The Charleston Daily News

A Hoax of the First Water,

The tidal-wave prediction, which struck terror into the souls of the old ladies of both sexes, especially along the Gulf coast, is a rehash of a sensational dish prepared for another locality and another season. An old naval officer in the English service was the original seer, and announced that the mighty wave would submerge the coast of Albion on October 5, 1869. A paper on the subject appeared in the London Daily News of September 27, 1869, which speaks of the anxious questionings which the subject has awakened, and shows that there was no cause for the alarm felt. The paper is from the pen of Professor R. A. Proctor, who said that on the 5th of October of the year in question the sun and moon would be in such position as to be favorable for the production of high spring tides. "But, after all," he adds, "high tides depend very importantly on other considerations than astronomical ones." He then speaks of a predicted high tide some two years before, which turned out to be a very insignificant affair. As for predicted weather changes, any length of time in advance, he regards them as "mere moonshine and altogether unreliable." This article from the London News is reproduced entire in Proctor's work, entitled "Light Science for Leisure Hours," from which work, when it appeared in the North, the new tidal-wave story was undoubtedly manufactured. The scene was changed to this side of the Atlantic, and Agassiz, a "heavy swell" in science, became its putative parent. There is, however, positive proof that Agassiz made no such prediction, and any one who now feels alarm, in consequence of the mythical prophecy, will, on or about the 7th proximo, confess that his courage was cooled by a hoax of the first water.