CATARACTS, AND INUNDATIONS. 28? 



and other places, yet there not being boats enought to afford help 

 to all, its to be feared ina<iy will be lost for want of it. A? Oter- 

 dam, near Delfxiel, but twenty. five persons have escaped ; in the 

 village of Peterborne there are but three bouses left standing, and 

 in general, all the houses that stood near the dyke have been swept 

 awav." 



Instances of this kind might be selected to infinity : but we shall 

 confine ourselves to the following extraordinary agitation of the 

 waters of Loch Tay, given in a letter from the Reverend Thomas 

 Fleming to the Reverend John Playfair, M . A.* 



* 4 I did not return from ihe excursion on which I was when I 

 had the pleasure to see you at Dundee till last Tuesday night. On 

 my arrival, 1 found your letter respecting the phenomenon that 

 lately happened in this neighbourhood. Although ill qualified to 

 give you satisfaction upon this subject, I shall, however, comply 

 with your desire, and give you the most accurate account of that 

 phenomenon which I have been able to obtain. 



On Sunday the 12th of September, 1784, about nine o'clock in 

 the morning, an unusual agitation was observed in Loch Tay, near 

 the village of Kenmore. That village stands at the east end of the 

 lake, having the river, which there issues from the lake, on the north 

 side, and a bay, about 160 yards in length and 200 yards in breadth, 

 on the south. The greater part of this bay is very shallow, being 

 generally no more than than two or three feet deep ; but before it 

 joins the body of the lake, it becomes suddenly very deep. At the 

 extremity of this bay, the water was observed to retire about five 

 yards within its ordinary boundary, and in four or five minutes to 

 flow out again. In this manner, it ebbed and flowed successively 

 three or four times during the space of a quarter of an hour, when, 

 all at once, the water rushed from the east and west, in opposite 

 currents, towards a line across the bay, and about the edge of the 

 deep, rose in the form of a great wave, to the height of five feet 

 above the ordinary level, leaving the bottom of the bay dry, to the 

 distance of between 96 and 10O yards from its natural boundary. 

 When the opposite currents met, they made a clashing noise, and 

 foamed ; and the stronger impulse being from the east, the wave, 



* See Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol I. p. 200. 



