THE BALTIC INUNDATIONS.

North Otago Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 813, 4 March 1873, Page 4

THE BALTIC INUNDATIONS.

' The Danish correspondent of the London "Mail,", writing under date November 29th, says: — "The past week has been taken up almost entirely by the tempest and flood of the 13th November, by listening to the continual reports of the immense lpsses of life and property inflicted, and by, the endeavors to afford some assistance to the unhappy sufferers, The more we hear from the districts devastated by the furious waves, and the more detailed the acpounts are becoming, the more extensive dimensions the calamity assumes, and the more, vivid becomes the pity felt for its, victims. As j'ct no valuation of the damage is possMc, not oven an approximate idea < of its amount can be formed, but that it will have to be counted by millions is only too certain. In one of the Hundreds of Lolland, comprising the southern and southwestern, shores,, the Jops.es ,are estimated at inore thim a million of dollars (nine to the pound), and though tliis distiict inust be coiibidered as one of the worst faring, there are many others which, have suffered scarcely, less. The rjsjng sea has penetrated for many miles inland, and ,the waves meeting from different sides, parts of the country were .temporarily changed into islands, the water carrying with it the fertile soil, and covering the fields with a layer of sand and gravel; all along the coast of Sealand, Funen, Lplland-Falster, and the smaller islands the flood has peeled fifom the land, a belt ,of (highly-, cultivated earth, cutting hero and there deep slices out of it. Some parishei have suffered to the extent of half or two-thirds of, the, whole tilled area, a few have all but disappeared. Jn Qloalunde, , a sinnjl village .of Lolland, only ten farms out of more than forty are left standing ; the greater part of the parish was submerged under nine, or, ten feet of water, and when it receded everything was ruined, washed away,, turned topsy-turvy. In this parish alone twenty-six human lives perished, besides several brought {o the brink of the grave by the sufferings and wants of those horrible days. Part of this parish fornied a low peninsula, called the Hummingen, shooting oat between tho sea and the inner fjord ; this peninsula >is now hidden under the 1 level of tho sea, and will scarcely ever again emerge; all its inhabitants are drowned ; families of husband, wife, and "six or fee ven children must have struggled alone and unaided against a dreadful death, and have disappeared without leaving any traces behind them— houses and , fields, cattle and furniture , disappearing with them in one common destruction. In another parish, Gjedesby on Falster, twenty-four fauns und cottages have been entirely washed away,, sjxty-five are uninhabitable, only nine, among them the

school, have escaped destruction ; twenty persons are drowned, but only twelve corpses have been found { < three families have become extinct, and ninety-four households are without home or hearth. Some qf, the small islets scattered about in the Belts have been entirely, submerged, and the inhabitants drowned, their boats , having been, carried away by> the storm. The local papers abound in heartrending descriptions of the pitiful' scenes witnessed all around, and of miraculous escapes from all but certain death. In Hoby a inanan,d his wife ran before the water to the roof of their house, but the -flood rose and reached them there 5 they were seen hand in hand calmly expecting death's coming, when the waves rushing in with renewed force washed the feeble construction away, carrying the woman clinging to some rafters of the roof out into the sea, whore she was toon past all saving, but. leaving the man to be shortly rescued by a boat. An old woman living by herself in a small cottage also sought refuge upon the roof; when the house , crashed down she happened to fall upon her loom, which floated away with her and her cut, bringing, them to the top of an old willow, from which, after a night of trembling and /anguish, the two miserable creatures were saved next mornt ing. Prom Saxfjcd, another low strip of country inundated by nine or ten fept of water, eleven human beings were hope-* lessly drifting upon a roof, every moment threatening to leave its. bewildered paascn* gers to certain death. They Were ob* served for h 611 re, and numerous efforts made to reach them ; but for a long time in vain, and it was only a happy concurrence of circumstance! that permitted at length their rescue by some boats, one of their number haying in the meantime succumbed to fatigue and, anxiety, the rest embracing their gallant rescuers and weep* ing fqr joy. In one house an old man and his wife and an only son had lingered too long, and the mountain floods soon made escape impossible for the old couple. Then the son, a powerful young map, yentured out with a line around his body, and strove to gain the higher ground at a little distance, half swimming and half walking. He was near his goal, when something was seen driving down egainst him, first supposed to be a cornstack, but soon disco-; vercd to be, in fact, a loose bridge, covered i with haulm, and crushing the head of the struggling young man before the eyes of his parents Another man had, with his wife and infant child, been kept a f \ake; allnight by the raging elements, and in , the morning he carried his cattle and his , poor furniture, piece by piece, to a safe , pinco close by ; but returning to fetch his , wife and child he found it impossible to . reach his cottage, and soon after he saw it 1 disappear with them under' the waves. After some hours of despair,' when the water had fallen a little, he was,able. to reach in a boat the place where his cottage once stood, andgotnold of some supports of the still drifting roof, when, to his unspeakable joy, a faint shriek from within told him that somebody was still alive, and out from the straw came wife and child, both unhurt, but utterly worn out by hunger and cold. The most marvellous thing in all the descriptions is the haste with which the waters came rushing onward. 'Something white,' as most of the country people express it, was seen in the distance; it came nearer with frightful velocity, and in a few minutes the ' something white' turned out to be a high, foaming, and roariug wave of some two or three feet in height, followed by several others still higher in rapid succession, and changing as it by magic the happy and fertile country, with its wealthy farms and snug cottages, its fields and meadows, orchards and groups of trees, into a wild sea."