In this short voyage we meet with the _Macareo_, or _bore_ of the sea, which is one of the most marvellous of the works of nature, and one of these hardest to be believed if not seen. This consists in the prodigious increase and diminution of the water of the sea all at one push or instant, and the horrible noise and earthquake which this Macareo produces when it makes its approach. We went from Martaban in barks like our pilot boats, taking the flood tide along with us, and they went with the most astonishing rapidity, as swift as an arrow from a bow as long as the flow lasts. Whenever the water is at the highest, these barks are carried out of the mid-channel to one or other bank of the river, where they anchor out of the way of the stream of the ebb, remaining dry at low water; and when the ebb is completely run out, then are the barks left on high above the water in the mid-channel, as far as the top of a house is from the foundation. The reason of thus anchoring so far from the mid-stream or channel is, that when the first of the flood, Macareo or bore, comes in, any ship or vessel riding in the fair way or mid-channel would surely be overthrown and destroyed. And even with this precaution of anchoring so far above the channel, so that the bore has lost much of its force before rising so high as to float them, yet they always moor with their bows to the stream, which still is often so powerful as to put them in great fear; for if the anchor did not hold good, they would be in the utmost danger of being lost. When the water begins to increase, it comes on with a prodigious noise as if it were an earthquake. In its first great approach it makes three great waves. The first wave washes over the bark from stem to stem: The second is not so strong; at the third they raise the anchor and resume their voyage up the river, rowing with such swiftness that they seem to fly for the space of six hours, while the flood lasts. In these tides there must be no time lost, for if you arrive not at the proper station before the flood is spent, you must turn back from whence you came, as there is no staying at any place except at these stations, some of which are more dangerous than others, according as they happen to be higher or lower. On returning from Pegu to Martaban they never continue more than half ebb, that they may have it in their power to lay their barks high upon the bank, for the reason already given. I could never learn any reason for the prodigious noise made by the water in this extraordinary rise of the tide. There is another Macareo in the gulf of Cambay, as formerly mentioned, but it is nothing in comparison of this in the river of Pegu.