eath the waves. Some of the smaller islands, indeed,
were for a time completely submerged. Before long, however, the sea
fell again, and as it did so the observers "found it impossible to
resist the impression that the islands were rising bodily out of the
water." For no less than three days this strange oscillation of the
sea continued to be experienced, the most remarkable ebbs and floods
being noticed at Honolulu, on the island of Woahoo.

But the sea-wave swept onward far beyond these islands.

At Yokohama, in Japan, more than ten thousand five hundred miles from
Arica, an enormous wave poured in on August 14th, but at what hour we
have no satisfactory record. So far as distance is concerned, this
wave affords most surprising evidence of the stupendous nature of the
disturbance to which the waters of the Pacific Ocean had been
subjected. The whole circumference of the earth is but twenty-five
thousand miles, so that this wave had travelled over a distance
considerably greater than two-fifths of the earth's circumference. A
distance which the swiftest of our ships could not traverse in less
than six or seven weeks had been swept over by this enormous
undulation in the course of a few hours.

More complete details reach us from the Southern Pacific.

Shortly before midnight the Marquesas Isles and the low-lying Tuamotu
group were visited by the great wave, and some of these islands were
completely submerged by it. The lonely Opara Isle, where the steamers
which run between Panama and New Zealand have their coaling station,
was visited at about half-past eleven in the evening by a billow which
swept away a portion of the coal depot. Afterward great waves came
rolling in at intervals of about twenty minutes, and several days
elapsed before the sea resumed its ordinary ebb and flow.

It was not until about half-past two on the morning of August 14th
that the Samoa Isles (sometimes called the Navigator Islands) were
visited by the great wave. The watchmen startled the inhabitants from
their sleep by the cry that the sea was about to overwhelm them; and
already, when the terrified people rushed from their houses, the sea
was found to have risen far above the highest water-mark. But it
presently began to sink again, and then commenced a series of
oscillations, which lasted for several days, and were of a very
remarkable nature. Once in every quarter of an hour the sea rose and
fell, but it was noticed that it rose twic