The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1901-01-19
food found the people unprepared and
L a. .-.-... 4. ell rsa4;.,na te. ito f,r,r

thousands Tell victims 10 It's Iury.
There is nothing in literature, and moth
ing of course in the musty archives Of the
Lincolnshire towns, conveying the vivid
an impression of the horror of the day and
night as the Ingelow verses. They are
written in the old, and what now seems to
us the quaint, English of that day The
story is told by an old woman whose daugh-
ter, out with her two children looking and
calling for the COWS at eventide, is over
whelmed and drowned. Perhaps it is
safe conclusion that the tragedy poetry has
set for us on the Lincolnshire stage had
found expression in real life alohg the
Texas coasts. The old Lincolnshire
woman's plaintive narrative has never
seemed unreal, because it is filed with the
spirit of homely life, but just now it
seems like voice from out the past tell
ing us of the tragedy now at our doors.
The poem is very long one, but few
selections from its narration of the wide
spread desolation of the country will pic
ture much Of the gulf coast of Texas at this
time. The cry of the housewife for the
cattle dies out in the evening stiffness and
then the old dame sees the flood:
And 10, along the rivers bed
A mighty eygre reared his crest,
And uppe the river raging sped.
1t swept with thunderous noises loud
Shaped like curling, snow white cloud,
a. l,I.a a damon in a chroud
And rearing Lindus, backward pressed,
Shook all her trembling banks amain,
Then madly at the eygre's breast.
Flung uppe her weltering walls again,
Then bankes came down with ruin and
rout,
Then beaten foam few round about,
Then all the mighty foods were out.
So fare, SO fast the eygre drave
The heart had hardly time to beat
Before a shallow seething wave
.sobbed in the grasses at our feet;
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee
1And all the world was in the sea.
.
That flow strewed wrecks about the grass,
That ebbe swept out the focks to sea-
A fatal ebbe and flow, alas,
To many more than mine and me.
TIDES AND EARTHQUAKES.
Many of the most fatal tidal waves of
which we have any history have been ac-
companied by earthquakes, adding to their
horrors, but making it impossible to say
whether the earthquake or the inundation
has been the more fatal and destructive.
The great earthquake at Lisbon in 1855
was accompanied by tidal wave which,
rolling up the Tagus river from the ocean,
submerged all the lower parts of the city
and destroyed thousands of lives which
might possibly have escaped the earth
quake shocks. When the earthquake
shocks. When the earthquake came to
Caracas in 1912 there was tidal wave
at La Guyra, the entrepot of Caracas,
which destroyed many lives. Five years
ago series of tidal waves, accompanied by
or alternating with earthquake shocks, Wis
tied 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
from the ocean, particularly when restrict
ed to narrow valleys, as to be capable Of
destroying much life The number OF
human lives lost at that time has never
been stated in any English newspaper, but
| that it ran far into the thousands there is
no room to doubt. Ten thousand is more
apt to be an under than an over estimate,
such were the ravages of the combined
seismic and cataclysmic terrors visited upon
that part of the world during nearly a week
of days and nights of horror, which, for
tunately, come but seldom in the expert
ence of the race
The affliction of Texas, while much less
than this, is still monumental, and will al
ways rank among the great catastrophe
of history. Perhaps there have beer
events more destructive of life in times Oh
places where it was impossible that any
record of them should be left. But few
such are known to history. Nor is it likel,
that the future will often bring to any par
of the world severer afiiction than thai
which has fallen upon our Gulf coast.