520 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, 



sudden disruption of the ice wliicli arctic voyagers tell of, the im- 

 mense bergs which occasionally appear in groups near certain lat- 

 itudes, the variable character of all the currents of the sea — now 



of a cataract four or five miles across, and about thirty feet high, moving bodily on- 

 ward. Soon it reached the advanced guard of the immense assemblage of vessels 

 awaiting its approach. Knowing that the bore of the Hooghly, which scarcely de- 

 served mention in connection with the one before me, invariably overturned boats 

 which were not skillfully managed, I could not but feel apprehensive for the lives of 

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

 they were silenced, all being intently occupied in keeping their prows toward the 

 wave which threatened to submerge every thing afloat ; but they all vaulted, as it 

 were, to the summit with perfect safety. The spectacle was of greatest 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 unruflled stream, while those on the nether 

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

 scaling with 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 recollection. My impression is that the fall 

 was about twenty feet ; the Chinese say that the rise and fall is sometimes forty feet 

 at Hang-chau. 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 ap- 

 pear to be known at all. It is not, therefore, where tides attain their greatest rapid- 

 ity, 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 

 the 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 sud- 

 denly 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 comprehensive, 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 resumption 

 of trafliic. The vessels were soon attached to the shore again ; women and children 

 were occupied in gathering articles which the careless or unskillful had lost in the 

 aquatic melee. The streets were drenched with spray, and a considerable volume of 

 water splashed over the banks into the head of the grand canal, a few feet distant." 

 — ^Vide Transactions of Chinese Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 



