TIDAL WAVES AND CYCLONES. 179 



ing rapidly towards him, and then with a wild cry of terror 

 he fled for protection to the nearest tree, among the stout 

 branches of which he had barely secured himself, when the 

 black and angry deluge of leaping and roaring waters swept 

 by him with a force nothing could withstand ; whirling away 

 trees, houses, cattle, and human beings, as if they were no 

 more than straws or beetles, he alone escaping death out of 

 his family of ten prseons. My informant used to say for 

 being in my own service, we often discussed these occurrences 

 that the flood subsided quickly, but in its rapid advance 

 it destroyed nearly all the people and cattle of Hatia. 



A strange fact in connection with this mighty storm 

 earthquake-born wave is, that its breadth was so limited that 

 the larger islands of Shahazpoor, then only two or three miles 

 to the west, and Sundeep ten miles to the east, escaped with 

 comparatively small losses. 



The great cyclone of October, 1852, buried the whole 

 district under water, but though the damage done to life and 

 property was far more general, it was nowhere so awful as 

 that done in Hatia by the great wave just described, and if 

 I recollect rightly not more than three or four hundred lives 

 were lost, and those mostly immediately south of the station 

 itself, according to my own observations. 



The cyclone of the night between the last day of October 

 and the first of November, 1876, inflicted losses still more 

 dreadful and more widespread, and was even more calamitous 

 in the Noakholly and adjoining districts of Backergunge and 

 Chittagong, than was that of the 5th October, 1864, in Midna- 

 poor and the twenty-four Pergunnahs, Calcutta included. 



A curious fact in connection with the hurricane of 1876 

 is that by far the greatest amount of damage was done 

 during the reflux or retirement of the waters which had been 

 driven up from the sea into the funnel-like mouths of the 

 Megna and Burra Fenny rivers. When that cyclone burst 

 upon the land on the night of the 31st of October, the moon 

 being at the full and the highest spring tides of the year 

 due, an alarming rise of the water was naturally to be 



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