"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this storm."

Here, as in many places on the Pacific coast, people should be web-footed during the rainy season to escape the drowning, and iron clad during the dry season to escape the merciless peltings of the clouds of shot-like dust.

The storm was increasing, but he heeded not the peltings of the wintry wind, or the wild music that mingled with its mournful wail, as he passed the luxurious hall, where "Fashion's gay tapers were lighted.

The rain and sleet were driven furiously before the wind, and the child of want shrank from the biting blast, as stern necessity drove him forth to meet the peltings of the winter storm.

To this story Coleridge alludes in one of his early poems, the "Monody on the Death of Chatterton:" "While, 'mid the pelting of that merciless storm, Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form!" 121*'T is of a little child*, etc.