Tidal Wave at Bengal.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1776, 28 December 1885, Page 3

Tidal Wave at Bengal.

A MOST APPALLING CALAMITY. FOUR HUNDRED SQUARE MILES OF COUNTRY DEVASTATED. Ihe Indian Daily News publishes the following particulars with regard te one of the most appalling calamities ever experienced in India 44 Accounts are slowly coming in of the damage done in Orissa by the formidable storm wave of Sep. 21. At False Point, a te a wave 20ft deep, swept inland, converting hundreds of square miles into a wilderness. The only vestige of Hookeetollah is a few cocoanut trees and the house of refuge. The lost 0! life here was about 90 souls. At Jumboo all the canal officers were drowned, and there were only thirteen survivors out of the village of 130 inhabitants. The village site was covered with dead bodies lying in groups. From Jumboo to the Brabmini River, the Commissioner followed the Hun«ooa Creek, on all sides of which were putrid bodies ol men. women, and children, and cattle. The rice lands of an area over 400 square miles in extent, have been covered with sea water and converted into a vast lagoon. All the crops are destroyed, and whole villages have disappeared. In this area there is no drinking water nor grain. In the st-mhern part of the Balaaore district the injury, though severe, has been less fatal than in the southern part of Cuttack. In a great portion of this tract there is no one left to bury the dead. Here and there were seen in places a solitary bullock from time to time lowing for a companion, standing alone surrounded by the dead carcases of a herd; here and there a solitary human form standing out against the sky on the roof ol a fallen hut. No soutd, except the rush of water ; no sound of birds, cattle, or human voices j oil life seemed crushed. Th* .♦— • ’

in pieces literally ran though a succession of floating barman bodies. Evidently this calamity is the one of the like of which this generation baa bad, happily, no previous experience. It surpasses in its horrors even the destruction wrought by the tidal wave of the cyclone of 1864, lu the reaches of the Hoogly.