- Author:
- Hannaford, Ebenezer
- Publication Info:
-
Springfield, O:
The Crowell and Kirkpatrick co,
1900,
pg 18
Text on page 18
18
THE PICTURESQUE PHILIPPINES
Uourtesy oi Andreae and Keeves
On a Country Road in the Interiora A Grouping by the Photographer in Front oe a Native Cart With Solid Wheels
brought over 28 inches. It then decreased until December. Throughout the archipelago generally the damage done by floods in the tremendous downpours of the rainy season must aggregate more than that from earthquakes. The greatest recent calamity of this kind was the storm of October 31, 1876- in
southeast Luzon. The floods, pouring down the sides of El Mayon, swept along with them prodigious quantities of volcanic debris and overwhelmed a dozen villages, filling up the roads, breaking down the bridges and completely ruining 6,200 houses. Rains were much heavier in 1899 than the year previous.
MONSOONS AND TYPHOONS
THESE terms are often confounded by American readers, and it is to be regretted that a recent government compilation lends authority to the same error. Monsoons are among the regular and beneficent economies of nature. Typhoons are occasional and destructive. Think of the steady, complexion-bronzing breezes of Kansas, then of the tornadoes (so-called cyclones) of the same section, and one can get a good suggestion of the contrast between a monsoon and a typhoon.
The trade-winds of tropic seas are surface winds that blow with remarkable uniformity; their cause is the rush of cold air from the polar regions to the heated regions of the equator. Monsoons are trade-winds that have been modified chiefly in direction, though to some extent in character also. The name
comes from a Malay word signifying a seasons,a and got its footing in English because of its convenience. Nevertheless, in ordinary literature, a monsoona is restricted much as at firsta to the Indian ocean and adjoining parts of the tropical Pacific.
From the facts that the atmosphere partakes of the eartha s rotary motion, and the equatorial regions have a greater rate of motion than the polar, there results a marked change of direction in the trade-winds. The air currents from about the poles (cold) flowing toward the equator (hot) cannot at once acquire the greater velocity of the subjacent surface, the earth slips from under them, and they reach their destination as northeast instead of north winds in the Northern hemisphere, and of southeast instead of south winds in the Southern.
