NATURAL 1'IIILOSOPHY. 199 



wave 13 feet higher than the highest tide-mark surmounted sea- 

 walls; and dikes and poured over the whole of the surrounding country. 

 For an hour the water rose and covered nearly 800 square miles 

 of the plain, and when it retired, at 11, the work of destruction 

 was done. The plain for 80 miles along the coast and from nine to 

 ten miles inland had been submerged, and in one place the storm-wave 

 had reached a spot 17 miles from the shore. We can onlyfeebly pic- 

 ture to ourselves the desolation of the scene. The low-built houses 

 of the natives had been washed away, and those which might have 

 reached above the wave had been blown down by the fury of the 

 storm. The fiercest powers of the natural world were at work, and 

 in the darkness of night there was no escape possible, whatever might 

 have been done in the light of day. Whole villages were entirely 

 destroyed ; their inhabitants were drowned, their cattle were lost, 

 their crops were buried beneath a thick deposit of mud and sand. To 

 have been the sole survivor of such a calamity was, perhaps, a more 

 cruel fate than to have perished with kinsfolk and friends. When 

 help came from Madras, those who brought it witnessed a sight which 

 they will not easily forget. The mud banks were full of unburied 

 corpses in every possible attitude, combining the grotesque and the 

 horrible. Side by side lay one whom despair had reduced to abject 

 resignation and another whom it had driven to wild defiance. Half 

 the town was in ruins ; fallen trees, drift, the ruins of houses, and deep 

 pools of salt water made streets and roads impassable. Huge barges 

 had been carried into the center of the town, and masses of solid 

 masonry had been rolled, boulder-like, distances of 60 and 70 yards. 

 The first impression of those visiting this city of death, was sufficiently 

 awful, but when after a while the tale of destruction was reckoned, it 

 was seen that the first horror had fallen short of the reality. In 

 fort and town of the inhabitants had perished. One thousand 

 were drowned in the fort and 15,000 in the town, and in the surround- 

 ing villages 20,000 more had met their death. In one Brahmin 

 village on the outskirts of Masulipatam 70 only remained alive out 

 of 700. For a single night, or rather for a single hour, the destroy- 

 ing angel had been at work, and when he finished it was as if the life 

 of man and the life of nature had both been elfaced. Beneath the 

 sweep of his wings the prosperous plain had become desolation and 

 the fruitful villages tenantless." 



The destruction of property caused by this storm at Calcutta, and 

 other places, was immense ; and effects of the visitation must 

 remain impressed upon the country for years. 



THE FORCES IN NATURE. 



The concussion of one pound of hydrogen with eight pounds of 

 oxygen is equal, in mechanical value, to the raising of 47,000,000 

 pounds one foot high. I think I did not overrate matters, when I 

 said, that the force of gravity, as exerted near the earth, was almost 

 a vanishing quantity in comparison with these molecular forces ; and 

 bear in mind the distances which separate the atoms before combina- 

 tion, distances so small as to be utterly immeasurable, still, it is in 

 passing over these distances, that the atoms acquire a velocity suffi- 

 cient to cause them to clash with the tremendous energy indicated by 







