Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/270

258 earthquake have been mistranslated. The earthquake is thus put out of court, and we are left with what help we can get from the hurricane, a kind of disturbance which often vies with the earthquake in the destructive nature of the sea waves to which it gives rise.

The Andaman Islands of the East Indies are a center which give birth to some of the most terrific hurricanes in the world. Traveling more or less westward and northward, these whirlwinds sweep over the waters of the Bay of Bengal and raise the sea into waves mountains high, which every now and again rush over the low-lying lands of the Ganges delta, overwhelming the unfortunate inhabitants by myriads. Thus on the night of October 14, 1737, one of these waves, estimated at forty feet in height, suddenly overtook the dwellers by the Ganges and destroyed them to the number of one hundred thousand, or, as some say, three hundred thousand souls. These storms do not, as a rule, travel toward the Persian Gulf, and the North Arabian Sea is singularly free from them; but Suess, tracing the course of the storm of October 24, 1843, suggests that for once, in the case of the deluge, an East Indian storm may have lost its way and blundered, as it were, into the Persian Gulf. The track of this storm of 1842 was as follows: At five o'clock on October 24th it reached Pondicherry; it then slightly altered its direction and veered more to the southwest, and on the 25th at midday it crossed the western Ghats, and then divided into two parts; the south center need not concern us. The northern center traveled northeastward toward the Persian Gulf, and was felt from the Gulf of Aden to Cape Guardafui, wrecking in this tract a number of vessels.

The greatest estimated height of storm waves is from forty to forty-five feet, and, as Suess points out, it must have needed a much greater wave than this to drown out all Mesopotamia up to the Nizir hills. How much greater, is a question we are fortunately able to answer positively, thanks to the accurate measurements made by the engineer Czernik during a survey for a projected railway. The Tigris rises very slowly from its mouth inland, but at Bagdad it is already one hundred and fifty-four feet above the sea level, and at Mansurijah, the lowest point where its tributary Diala Tschai emerges from the Hamrin Mountains, the height is given as two hundred and eighty-five feet; but the land of Nizir lies even still more to the north than this, and the Lower Zab, which cuts through it, can not have a less elevation than six hundred or seven hundred feet. No storm wave of which we have any record, no recorded earthquake wave, nor any combination of the two, approaches even remotely the height that would be required to carry the sea even to Bagdad; while as for the Nizir Mountains, the Valiant Pherson, who "nearly spoilt the