THE AMERICAN VOLCANO AND THE ENGLISH TIDAL WAVE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4125, 10 June 1874, Page 3

THE AMERICAN VOLCANO AND THE ENGLISH TIDAL WAVE.

[From the Nao York Herald, March 24.] The concurrence of the volcanic disturbance in North Carolina and the great tidal inundation of the east coast of England has raised the question whether the two phenomena have any connection. Sir Charles Lycll, the great geologist, has asserted that the American coast in Georgia and the Carolinas is subject to subsidence; and this fact, taken in connection with the rumblings of Bald Mountain, suggests an agitation extending far into the waters of the Atlantic. The undulation of the ocean from the great Lisbon earthquake produced a marine wave which crossed the whole Atlantic, 3728 miles, in a straight line, and broke upon the West Indian shores of Barbados and Martinique; and in 1801 the Japanese earthquake sent its sea wave across the North Pacific and piled up its waters on the Californian coast. It does not appear alarming that Bald Mountain should be in tremor, and yet we can infer nothing from the apparent tardiness of the mountain to relievo itself from internal pressure. The subterranean sounds which preceded the fiery uprising of the Mexican volcano of Jorullo, which rose in a single night 1(183 feet, had lasted from Juno till September. The first alarm subsided, and tranquility was restored a few days before the most tremendous eruption of modern history took place witli terrific destruction. It is, however, more probable that the great flood tide on the English coast was duo to meteorological causes. At this season the high winter atmospheric pressure amassed over Northern and Central Europe and Asia is breaking up, and it rolls off to the westward in the form of long continued and high easterly gales on the English sea front. In 1818 (March 4) just such a tidal inundation occurred in the Thames and at Hull, Yarmouth, and other points on the Eastern coast, and extended to Plymouth, where it washed off many enormous stones of the breakwater. So powerful arc tho agencies of tho sea here that Aldborough, as it formerly existed, lies twenty-four feet under water, almost every remnant having been engulfed and the inhabitants long since forced to retreat inland and form a now site for their town. There is an undoubted physical connection between the- qnakiugs and commotions of tho earth’s crust and tho commotions of the atmosphere over wide areas of both sea and

land, but the causal connection is obscure and mysterious. In the present instance it is altogether improbable that the tide in the Thames can be due to anything else than the stormy weather and easterly winds peculiar to the spring equinox. As already intimated, we may not have had the last of the volcanic upheaval in North Carolina, and it may take many months for the mountain to finish its labour.