50 REMARKABLE AURORAL DISPLAY IN COLORADO. 



was destroyed, while the shipping at anchor in the bay was thrown far up 

 on to the hind. This very spot was visited by an almost equally destructive 

 cyclone wave in 1839. On October 31st, 1831, one hundred and fifty miles 

 of the country at the mouth of the Ganges was swept by a wavis which ob- 

 literated three hundred native villages and destroyed l0,000 of the inhabi- 

 tants. Other destructive hurricanes are recorded as having occurred on 

 the same coast on October 7th, 1832, and September 21st, 1839. On October 

 21 St, 1838, a wave swept the mouth of the Hooghly, and overwhelmed 

 10,000 people; while, on the 21st of the previous May, three successive 

 waves, as at Coringa, swept away six hundred villages and destroyed 50,000 

 people. The last of these waves was nine feet higher than the highest tide, 

 and the barometer is said to have suddenly fallen as much as two inches. 



"In the Calcutta cyclone of October 5, 1864, the devastation was almost 

 solely due to the effect of the cyclone wave, the extent of country laid under 

 water having been 1,500 square miles. It was of little avail that the banks 

 of the Hooghly and its feeders and the island at its mouth were protected by 

 dikes and embankments of from eight to ten feet high ; these, even if they 

 had been strong enough to withstand the shock of the wave, were far over- 

 topped by it, and the land inside laid under water to a depth of from six 

 feet to eighteen feet. In the Hooghly the greatest height of this memorable 

 cyclone wave recorded was sixteeu and a half feet above high spring-tide 

 level, and about twenty-seven feet above the mean level of the sea. Even 

 as far up as Calcutta it was about the same height as the highest spring- 

 tide, and fourteen and a half feet above mean sea level. The wave was felt 

 as high up as Mehurpore, on the Matabangha. The loss of life directly caused 

 by the storm wave was not less than 50,000, and would probably have been 

 enormously greater had the wave caught the j)eople asleep, as has been the 

 case at Backergunge. 



" In the brief space of one month after the Hooghly disaster of 1864, on 

 November 5, a scarcely less destructive wave dashed over the coast at Mas- 

 ulipitam, at the mouth of the Kistnah, where the curve of the coast is pre- 

 cisely of a nature to intercept and concentrate the power of such a wave. 

 The loss of life in this case was something like 35,000 people. Only three 

 years later, November 1, 1867, the Calcutta district had another similar 

 visitation, happily not nearly so destructive, as only 1,000 lives were lost, 

 though 30,000 native huts were swept away. 



"Of all recorded previous catastrophes of this kind, the most terrible 

 occurred in 1862, and the natives still remember it as the banya, or flood of 

 1229 B. S. This cyclone appears to have had a very wide range, extending 

 far inland, and to the east, and far beyond Calcutta to the west. It swept 

 over all the islands at the mouth of the Hooghly and over the neighboring 

 coasts. Fortunately the wave broke in the early evening, and, as the cy- 

 clone had been raging for some time, the people were in some measure pre- 

 pared. Still, it is stated, 100,000 of the inhabitants twid as many oattJe 

 were destroj^ed, and property to the extent of more than 1,000,000 rupees." 



REMARKABLE AURORAL DISPLAY IN COLORADO. 



The interesting meteorological occurrence of the 23d ult., consisted in 

 the simultaneous appearance of several parhelia or mock suns, connected 

 with one another by a white horizontal circle or halo, at the same height 

 above the horizon as the sun. The sun was surrounded by two concentric 

 circular corontu, and an arc of another circle whose centre was in the zenith 



