392 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



of all the currents of the sea — now fast, now slow (§ 401), now run- 

 ning this way, then that — all of which may be taken as so many 

 signs of the tremendous throes which occur in the bosom of the 

 ocean. Sometimes the sea recedes from the shore, as if to gather 

 strength for a great rush against its barriers, as it did when it 

 fled back to join with the earthquake and overwhelm Callao in 

 1746, and again Lisbon nine years afterward. 



757. Few persons have ever taken the trouble to compute 

 Rains at soa and their (^ 402) how uiuch the fall of B> sluffle iuch of raiu 



effect upou its equi- ^"^ •',. • ' ,^ i i 



librium. over an extensive region m the sea, or now much 



multitude. As the foaming wall of water dashed impetuously onward, they were 

 silenced, all being intensely occupied in keeping their prows towards the wave 

 which threatened to submerge everytliing afloat ; but they all vaulted, as it were, 

 to the summit with perfect safety. The spectacle was of great interest when the 

 eagre had passed about one half way among the craft. On one side they were 

 quietly reposing on the surface of the unruffled stream, while those on the netlier 

 portion were pitching and heaving in tumultuous confusion on the flood ; others 

 were scaling wutli the agility of salmon the formidable cascade. This grand and 

 exciting scene was but of a moment's duration ; it passed up the river in an 

 instant, but from this point with gradually diminishing force, size, and velocity, 

 until it ceased to be perceptible, which Chinese accounts represent to be eighty 

 miles distant from the city. From ebb to flood tide the change was almost 

 instantaneous ; a slight flood continued after the passage of the wave, but it soon 

 began to ebb. Having lost my memoranda, I am obliged to write from recollec- 

 tion. My impression is that the fall was about twenty feet ; the Chinese say that 

 the rise and Ml is sometimes forty feet at Hang-chow. The maximum rise and 

 fall at spring-tides is probably at the mouth of the river, or upper part of the bay, 

 where the eagre is hardly discoverable. In the Bay of Fundy, where the tides 

 rush in with amazing velocity, there is at one place a rise of seventy feet ; but 

 there the magnificent phenomenon in question does not appear to be known at all . 

 It is not, therefore, where tides attain their greatest rapidity, or maximum rise and 

 fall, that this wave is met with, but where a river and its estuary both present a 

 peculiar configuration. 



" Dryden's definition of an eagre, appended in a note to the verse above quoted 

 from tlie Threnodia Augustalis, is, ' a tide swelling above another tide,' which he 

 says he had himself observed in the River Trent. Such, according to Chinese 

 oral accounts, is the character of the Tsien-Tang tides — a wave of considerable 

 height rushes suddenly in from the bay, which is soon followed by one much 

 larger. Other accounts represent three successive waves riding in ; hence the 

 name of the temple mentioned, that of the Three "Waves. Both here and on the 

 Hooghly I observed but one wave ; my attention, however, was not particularly 

 directed to this feature of the eagre. The term should, perhaps, be more compre- 

 hensive, and express ' the instantaneous rise and advance of a tidal wave ;' the 

 Indian barbarism ' bore ' should be discarded altogether. 



" A very short period elapsed between the passage of the eagre and the re- 

 sumption of trafflc. The vessels were soon attached to the shore again ; women 

 and children were occupied in gathering articles which the careless or unslcilful 

 had lost in the aquatic melee. The streets were drenched with spray, and a con- 

 siderable volume of water splashed over the banks into i^e head of the grand 

 canal, a few feet distant." — Vide Transactions of Chinese Branch of the Boyal 

 Asiatic Society. 



