3-047-071 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Waterspouts in the Mediterranean, 1872. 'The residents and visitors at Mentone, on the Mediterranean shore of France, were enabled to behold an interesting natural phenomenon on Tuesday, the 12th November. Three waterspouts at sea were visible to them at once, which is said to be a very unusual thing in that locality. A sketch, with which we are favoured by Mr. L. Burd, shows the appearance of the waterspouts, and the forms and position of the clouds. The effect, when a cone of the heaving water rises to meet and join the descending cone of dark vapour, is very striking, and even astonishing, to those who see it for the first time. In the view of these three waterspouts, however, at the moment when the sketch was taken, each seems to have formed a complete junction, one after another, between the clouds and the sea; and they are in different stages, the force and bulk of the first being nearly expended as the cloud, lightened by its discharge, is lifted higher, while the second and the third, with their portions of cloud hanging denser or lower, present massive columns of water, like the trunks of enormous trees. It was about a quarter before eight in the morning. The day was cold, with a wind from the north, but there was no rain'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.