The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1876-12-14
The Great Cyclone in Bengal.

4
loss of life and property occasioned by
the cyclone of October 81. Storms are
frequent enough in those ATTITUDES, but
Calcutta correspondent of the London
Times says that this storm was more
severe than any since the great cyclone
of 1864, and that fuller details will
doubtless show it to have been even
more destructive than that memorable
tempest.
The October cyclone arose some
where in the Bay of Bengal, and, rush
ing northward in the track of vesse S
bound for Calcutta, dismasted many
large ships, and did much other dam
age. But this was trifing compared to
what it did on shore. Calcutta itself
narrowly escaped its violence. At Chit
TAGGING it stranded every vessel in the
harbor, and almost destroyed the
town. Three large islands, Haitian,
Sundeep, and Dakhin, with numerous
smaller islands included in the Bacher-
gunge, Nookholly, and Chittagong dis
tricts, were entirely submerged by the
storm-wave, as was also the main land
for five or six miles inland.
These islands are situated in or near
the estuary of the river Megna. They
have been formed by the deposition o.
earth washed down by the sacred river
Ganges during its periodical inunda-
tions. The waters of the Ganges pour
into the Bay of Bengal by fourteen
principal channels. Some of these
channels are so narrow that the rigging
of coasting vessels is often entangled in
the trees on the banks. Plentiful sup
plies of fish for the Calcutta market are
procured in the numerous water courses
of this region, although with difficulty
and danger, as crocodiles and formida-
bic serpentS abound. The forests and
| jungles are crowded with tigers and
other ferocious animals, and every
where reigns the deadly malaria
which makes the Sunderbunds'-
as the low, marshy lands of the delta
are called, from being covered
with the soondru, or sunder tree-the
most inhospitable and unhealthy, rs it
is the hottest, part of British India.
Government has made vigorous efforts
to clear and to people the Sunderbunds.
1t has offered special inducements to
settlers in this extensive maritime dis
trict and its adjacent islands, and re
lays of fresh victims to accident and
disease have been tempted there to fill
up the gaps left by their predecessors.
A larye portion of land has been clear
ed, and timber, cotton, rice, sugar cane,
honey, and the mulberry tree for feed
ing silk worms, have yielded rich re-
turns to enterprise and labor. The
biggest Of the submerged islands, Da-
kiln, was 800 square miles in extent, and
had a population of about 100000.
Haitian and Sundeep together had
about 100, 900 inhabitants.
Up to II o'clock On the night Of Oct.
81, according to q dispatch from Cal
cutta, there were no signs of danger +;
but before midnight wave swept over
the country to a depth in many places
of 20 feet, surprising the people in their
beds. Dense groves of cOcoanut and
palm trees around the villages enabled
many persons to save themselves by
climbing among the branches, and
some took refuge on the roofs of theiI
houses, Dut the water burst the houses
asunder and swept them out to sea
Some were thus carried across the
channel, ten miles, to the ChittagOng,
district, but vast majority were never
heard of again. The country is flat, land
almost every one persisted who failed
to reach the trees. More than one
tree presented the queer spectacle otter
witnessed during an inundation of tht
Ganges-a G. happy family" of ser
penis, birds, and beasts of divert
and hostile kinds, waiting aloft for tn
: water to subside. All the cattle wero
drowned. The boats were swept awa1
= and other means of communication de
stroyed The Calcutta Government Ga
zetIe SAYS that "whereVer the storm
. wave passed it is believed that not
. third of the population survived. Tn
islands have barely one-fourth of thei
former inhabitants. The latest oficia
estimates, in report by Sir Richar
Temple, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS of Ben
gal, put the total loss of life at 25O,OOC
In some places the stencil from tn
, putrefying bodies is insuferable, and
general outbreak of the cholera, whic
, has already appeared in Nookholly, i
= expected. Government is fastening +
its duty of relieving the sore distres
which prevails among the survivors O
the cyclone.
Remoteness lessons the shock of tn
direst disasters, and India still seems ia
remote even in this day Of triumph 70
steam and for the electric telegraph
These have almost annihilated time an
space, so that Cooks travellers, who ar
nicknamed "globe trotters" in the East
: can circumnavigate the earth in thre
months; and the earliest news of tn
Bengal cyclone came from Calcutta
, London and New York in less than
= fortnight. 1t was received, however
with comparative Indifference, becaus
the scene of the tragedy is so distant, AN
l so little is known of the victims an
their whereabouts, most of the localitie
that suffered not even being named o
the map. Then there were so man
victims as to leave only TIL
> same vague, confused notion of a
aggregate loss of life which our Unite
cOnceptive faculties allow Of that o.
casiOned by battle, an earthquake,
famine, or a pestilence, or of the tot;