The Arizona sentinel. [volume] (Arizona City [Yuma], Yuma County, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1872-1911, 1889-07-20
FLOODS OF THE PAST.
Awful Catastrophes Which Have
Decimated Mankind.
Vast foundations in Which People Have
Perished by Tens of Thousands
The Johnstown Disaster Pc
cuIiarly Horrible.

culldrly hOrriDles
Numerous are the traditions coming
to us from prehistoric periods con-
cerning great floods. Everywhere in
the annals of the various nations we
meet with similar accounts as that
contained in the Bible. 1t is therefore
most likely that at certain time,
several thousand years before the be-
ginning of our era, extraordinary
floods occurred in various portions of
the earth simultaneously.
Strabo and Diodorus speak of
gigantic spring floods having broken
upon Egypt at an early date, and
Plinius and Tacitus report such of the
north of Europe about the time of
Christ, which in terrible magnitude
and destructiveness had not their
equal. The oldest reports concern the
floods in the region of the Red sea
along the peninsula of Suez. Strabo
chronicles the destruction of many
armies of the ancients in this danger
Gus locality, and Diodorus relates the
drowning of the hosts Of Artaxerxes
at the same place. Here, too, the
passage of the Jews through the Red
sea and the destruction of the Phara-
nnic hosts find their explanation.
Reliable accounts of disasters by
water begin century or two before
our era. They treat until compare
lively recently almost exclusively of
floods in Europe. owing to the imper-
feet connection between the nations up
to our own times.
About the year 13O B. c. the power
ful nation of the Celts, after having
suffered for long time great losses in
possessions and lives, were forced by
continued destructive floods to forsake
their abodes along the shores of the
western ocean and emigrate to Italy,
the upper Rhine, and the Danube.
Likewise about the year 113 B. C. sew
eral Teutonic tribes were driven fur
ther south from the northern settle
ments by like causes. Among the
older towns of the world the Eternal
City, Rome, suffered frequently and ex-
tremely from inundations of the Tiber,
which to fill the cup of the sufferings
of the people were generally accom-
panied by dearth and pestilence. No
table among these floods at Rome are
those of the years A, 81, %, %, and
Is B. c., and 5, Is, Sc, 81, SO, and 20
A. ID. In the year the city was nav
igated by boats for over a week, and
a large number of buildings were de-
stroyed by the flood as were also hun
dreds of lives.
In the year 60 A. D. great floods in
undated many miles of territory along
the French and English coasts His
torically remarkable is the disastrous
inundation caused by the Rhine in con-
sequence of the destruction of the dam |
of Drusus at Nijmwegen, in the Neither
lands. by the rebelious Batavians un-
der Civilis to stop the advance of the |
much-feared Romans. This famous
dam had been commenced by Drusus
Germanicus in the year 5 B. c., but |
had only been finished five years at the |
time of this catastrophe
A. ID. 10 the fertile table-land of |
March in Arabia was turned into a
permanent desert by the breaking of a |
dam, and the inhabitants were forced |
to emigrate. In ia large tracts of |
Italy and adjoining countries were
under water. The year 366 saw the
Of
In 444 the city of Is, on the bank of the
bay of Douarney, France, formerly |
quite famous, was swallowed by the |
floods. In 587 and $50 Germany suf-
fered immense losses by water. The |
Rhine, having always been a source of
great and frequent disasters. again did |
enormous damage in 694 Ninety |
years after even Charlemagne was stop
ped on one of his victorious marches
by the waters filling the lowlands
everywhere. In 793 the sea flooded
the whole of East Frisia. The year
800 witnessed the swallowing up of a |
very large part of Heligoland by the
Unsuitable element. In S15 the Kline, |
~ OhOOLOA ONCl lOWs OlU llOLO
than ever before, and in S86 its waters
devastated all the adjoining regions
along its entire course. During the
ninth century the English coasts suf-
fered terribly from foods, and in 9S6 |
all the rivers of Central Europe over
flowed their banks and caused great
loss.
The eleventh century had no less
than forty-seven great foods At one |
time fully 125 geographical square
miles of the Netherlands were laid |
waste. At this time there also disap-
peared a number Of the larger Islands
near the southwest coast of the Baltic,
making the entire number swallowed |
up by floods on the same coast from !