Chap. XV. 



THE EAGRE, OR BORE. 



319 



dashed impetuously onwards tliey were silenced, 

 all being intently occupied in keeping their prows 

 towards the wave which threatened to submerge 

 everything 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 half-way among the craft. On one 

 side they were quietly reposing on the surface of 

 the unruffled 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 dimin- 

 ishing 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 instanta- 

 neous. 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-chow. 

 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 discover- 

 able. 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 



