25th. Weather still hot, with cold nights. The wind changes about
midnight, and blows cold from the west until noon of the next day, in
the afternoon it dies away, leaving the atmosphere hot and sultry. The
wind suddenly changed this evening, and blew a perfect tornado. It
would have made a parson split his sides with laughter if he could have
refrained from holding the hair on his own head long enough to
laugh--to have seen the perfect confusion and turmoil which our camp
was thrown into when it struck us. Tents were flying in the air, men
chasing their hats, with the most persevering energy; some were holding
down their tents to keep them from tumbling down, while others were
tumbling them down to keep them from being torn into ribbons, and
others in the greatest excitement were securing the covers of their
wagons to prevent their being blown away; in truth it was one of the
most delightful scenes of confusion, turmoil and dismay that could be
imagined. For our part, we had noticed the coming change a few moments
before it came about, and had secured our tent to our wagon, so that it
weathered the gale; ours and one other were the only ones in the camp
that remained standing when the blow passed over. The tornado lasted
about thirty minutes, but during that time it leveled every tent in
every encampment in sight of us, (but the two in our camp.) This is the
second time we have had such a blow out, but we expect to find more of
them before we get through. The grass is poor to-day, and no wood
except willows on the islands and buffalo chips, of the latter of which
there are a great plenty.