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254 wonder, for their fate, in reality, bad been an excessively bard and cruel one.

This dreadful occurrence took place ages before, but the details were treasured up in their memories, and handed down from generation to generation with singular accuracy; for wherever the crew of the Valina landed, the tale in the main was the same, though in different islands there were many additions and omissions of minor particulars.

For some time preceding the dreadful catastrophe, they experienced frequent earthquakes and unusual meteorological disturbances; gales of a kind unrecorded in previous annals swept over land and sea, committing incalculable havoc, and causing the loss of numberless lives. The tides were of phenomenal height, and ceased to ebb and flow with their former regularity. They submerged whole low-lying tracts, while their heated waters scalded human beings and animals to death, and also withered up all the vegetable life that came within their reach. But the worst was yet to come. The surface of the sun appeared to have undergone a change, and his rays became more feeble, so that the moon and many of the stars began to shine by day. The former appeared to have come closer to the earth, and was sensibly of