A DISASTER IN INDIA.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12401, 17 November 1908, Page 4

A DISASTER IN INDIA.

India has again been the victim of one of those ruthless excesses by which Nature occasionally reminds us of the futility of human effort to restrain her forces. While the parched lands of the Deccan were rejoicing hrthe rain that brings life to her people, there descended a flood which filled the Mir 'Alam Tank— a lake seven miles in circumference— and pouring into the River Musi, in the north west of Hyderabad, swept over the city like a tidal wave on the ocean. Carrying everything before it; the torrent overthrew a whole ■quarter of the city arid left behind a trail "of disaster. One thousand ■dead lie buried in the wreck of mud masonry, and the capital of the Nizam is in ruins. .;■ *' -The 'disaster, it appears, was hot unforseon, and the dwellers on the banks of the Musi were warned . of impending danger. But it is not easy to imagine what the dense native population of the city could do to ward off the blow of fate. Before this sudden and irresistible force of nature they were helpless and could only submit. One gleam of sunshine hovers ores this welter of ruin and death and glorifies the heroism of the women and men of our race. The nurses of the Victoria Hospital, faithful to their charge 1 even in the hour of death, carried their patients to safety. The doctors risked life to save the helpless.;' and a Roman Catholic priest stood on the tottering bridge to calm and direct the people. Such deeds, even when chronicled in brief words, cannot be; read without deep emotion. . They stir the pulse, though they dim the eye ,and warm our-blood to the heroines and heroes of .our race. It is the spirit of such sacrifice that holds India fast and makes the poor untutored Hindu look up to the sahib as his protector and shield.