Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 72.djvu/241

Rh to run rapidly eastward until the arrival of the midnight bore, the water being at its lowest for the two hours preceding that event.

One of the most surprising features of the whole phenomenon is the sudden change in the aspect of the river. Just now we saw the muddy bottom bare for some distance from the shore to where the mid-river current was swiftly out-flowing, and a few minutes later the whole basin is filled with muddy boiling water, which seems to threaten to wash away even the substantial sea-wall on which we stood.

After the passage of the bore and during the in-rush of the after-body a number of men, some of them probably the duly appointed patrols, others not, appeared on the sea-wall with very long bamboos, some furnished with hooks at the end or spikes, some with rake-heads and others with loops of rope, all designed to enable their manipulators to gather in the driftwood, consisting chiefly of the loosened or broken piles of the outer protecting ledges of the dyke. One fellow was seen marching off in triumph with two whole piles and a half.

During and just after the passage of the bore a busy scene was also enacted on board the junks resting so securely on the platform alongside