EVILS FOLLOWING DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS. 61 



standing, we could see how high the water had stood 

 but a few feet from the roof. In that fearful night a 

 mother with her two little children, one of them a suck- 

 ling, was swimming in her bed. The water rose higher 

 and higher ; all hope of escape seemed lost. She tried to 

 break a hole with her hands in the cane roof in order to 

 save herself there, but in vain. Then she seized the light 

 and burnt a hole in the canes, large enough to let her 

 through. She pushed back the tiles and set her little boy 

 upon the roof, then she held her baby out with one hand 

 and helped herself after with the other. Half naked 

 she sat there with her children on that fearful night. 

 The house before them became a prey to the waves. One 

 wall of her house fell too, but the roof held out, and with 

 the morning the longed for rescue came, through two 

 brave young fellows from Alcantarilla, who risked their 

 lives to save her. 



' Thank God many a song of valour might be sung ; 

 very many deeds of heroie courage were successfully 

 done in spite of hindrances and darkness. The excellent 

 troups of country police, the Guardias civiles, helped with 

 zeal and abnegation ; but they were soon called back to 

 the little town, because the lower part of it had also fallen 

 a prey to the waves. There, too, houses and walls fell ; 

 single individuals were saved, others were buried in the 

 ruins, or drowned in the waters. 



' But the saddest fate of all was that of the village of 

 Nonduermas, which lies about half way between Alcan- 

 tarilla and Murcia. We did not go by the road, but 

 followed the path which the raging flood had broken for 

 itself. There every house and every tree tells its own sad 

 tale, and louder than all do the heaps of ruins scattered 

 throughout the entire plain proclaim that there once 

 diligent people lived in their own huts, and cultivated and 

 watered the fruitful land. Our guide, Pedro, was himself 

 one of those who had passed that fearful night outside. 

 We stopped at one ruin after another and listened to his 

 account. Here a little girl of five years who had rescued 



