The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1899-11-30

Story Of the Disaster that Carried Away
the Six Children of Rev. ID. II. Lee.
1t viii be remem bered that short
TIME ago an account OF the floods and
'iandslldes in India was given in this
paper and also the death of the chill
dren of Mr.. and Mrs. d. II. Lee. Be
low is letter written by Mr.. Benja-
min Aitkin, of Calcutta, which gives
a graphic account of the disaster:
An appalling catastrophe has taken
place at Darjeeling, the great hill
sanltarIum of Bengal. This place is
situated at an elevation of seven
thousand feet above sea level, ON the
southern slopes of the Himalaya
mountains and a twenty-five hours
journey bYrail due north of Calcutta
; s;&.ontalns large population OF ma
Ilntfe fei Ihah il hundred resIdehcesl l'ie
Europeans, both on the lower levels
knd on the steep hillsides. There are
Iblso several tirst-class schools for
European children who are sent there
tobe kept out of the trying climate
of Calcutta and the plains OF Bengal.
)n Sunday evening, September "A,
"a yclone accompanied with torrents
ofrain struck the station, as towns
lille Darjeeling are called III India.
1t continued all night and nearly
twenty inches of rain fell. Before
midnight houses had begun to col
lapse III all directions and the water,
soaking into the soil, sent vast avail
anches of rocks and earth mixed with
| shrubs and trees rolling down lhe
| hillsides with roar which alarmed
all the inhabitants.
The Arcadia Girls High School
stands on "a ridge i'll one OF the most
popular parts of Darjeeling and has
1iIty bOarders, besides many day
scholars. The lady principal is Miss
g. Josephine Stahl, an American,
born in lndianOla, Iowa. She was a
student OF Simpson College, Iowa,
and of the Northwestern University,
Evanston, Ill. She was sent to India
in 1892 by the Northwestern Branch
of the WOmen's Foreign Missionary
Society, and was principal of the Cal
cutta Girls High School in 1869.
She took charge of the school at Oar
| jeeling in the spring of the present
! year.
\ About half past ten o'clock when
4 the pupils and teachers were in bed q
|, part of the building fell in, and Miss
!, Stahl made the girls get up and dress
I and took them, with the teachers,
! through the rain and darkness to a
house called Ida Villa, higher up the
ridge. Before long Arcadia was swept,
land bank of mud covered the site
,l i 4
main hall of Ida Villa, most of them
laying down on the floor to sleep. But
I'M little more than an hour after
.S.rdsl great mass ol -tne nil above
game down and covered the house,
knocking down one wall but leaving
the roof and other walls as they were.
The inmates were thus shut in and
drenched with mud but not crushed
By desperate efforts number of the
girls were pushed or dragged through .
the ruins out into the deluge, but the
danger of a second avalanche which |
would have blotted out the school in
creased every moment, Very great !
difficulty was experienced in keeping |
the terrified girls in order. There
was in the school staying as visitor
the wife of the Rev Frank w. Warne, |
pastor of the American Methodist |
Episcopal church in Calcutta. This |
lady with her daughter, who is one
of the senior girls in the schools, and |
two of the teachers, scrambled |
through a window and got on the
road above and walked three-quarters |
of a mile through the tempest to the
Union Church Manse in search of as
sistance. Two gentlemen Immediately
set out to get help among the neigh
|bors. In very short time six or
seven gentlemen were at work on the
ruin, and forty-tive girls were gotten
|out alive and nearly all uninjured.
but two sisters, aged nine and three,
n third little girl and little boy were
,taken out dead. The parents of these
children are well known in Calcutta,
Ind much sympathy is felt with them
II their bereavement. The boy was
son of Rev. Herbert Anderson,
tcretary of the English Baptist Mis-
Ionary Society-Carey's Society.
'ufThe rescuing was a work of danger
nj well as of indescribable labor. The
tip trrespondent of one of the Calcutta
lodily papers says that several of the
N nltlemen deserve the Victoria Cross.
niant vi bllcIl Sdlh W HIS
mud and his companions were
.rly sucked in after him. But by
Aading a waterproof coat on the
- e,s,,nLdd -, 4 ryyy secured sufficient buoy
AanUy rag him up. The rescued
girls W ps distributed in different
houses herever shelter could be
found al that hour, about three in
morning With the wind still raging
and the rain pouring and the land
slides filling the blackness with a con-
tinual roar.
But worse remains to be told. The
Rev. ID. H. Lee and his wife are Amer
lean Methodist missionaries in Cal
cutta, Mrs. Ada Lee being well known
in America as the writer of the thrill
ing story of "Chundra Leila" Their
six children, Vida, Lois, Wilbur, Her
bert, Ada and Esther, the eldest sew
Nenteen and the youngest four or five
years of age, were day scholars at
arcadia" but lived by themselves
with native woman servant, in a
house on the steepest part of the hill
with precipitous descent of several
thousand feet to the Rungeat river
below. During that awful night this
house was carried away. All we know
yet is that the body of the second
Uirl was found and that tha nldaSt