The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1901-01-19
The Great Tidal Waves In The
Earths History.
From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

tory. History is deficient in the record OF
such tragedies in human life, but the rec
ords are written in physical geography, and
are found in the conformation OF shore
lines. here and there, around all the CONT
nents. It is impossible to estimate the
number Of lives lost through inundation
since mankind began, for purposes of COM
mercial intercourse, the development OF
seaports. Doubtless the total would run
into the hundreds of thousands, and might
reach into millions. Geology is quite sure
that the rough Norwegian coast, pierced at
intervals of every few miles with the fiords
or estuaries which penetrate in many IN
stances leagues into the land, tell the story
of many cataclysms such as that which re-
Gently occurred along the northern coast OF
the Gulf of Mexico. Science, however,
taking no note of the traditions or folklore
of people, antedates all human life on the
Scandinavian peninsula in setting the time
when this great rising of the sea against
the land took place.
Scientists are agreed on putting the for
nation of the Norwegian shore lines as far
back as the glacial period. But in the
songs of the skalds, as late as the reign of
Harold HaIdrada, there are illusions to the
valor of olden heroes over whom the seas
had swept, but whose spirits rode upon the
winds which blew the Norman galleys to
other shores. In the Norway of the pres
ept day there are traditions, handed down
through countless generations, from the
remotest antiquity, telling how, but not
when, the seas came in. One OF the Oldest
and prettiest traditions in the world is that
which tells of submerged city somewhere
ON the Scandinavian coast, the minarets
and towers of which poets can see reflected
in the waters at sunset, and the bells OF
which musicians, with ears divinely attuned
to concordant sounds, can hear at yespers.
Without either the poet eye or the musi-
clan $ ear it is still possible to conclude
that traditions which have survived SO many
centuries, and which contradict nothing OF
the exact truth of science as to original
causes, may be as well trusted as science
when it begins to speculate, which is all 1t
does when it seeks to prove that the Scan
dinavian fiords were in the country before
the Scandinavian himself.
THE LOST ATLANTIS.
The world, with the lapse of centuries,
has not even been able to outgrow the ira
dition of the lost Atlantis. Perhaps this is
the Oldest of all the traditions of cataclysns
which have blotted out cities and CONT
nents. 1t may be that it is because this
one comes handed down to us from the IL
lustrious hand of Plato that we yield to 1t
veneration which prolongs its life. Ger
family it can never be more than tradition,
without a return to the ages of miracles.
Our lately found experiences in deep sea
soundings has given us no new light on
Atlantis. And yet we cling to the old
story, and are loath to turn from the spec
tacle of continent in the agonies of a
watery burial or to take down from the
walls of our brain cells the pictures OF a
submerged world in which sea moss trails
over and around great temples and monu-
ments. More than half the world believes
that there is lost Atlantis. The Egypt
ians believed so, long before Platos day
1t is in the mouth of an Egyptian priest,
talking to Scion. that Plato puts the de-
scription of the vanished island. That de-
scription makes of Atlantis land larger
than the Texas of today The Greek
philosopher located it off the shores of
North Africa, a little to the southwest OF
Gibraltar. The Platonian description OF
the interior Of the Atlantis of ancient times
is surprisingly beautiful, but not more SC
than the rare imaginative power with which
Plato writes, of the country and its people,
a most fabulous and engaging history.
All this, of course, is the work of pure
fancy, and only important, beyond the fact
that it is the work of Plato, as showing
how deeply the conviction had taken hold
upon the mind of that age that the sea had
taken away land which the ancients knew
as the western shore of the Atlantic Ocean,
and had left nothing but boundless waste
of waters west of Europe. Spectators
have located the lost Atlantis near the
Canary Islands, and these islands are, il
fact, supposed to be the remnants of the
lost continent. There is positively nothing
tangible upon which to hang the story Of
the lost Atlantis. But, like most tradi
tions which persist in living on, after the
world has grown too practical to have any
use for them, it has, doubtless, founda-
ton in some important fact of olden time,
the tragedy Of which was in that sacrifice
of the earth to the waters Of the deep
which had become familiar even to the an
clients. Byron's apostrophe to the ocear
is so singularly powerful and beautiful be
cause it expresses that awe and fear of mar
for the sea which is an instinct with us, ant
which, if it had not been instinct with u
at the first, would have become SO through
the many and heavy Affections visited upor
the race by Neptune, god of the sea.
ON ENGLISH COASTS.
That the coasts of England have beer
visited by many and disastrous tidal waves
there is abundant evidence. In fact, tn,
ocean bar, which surrounds nearly tn
whole of England and Scotland, is evidenc,
enough that the entire shore line as it exist
today is itself the result of great sub
mersion, OF series of submersions, which
ages ago overfowed the old coast, rushe,
in shore, made new land lines, and, hollow
ing out between the new line and the old
a new ocean bed, leaving what had beer
called the coast line to be forever afte
called sthe bar. The bar is to be fount
in nearly every port of England, eloquen
testimony to the tidal waves of the past
But there is comparatively little of othe
testimony save such as has been preserves
in the records of seaport towns.
One of the greatest cataclysms ever oc
curing on the British coast was that on tn
coast of Lincolnshire in 1871. This ha
been commemorated in verse by Jean Inge
low in the poem entitled High Tide Oh
the Coast of Lincolnshire :" The Lincoln
shire coast is almost uniformly low an,
marshy-so low, in fact, at some place
that the shore requires the defence Of al
embankment to save it from the encroach
ments of the sea- A sea wall had beel
built when the great tidal wave of l57
came, but it appears to have been absolutel.
useless as n defence of the country and tn