166 l(AfMBLES OF A VOMINIS 



wide alluvial plains that tides are seldom at their 



highest 



" When descends on the Atlantic 



The gigantic 

 Storm-wind of the equinox." 



But there could be no better time than such a 

 coincidence of wind and wave for watching on some 

 slow-moving river that strange incoming of the tide 

 that is known as The Bore. Buckland has described 

 how, on the Severn, the first wave of the rising tide 

 comes in with a rush that, when the stream is at its 

 lowest ebb, broadens the great river from a narrow span 

 of fifty yards to a breadth of nearly a mile in a few 

 minutes. 



Such a wave as this fore-ran that fatal flood upon the 

 coast of Lincolnshire when 



" So f arre, so fast the eygre drave, 

 The heart had hardly time to beat, 



Before a shallow, seething wave 

 Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet : 



The feet had hardly time to flee 



Before it brake against the knee 



And all the world was in the sea." 



Such waves come up the Mersey and the H umber; 

 and no doubt Scott describes what he had often seen 

 when he makes Lochinvar say, " Love swells like the 

 Solway, but ebbs like its tide." On the Seine and the 

 Rhone there are tidal waves which fill those rivers in 

 just this sudden way. 



But it is on the Amazon that the phenomenon attains 

 its greatest magnitude. Indeed, the very name of the 



