HAMILTON ON TIDES OF THE BAY OF FUNDY. 47 



But to see these tides in their true grandeur and beauty, the 

 spectator must be in their midst. About the full or change of 

 the moon he must get on board a vessel, drop down with the 

 ebb, and get aground upon some of the broad flats about the 

 middle, or lower part of Cobequid baj, and wait there for the 

 coming flood. I have endeavoured to describe the scene as it 

 would appear to him in daylight. Perhaps the occasion is even 

 more impressive in a still summer's night. In the dead silence 

 of the night you hear a low, prolonged whisper. What can it 

 be? You listen intently. It grows louder. It is the " solemn 

 roar" of the tide, miles and miles away. Every minute you are 

 conscious of the tumult away out in the darkness yonder, grow- 

 ing louder and approaching nearer. It is difficult to prevent the 

 imagination getting excited and the mind being deeply impressed 

 with awe. On it comes like a Fate, and still you know of its 

 approach only through the organ of hearing. At length, in the 

 dim light you see a white streak, reaching from shore to shore ^ 

 or from the gloom on the one hand to the gloom on the other. It 

 is " the bore." It rushes and roars on, striking the as yet flrmlv 

 embedded vessel in which 3^ou are luckily safe from its embracesy 

 with a thud which makes its timbers quiver ; and is past. Then, 

 after a breathing space, the tide rips begin to make. Here^ 

 perhaps, near at hand, you can see their foam leaping up under 

 the starlight, but you can certainly hear their fitful roaring out 

 in the darkness in every direction. Where uot many minutes 

 since the silence was, it may be, so intense that you could hear 

 yourself breathing, you now find yourself in the midst of a 

 chaos of angry waters. 



The momentum of this "bore" is no doubt enormous, but 

 many stories that are told of its achievements, and indeed of the 

 Bay of Fundy tides generally, are quite apocryphal. So many 

 strange reports have gone abroad about this Bay, that to many 

 strangers it is a name of terror. Yet to those acquainted with 

 the place its navigation is comparatively safe and easy, and these 

 very tides are what conduce so much to the facilities of its 

 navigation. Many of nature's moods and changes there are 

 known, can be calculated upon before hand, and taken advantage 

 of. I have myself gone all around and over the basin of Minas^ 



