Show THE CALCUTTA CYCLONE I 1 the spectator professing to write flom from from an official report on the tho cyclone gives the following narrative of the event prefixing the nei rei remark nark that it is on the level of the thet great groat historic calamities of events like the destree destruction tio n of pompeii the earthquake in lisbon or the catastrophe which in our own time half desolated catania I 1 the storm of bf the ath of october begotten apparently about the andaman islands rushed in a northwesterly direction along the coast at a pace which rose to twenty seven miles an hour struck places as widely distant as Hidge and calcutta with undiminished fury and from the seas to bubna and thence eastward to the garrow hills say from southampton to chester and thenea thence in a bold curve to lincolnia Lincol nit nib it left a broad track of desolation behind it or rather with it traveled a storm wave from the bay over feet which I 1 over the strongest embankments flooding the crops with salt water and carrying in away entire villages edeeb indeed if the storm had been sentient it could not have chosen a bett better tr spot for its destructive play R right I 1 through a rich s spongy ongy tract full of people and salt and anT cattle eattle and brackish creeks covered with low close jungle and full of shallow mud lined marshes the hooghly cleaves for it a road often miles wide past the indian metropolis past the railway center conter right away through the riceland rice land to the ganges and the broad indigo producing counties of the east its first tremendous blo bio blow biow was levelled bevelled level led at midna pore the great maritime country west of or the hooghly Hoogh ly bearing much the relation to calcutta that kent bears to london and though the great dyke of Hidge stood the shock till the waves overflowed villages by the score the police report the deaths at and n d in the track from kedgeree to huette a distant of many miles three fourths of the whole population with their cattle and other property property may be said to have perished to realize such a catastrophe we must imagine an english country crossed by a body of vater water such as that which first poured on red of the Helm Helin firth reservoir int ent but salt s so that when the gale is over the soil is still almost unfitted for cultivation and there is no fresh water to drink in gumlock Tu the salt mart of this district out of 1400 houses only 27 remain standing the wind hitting harder than the wave this was all on the west side of the river below calcutta on the opposite bank and on the east cast the destruction was still greater in island a desolate thinly populated district of 28 square miles in abated chiefly by foresters and tigers with a few peasants the storm wave literally clove the country in two the wave was 15 feet above the soil and so terrible were its weight and force driven on as it was by the hurricane that it cut a channel right across the island severing it in two halves a sentence which reads rather like the description of an event in geological history than of any occurrence conceivable in our own imagine the isle of wight cloven in twain by a wave which did its work at twenty seven miles an hour houri fifteen feet of water some ninety yards broad and three hundred miles deep hurled on you tou at the speed of a passenger express rushing to form this thia channel the water swept away awny the embankments bank ments by which all this low coast is protected utterly destroyed destroyed destro Ted all houses huts storehouses an and other buildings in number drowned cattle cattie and left alive out of a population of souls only 1488 11 those who escaped did so either by climbing the large trees or by floating on the roofs of their own houses which were carried inland on the mainland many miles the wave having force left to destroy one town at a distance of eight miles from the channel wherever throughout the twenty four font bergun nabs of the country on the calcutta side the wave flowed it heft left poverty so deep that the missionaries found the people i maddened with hunger fatigue and the impossibility of getting waterS tr angil n Rt at t frasl frass bassand ras sand land and ana the s alva aiva alfa al fa reu ut sega sefa f IN Mra urz I 1 Fraser F the larg largest 0 1 T ropon valt vait alt ait manufacturer n til ill elbro brolin no odeh op eh efa b bythe the popple I 1 who 1 1 says the lie official re reporter y has been driven almost mad by n hardships and who wanted the sa salt sait to 0 mix with the kind of grass which they ate cag eagerly eily dily at diamond harbor says the aper saper in of police a european within th a circle of six miles it is lm imp ot obie oble bl e to go 50 yards on the road without aitho u t hee fee I 1 I 1 ing a dead human body I 1 the 1 a ke having been oveita ovelta overtaken ken on anthe the r rd d while in in flight along the road in ag eutta 90 miles from the sea sex and ana nea twenty miles north of this point 40 huts were swept away the habitation 11 that idof is of human beings te teh tea vessels sank at once and d driven riven I 1 0 off shore of which 97 were severely injured and wid 36 totally lost the loss of or life however was not great the solid english buildings protecting the town and the wave striking most liea heavily vily on the opposite side at bowrah 1979 persons tire reported drowned cattle killed and property estimated at swept away from thence to Seram pore a distance of 26 miles along the line of railway and probably M more bre ore thickly populated than any country district on earth the homes of the lle ile lie people were either cleared so In injured jurod that it was necessary to replace them and the very jungle so battered that months afterward the track of tho the storm was clear as the track of through barley |