country are changed from
time to time, the remains of animals may more easily be inhumed and
protected from disintegration. Portions of plains, loaded with alluvial
accumulations by transient floods, may be gradually upraised; and, if
any organic remains have been imbedded in the transported materials,
they may, after such elevation, be placed beyond the reach of the
erosive power of streams. In districts where the drainage is repeatedly
deranged by subterranean movements, every fissure, every hollow caused
by the sinking in of land, becomes a depository of organic and inorganic
substances, hurried along by transient floods.

_Marine alluvium._--In May, 1787, a dreadful inundation of the sea was
caused at Coringa, Ingeram, and other places, on the coast of
Coromandel, in the East Indies, by a hurricane blowing from the N. E.,
which raised the waters so that they rolled inland to the distance of
about twenty miles from the shore, swept away many villages, drowned
more than 10,000 people, and left the country covered with marine mud,
on which the carcasses of about 100,000 head of cattle were strewed. An
old tradition of the natives of a similar flood, said to have happened
about a century before, was, till this event, regarded as fabulous by
the European settlers.[1035] The same coast of Coromandel was, so late
as May, 1832, the scene of another catastrophe of the same kind; and
when the inundation subsided, several vessels were seen grounded in the
fields of the low country about Coringa.

Many of the storms termed hurricanes have evidently been connected with
submarine earthquakes, as is shown by the atmospheric phenomena
attendant on them, and by the sounds heard in the ground and the odors
emitted. Such were the circumstances which accompanied the swell of the
sea in Jamaica, in 1780, when a great wave desolated the western coast,
and bursting upon Savanna la Mar, swept away the whole town in an
instant, so that not a vestige of man, beast, or habitation, was seen
upon the surface.[1036]

_Houses and works of art in alluvial deposits._--A very ancient
subterranean town, apparently of Hindoo origin, was discovered in India
in 1833, in digging the Doab canal. Its site is north of Saharunpore,
near the town of Behat, and seventeen feet below the present surface of
the country. More than 170 coins of silver and copper have already been
found, and many articles in metal and earthenware. The overlying deposit
consisted