The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1877-01-25
HORRORS OF THE CYCLONE.

The Incidents and Consequences Of tn
Late Cyclone i'm India-The CountrJ
Covered Thick With the Rotting Bod
les of the Notwithstanding Well
Cboked With COrpscs, and a Plague
Believed to be Inevitable.
From the Bombay GaEette.l
Those who remember the cyclone
which took place in Bombay more thar
a dozen years ago will be able to recall
wildly to their recollection the dread
full aspects which the storm presented.
Houses were blown down, panes OF
glass were smashed by the atmospheric
pressure, ships were lifted bodily out
of the water and hurled upon the shore,
where they were smashed. A number
of lives were lost, and a great deal OF
property was destroyed. But the cy-
clone was but pleasant breeze CON-
pared with the disastrous storm-wave
which has devasted the Delta of the
Ganges. At first the Ganges calamity
appeared dreadful enough when it was
reported that 5000 lives had been lost /;
but now that careful inquiries in the
scourged districts have shewn that
considerable more than 2OO, 900 persons
have persisted, the catastrophe stands
out as one of the
MOST APPALLING
that has ever occurred. The plague of
London, the destruction of Lisbon by
an earthquake, the great fire in Chi
cago, and death by fire and suffocation
of 1000 worshipers in Santiago Cathe-
dral, are few-a very few-of the
calamities with which in comparatively
recent years the fates have chosen to
scourge poor helpless humanity; but
when the details of this last cyclone in
Bengal become known to the world it
will be found to be as full of horror as
any morbid imagination could wish to
contemplate. Stories of the n ost
dreadful kind about the storm have
been finding their way into the Calcutta
papers, and many of them it was diff
cult to believe; but now that we know
that a'quarter of million of people
have been suddenly swept into eternity,
there need be little difficulty experienced
in accepting the descriptions of the
more horrible phases of the catastro-
phe. In calamity of such vast mag
nitude the most dreadful and unnatural
events must have taken place. Wild
beasts may well have laid down terror
stricken beside harmless brutes; houses
could easily have been swept down,
with their inmates, before the flood;
ships may well have been swept many
miles inland, and thousands of boats
dashed to pieces against each other;
desperate people may well have been
swept out of the trees to which they
had fed for safety; and it is conceive
bic enough that many tree in the
Ganges Delta bore a strange collection
of llfe-reptiles, wild animals, and hui
man beings-when the
ANGRY WATERS WERE RUSHING
along on their career of destruction.
If all the details of events connected
with the loss of this quarter of a mil
lion of people were made known, mag
NATIVE writers would have no occasion
to exercise their brains in the creation
of horrors, for they would probably find
every example of the terrible and dread
full ready to hand in the annals Of the
Bengal cyclone of 1876. 1t must not
be supposed that the evil effects of the
storm ceased with the subsistence of the
tidal wave. On she contrary, there is
reason to fear that the flood will be fol-
lowed by an epidemic outbreak of di-
sease among the survivors in the Delta;
for the flooded lands are now reeking
noxious gases under the heat of the sun,
and thousands of unburied carcasses,
of human beings and animals, are filling
the air with terrible stencil. Cholera
has already appeared in Backergunge,
and it is devoutly to be hoped that the
outbreak will not form the nucleus of
great Indian epidemic. We have al
ready appealed to the Bengal people to
come forward with assistance to Bonn
bay to battle successfully with the fam
inc that is raging in the Deccan; but
we perceive now that Bengal will have
enough to do at home with its charity,
for the relief which the ruined people
in the Ganges Delta will require must
be very considerable indeed. To add
to the misery of the situation, disease,
distress and opportunity have produced
GANGS OF ROBBERS,
who are looting wherever they can do
so. A Bengal newspaper actually men
tons the horrible fact that corpses are
being found with their hands and feet
cut off, and gashes in their necks-the
handiwork of men who were determin-
ed to get the jewels that the dead per-
sons were wearing at the time they
were drowned. The cyclone and storm
wave appear to have expended their
fury on the districts of Backergunge,
Noacolly and Chittagong; and a glance
at the map will show how probable it is
that storm wave occurring in that re-
gion could not fail to do immense
destruction. The district is honey
combed and broken up with rivers, all
parts of the Gangetic Delta; and some
of these rivers, such as the Gauges and
Megna, carry powerful floods of water
to the Bay of Bengal. The consequences
of a tidal wave must, therefore, be
tremendous in these districts, because
not only does such wave pour out up
on the land its own waters, but by rush
ing up the great rivers it rolls their
floods back, and these, rising rapidly,
must burst over the surrounding coun-
try, and carry destruction with them.
The total area of the inundated districts
is about 1900 square miles-Backer-
gunge, with the island of Duknin
Shahbazpore, 1878 square miles;