up into the woods,
it levelled the smaller trees and bushes in its headlong course; and, on
retiring, left a scene of wreck and desolation that is quite
indescribable.

"Storm-waves," as those unusually gigantic billows are called, are said
to be the result of the removal of atmospheric pressure in certain parts
of the ocean over which a storm is raging. This removal of pressure
allows the portion thus relieved to be forced up high above the ordinary
sea-level by those other parts that are not so relieved.

The devastating effects of these storm-waves is still further
illustrated by the total destruction of Coringa, on the Coromandel
Coast, in 1789. During a hurricane, in December of that year, at the
moment when a high tide was at its highest point, and the north-west
wind was blowing with fury, accumulating the waters at the head of the
bay, three monstrous waves came rolling in from the sea upon the devoted
town, following each other at a short distance. The horror-stricken
inhabitants had scarcely time to note the fact of their approach, when
the first wave, sweeping everything in its passage, carried several feet
of water into the town. The second swept still further in its
destructive course, inundating all the low country. The third, rushing
onward in irresistible fury, overwhelmed everything, submerging the town
and twenty thousand of its inhabitants. Vessels at anchor at the mouth
of the river were carried inland; and the sea on retiring left heaps of
sand and mud, which rendered it a hopeless task either to search for the
dead or for buried property.

We have spoken of waves "travelling" at such and such a rate, but they
do not in reality travel at all. It is the undulation, or, so to speak,
the _motion_ of a wave, that travels; in the same manner that a wave
passes from one end of a carpet to the other end when it is shaken. The
water remains stationary, excepting the spray and foam on the surface,
and is only possessed of a rising and sinking motion. This undulatory
motion, or impulse, is transmitted from each particle of water to its
neighbouring particle, until it reaches the last drop of water on the
shore. But when a wave reaches shallow water it has no longer room to
sink to its proper depth; hence the water composing it acquires _actual_
motion, and rushes to the land with more or less of the tremendous
violence that has been already described.

Waves are caused by wind, which first ruff