1 Supposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena, 



continued rains for twenty days. In China, the rains, which 

 subsided on July 24., were still more dangerous ; the rivers 

 were overflowed, and thousands of lives lost : the crops were 

 ruined; villages carried away, and trade suspended.* {Indian 

 Journals.) In November, great inundations occurred at Rio 

 Grande. The wet was so destructive, also, in Hayti, as to 

 prevent the coffee harvest. In December, 1833, and January, 

 1834, dreadful floods occurred in the Maine, the Moselle, the 

 Rhine, in Holland, and France. On Jan. 2. the Seine was 

 higher than known since 174 0. On the 4th, the Severn was 

 also overflowed from the melting of snow in Montgomeryshire. 

 On Jan. 10. the Maes rose so high, that the water was 

 5 ft. deep before the houses in Gaermaes, and remained so 

 for three weeks. To the end of the month, there were great 

 floods all over England and Ireland. There were many 

 houses near Limerick of which only the chimneys could be 

 seen. There was no such flood for ten years near London, 

 as happened at Chertsey, on Jan. 28. On Jan. 25. the 



* In the spring of 1831, owing to the extraordinary melting of snow in 

 Armenia (pointing out the presence of heat), the Tigris and Euphrates 

 were unusually swoln, and the country flooded to such a degree that 

 Bagdad was nearly ruined. (See Penny Magazine, Nov. 30. 1833, 

 p. 458.) In Nov. 1826, a similar flooding occurred in the Indus. (Barnes, 

 iii. 315.) The Indus, although variable in the height of its " swell," did 

 not attain its usual height in 1831 and 1832 (Burnes, m. 278.); which, like 

 the low state of the Nile, must have been occasioned by the heat of the 

 preceding winters ; for the increased heat of the summers would have pro- 

 duced a greater rise than usual, had the accumulation of ice and snow on 

 the mountains been as great as usual. It is certain, from various passages 

 in Mr. Burnes's work, that some temporary changes of climate occurred in 

 the East, in 1831 and 1832. He had, at the mouth of the Indus, terrible 

 storms in January, and February; heavy showers, and a severe hail storm, 

 with thermometer at 86°, in April, at Tatta, though there is sometimes a 

 dearth of rain there for three years at a time. Hot tornadoes, with lightning, 

 and without rain, occurred, also, at Toolumba, on the Hydaspes, and at 

 Moultan, for nine nights; and at Lahore, &c. The Oxus "was also frozen 

 from shore to shore, in the winter of 1831-2 ; which is not usually the case, 

 though that river is generally frozen in part. The natives attributed the 

 winds which Mr. Burnes met with in his voyage up the rivers to his " good 

 fortune," evidently surprised at their occurrence. The Caspian has, he 

 says, since 1820, retreated more than 300 yards on the southern shore 

 (Burnes, ii. 121.) ; which must be attributed to greater evaporation by heat. 

 Now, the shores of the Caspian, and the adjacent countries, have been of 

 late shaken by earthquakes. In Lahore, and all up the Oxus, there was 

 a great earthquake, on Jan. 22. 1832, at midnight; and shocks have been 

 frequent there. (Burnes, i. 17.) My brother writes me word, from Khoi, 

 in Armenia, that there have been unusual earthquakes in Persia, of late ; at 

 Khoi, on July 6, 7. and 10. 1834: and at Tabreez on the 18th : and, from 

 another private source, I learn that, about the same time, Jerusalem, Beth- 

 lehem, and almost all the cities of Palestine, were shaken by more violent 

 earthquakes, for ten days, than were ever remembered. The earthquakes 

 in Lahore and Persia had the same direction. 



