Old Viot, who had come for the sixth time to the island, alleged that such rainy tempestuous weather at this season of the year was quite an unusual phenomenon,--an opinion which somewhat later was confirmed by the reports of several North American whalers. Ordinarily the fine season commences at the beginning of November, at which period the South wind is the most prevalent, the sky often remaining clear and hot for weeks together. The hottest month of the year is January, the coldest June. From May to October it is exceedingly difficult to land with boats on the island, and cases not unfrequently occur during the continuance of the stormy season resembling that which is instanced by the historiographer of Lord Macartney's embassy to China, in which, during September, 1792, a ship anchored on the east side of the island, was only able twice, during the lapse of eight weeks, to send a boat to the island with provisions. On this station the fishery is confined to the fine season (from November to April), while for the rest of the year the various huts of the fishermen are entirely abandoned, being only inhabited by a couple of men, in whose charge are left the few but by no means valueless implements and apparatus of the island. These men lead a very monotonous life, though not one of privation, for the crater-basin supplies the whole year round the most delicious fish, and craw-fish of the finest kind.
Our sailors used to hang a basket with bait close to the edge of the crater-basin, sunk a few feet in the water, which they would draw out every time full of lobsters. In a few hours they frequently caught from eighty to one hundred pounds' weight of these large and extremely delicate species of shell-fish. An excursion which was got up one morning to the South side of the island, in a fisherman's boat, was rewarded in a few hours with some fifty different sorts of denizens of the deep, some of which weighed twenty to twenty-five pounds each.
According to Viot's account, snow does not fall often in winter, and in consequence of the heat inherent in the volcanic soil, never lies long on it. On the other hand, hail is a tolerably frequent visitant. Rain is of constant occurrence, and sometimes falls in immense quantities. Viot was never weary of expressing his astonishment at the enormous size of the drops of rain which for many a year he had seen fall at St. Paul. The cold is often pretty severe; while the almost entire want of firing on the island (for the dung of animals is not obtainable in sufficient quantities to make its storing worth the requisite labour), deprives the poor residents of the comfort of a fireside. "If the last storm had not blown down our hut, we should for long have had to do without fuel," was the naïve remark on one occasion of the old Frenchman, as he lay stretched out on a dirty bed, carefully rolled up in his rough woollen blanket. Winter begins in May and ends in September. During this period the Northerly winds are often very strong. On 27th June, 1857, there blew for six or eight hours here so terrific a tempest that the inhabitants of St. Paul did not venture outside of their huts for fear of being rapt away by the wind. These storms of winter occasionally rage to such a degree that they drive before them into the basin of the crater huge masses of water, which they whirl in wild confusion to an enormous height, showing that the tract in the Southern Ocean traversed by the hurricanes which occasionally do such damage about Mauritius and Rodriguez, occasionally embraces the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam. In November, at the commencement of the fine season, the winds are rather variable, and so continue to the end of March, when the N. and N.W. winds begin once more to blow regularly; these bring heavy rains and foul weather, after which, except that it is cold when the wind changes to West with a Southerly tendency, a warmer and drier climate is experienced. During our stay we frequently had an opportunity of verifying by observation the steady return of certain winds in regular succession. For instance, after the N.E. wind had prevailed for some days, it veered to N.N.W. whence it invariably went to W. by S., where it usually stayed some little time, after which it once more went to N.E.--a phenomenon which went through its phases every six days with surprising regularity.