Arizona republican., 1900-09-26

That the coast of England has been
 visited by many anI disastrous tidal
 waves, there is abundant evidence In
 fact, the ocean bay. which surrounds
 nearly the whole of England and Scot
 land, is evidence enough that the entire
 shore line as it exists today. is itself
 the result of great submersfon. or se-
 ries of submersions. which ages ago
 oVeriloW5d the old coast, rushed in
 shore. made new land lines, and. nol-
 lowing out between the new inc and
 the old, new ocean bed. leaving what
 had been called the coast line to be for
 ever after called the bar" Tn bar i. 10 De found in nearly every port of
 EnSland, eloquent testimony to the tf-
 Gal waves of the past. But there is lit
 tie or other testimony save such as has
 been preserved in the records of sea port towns
 One of the greatest cataciysrns ever occurring off the British coast was that or Lincolnshire in 1571. This has been . commem0rated in verse by Jean Inge- low in the poem entitled High Tide orr the coast of Lincolnshire" The
 Lincolnshire coast is almost uniformly low and marshy-so low. in fact at | defense Of an embankment to save it from the encroachments of the sea. A
 sea wall had been built when the great tidal wave of 151 came but it appears
 to have been absolutely useless a. a de- fense of the country and the people at that time. At the present day the fens of Lincolnshire are defended from the north sea by some of the finest engfn- eering works in the world. and yet it is much to be doubted whethe- they
 would prove effective against such in l vaslons as that which nas just over Whelmed Galveston.
 ! There are ancient town records in nearly all the seacoast towns of fin ] coInsnire which tell of the inundation ! Of l5I. There was then. as there is ] now chime of bells in the tower of 1 St. Botolph, Boston, and when the tide ] was seen to be sweeping away the bar riers the mayor of Boston himself
 mounted the belfry stairs and had
 played the old love song called The Brides Of Enderby'' as an alarm to the countryside. But the tide came 50 uil- 1 heralded, there having been no premo- | ntt0n of | in storm or tempest. that ! the meaning of the chimes was not uu- i GerstOod. Savants have never had an 1 explanation of the Lincolnshire tide,
 coming as it did so unheralded by any thing threatening cataclysm. The Hood found the people unprepared and ] thousands fell victime to it's fury. ! Many of the most fatal tidal waves 1 of which we have any history have ] been accompanied by earthquakes ad- | ding to their horrors but making il 1 impossible to say whether the earth | quake or the inundation had been the
 more fatal and destructive. The grent
 earthquake at Lisbon in l755 was ac- i companied by tidal wave which rolled | up the TagUs river from the ocean. ] submerged all the lower parts of the | city and destroyed thousands of lives i which might possibly have escaped the ! earthquake shocks. When the earth I quake came to Caracas Ln. 1872 there i Was tidal wave at La C;uayra. the en- | trepct of Caracas. which destroyed 1 many lives. Five years ago a series of 1 tidal waves, accompanied by or alter | hating with earthquake shocks. visited l some of the most populous islands of Japan. The tidal waves reached from fifteen to twenty miles inland. being of such height, force and volume ten miles 1 from the ocean, particularly when re- stricted to narrow valleys, as to be ca pable of destroying much iiie. The number of human lives lost at that
 time has never been stated in any t-nglisl newspaper. but that it ran far into the thousands there is no room
 to doubt. Ten thousand is more apt ta
 be an under than an overestlmate. such
 were the ravages of the combined se- ismic and cataciysmic terrors visited 1 upon that part of the world during 1 nearly a week of days and nights of horror. which, fortunately. come but seldom in the experience or the race.
 The afiliction of Texas. while much
 less than this. is still monumental. and
 will always rank among the great ca
 tasrophes of history. Perhaps there have been events more destructive of
 life, in times or places where it was
 impossible that any record of them
 should be left. But few such are known
 to Ei tory Nor is il likely that the fU-
 ture will often bring to any part of the
 world seVerer ahiictiOn than that
 which has fallen upon our gulf coast