1620. Seventh moon, eighth day. A great storm, which tore up trees and destroyed houses. Many people crushed to death. Ninety-six junks wrecked on the coast and over one hundred men drowned. 1621. Fourth moon, eighteenth day. A rumour was spread that pirates had landed on the coast. Many people were so terrified that they fled to a distance of 800 _li_, and trampled each other under foot in their efforts to escape. It was a false rumour. In the autumn there was an earthquake. 1622. Locusts. 1623-5. Three years of excellent harvests. 1626. Fifth moon: storm with hailstones as big as hens' eggs. Intercalary sixth moon: floods and destruction of crops. Seventh moon: great storm that uprooted trees. 1639. Locusts darkened the sky. Famine. 1640. Drought. Famine. 1641. Great famine. More than half the people perished. Men ate human flesh. Six hundred taels of money were given by the officials of Ning-hai to relieve the people of that district. 1642-3. No harvests. Country pillaged by robbers. CH'ING DYNASTY. 1650. Spring and summer: drought. Autumn: floods and crops inundated. 1656. Great harvest. 1659. Comet in the Northern Dipper [the stars α β γ δ in Ursa Major]. 1662. At Weihaiwei the tide threw up a monstrous fish which was five _chang_ high [over fifty-eight English feet], several tens of _chang_ long [at least three hundred and sixty feet], with a black body and white flesh. The people of the place all went down and spent a couple of months or so in cutting up the great beast but did not come to the end of it. Those of the people who liked a bit of fun cut out its bones and piled them into a mound; the large bones were about twelve feet in circumference, the small ones about six feet. The small ones were his tail bones. [Stories of monstrous fishes are not rare along the Shantung coast, and--allowing for exaggerations with reference to dimensions--they are based on a substratum of fact. We have seen (see p. 27) that the bones of a vast fish were presented to the Kuan Ti temple in Weihaiwei city, where they may still be seen; and another set of fishbones adorn the canopy of a theatrical stage in the same city. For other references to great fishes, see pp. 24 and 26.] 1664. Drought. Seventh moon: a comet with a tail twelve feet in length. 1665. Earthquake. Great drought. Land taxes remitted. A comet. 1668. First moon. The sun produced four parhelia. On the twenty-fifth day a white vapour came from the south-west. On the seventeenth day of the sixth moon there was a great earthquake, and there were three noises like thunder. Parts of the city walls of Ch'êng-shan-wei and Wên-têng collapsed, and many houses. A devastating wind for three days spoiled the crops. 1670. Great snowstorm. Snow lay twelve feet deep. Intensely cold weather. Men were frozen to death on the roads and even inside their own houses.