do not want to
see a big one. I have seen brown men who, in the storm of 1915 (which
did a million dollars' worth of damage in New Orleans), floated about
the Baratarias for days, upon the roofs of houses, and I have seen
little children, half Italian, half Filipino, who were saved by being
carried by their parents into the branches of an old live-oak, where
they waited until good Horace Harvey, "the little father of the
Baratarias," came down there in his motor yacht, the _Destrehan_,
rescued them, warmed them, fed them, and gave them back to life. I was
told in New Orleans that there were ten seconds in that storm when the
wind reached a velocity of 140 miles per hour at the mouth of the
Mississippi, that it blew for four hours at the rate of 90 miles, and
that the lowest barometrical reading ever recorded in the United States
(28.11) was recorded in New Orleans during this hurricane.
Of the summer climate of New Orleans I know nothing at first hand, and
judging from what people have told me, that is all I want to know.
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