THE MOVING WATERS 



the former may be to some extent predictable, while 

 those of the latter are erratic and cannot be forecast. 



The fearful velocities of surface storms might be 

 instanced with numbers of cases. One of the most remark- 

 able in recent years was the cyclone which hit Belsize, 

 the capital of British Honduras, in 1931. Striking the 

 town at 2.30 p.m. on loth September, the hurricane 

 destroyed the town in half an hour — all the churches 

 were wrecked and not a building was left undamaged. 

 The wind sometimes reached a velocity of 150 miles an 

 hour. A 200-ton dredger was lifted from the sea and 

 dropped squarely on the roof of the Customs House. 

 That single incident exemplifies the force of storms 

 over the sea, although, mercifully, few storms are as 

 violent. 



Tidal waves may be caused by mighty winds, or by 

 earthquakes or settlements of the sea-bed, deep down 

 under the waves. On loth November 1932, a tidal wave 

 twenty feet in height swept inland over Cuba and other 

 West Indian islands. The cyclone which accompanied it 

 raged with a velocity of 200 miles an hour, destroying 

 houses, stores, crops — almost everything in its path. Some 

 3,000 people were drowned or otherwise killed at Santa 

 Cruz del Sur, and the town was completely destroyed. 

 The tidal wave carried numbers of bodies and a con- 

 siderable amount of wreckage back into the sea. 



The Humber and the Mersey are examples of Britain's 

 tidal rivers. In some instances, where the tide comes in 

 swiftly and the river runs rapidly, the water moving 

 inland from the sea may be heaped up to several feet in 

 height, instead of moving up the river steadily and with a 

 gradual increase in the height of the water. Such a wave 

 — which can be a most exciting thing to watch — is para- 

 doxically called a ''bore", meaning a billow. In France 

 the name eau guerre is given to it (appropriately, for the 

 term means ''water war") while in South America it is 

 C2i\\td proroca, "the destroyer". 



83 



