48 THE BENGAL STORM WAVE. 



to the height of ten or twenty feet. The IsToakhally people think it came from 

 the sea up the Meghna with salt water, and then the cyelone turned it round 

 and rolled the fresh water of the river down ; the refluence caused the piling 

 up of the fresh and salt water, which rushed over the surrounding dis- 

 tricts ; drowned bodies were carried great distances; corpses began to pu- 

 trefy before the waters retired. The Mahometan population have no crema- 

 tion, and the masses of corruption of human and animal bodies were fre- 

 quent, presenting a sickening spectacle. Many corpses were seen at sea; 

 the bodies of living and dead were borne across the arm of the sea from 

 Sun deep to Chittagong, the former clinging to the roofs of their own 

 houses. The force of the inundation ajDpears to have lasted from midnight 

 to two o'clock in the morning. By daj'break there was much subsidence of 

 the flood, and by noon the survivors came down from the trees and regained 

 terra firma. The boats, great and small, which constitute the only means 

 of carriage in these tracts, are all lost. The JSFoakhall}^ authorities were thus 

 bereft of resources for moving across the floods, and this was a very hard 

 case on the Hattia Islands, where the people were for three days succorless. 

 In the Backergunge District the boats were saved, but much wealth was 

 lost almost entirelj^ in the form of agricultural crops or cattle. With the 

 exception of Dowlutkhan, a trading town, which was clean destroyed, 8,000 

 inhabitants, a quarter of the number, perished. On approaching it we 

 steamed for two miles through the creek ; the banks were strewn with 

 human bodies.' " 



The India correspondent of the London Telegraph writes that three waves 

 in succession, varying from ten to twenty feet in height, swept over the 

 ■doomed district. Many who survived the first shock were overwhelmed in 

 the second or third wave, and drowned before they eould reach a place of 

 refuge. The women and children naturally were the most numerous vic- 

 tims, though some were washed into the branches of trees and thereby 

 saved. The trees, indeed, were thickly peopled that dreadful night until 

 ■daylight broke, and then it was found that not a few had escaped from 

 drowning only to perish of cold. In one tree a man hugging a pig was 

 seen close to a young woman clasping her babe to her besom. The latter 

 two were alive and unhurt, while the two former were stift'ened in death. 

 The long, sharp thorns of the madar tree saved some scores of women by 

 catching their dresses and holding them fast till the wave had passed on- 

 ward. 



The correspondent of the London Times writes from Calcutta, I^ovem- 

 ber 19th as follows: 



"Further details received regarding the cyclone of the 31st of October 

 prove it to have been one of the most terrible calamities on record. Esti- 

 mates based on official returns from each police section jjiit the loss of life 

 in the districts of Backergunge, Noakhally and Chittagong at not less than 

 215,000. Probabl}^ this figure, enormous as it appears, is still short of the 

 truth. Three large islands — Dakhin Shahabnzj)ure, Hattia and Sundeep 

 — and numerous small islands were entirely submerged by the storm-wave, 

 and also the mainland for some five or six miles inland. These islands are 

 all situated in or near the estuary of the Meghna, a river formed by the 

 confluence of the Ganges and Brahmapootra Eivers, the largest being 

 Dakhin, Shahabuzpore, in extent 800 square miles, with a jjopulatien of 

 about 240,000. The population of Hattia and Sundeep ^together is about 

 100,000. Up to 11 J), m., on the night of the catastrophe, there were no 

 signs of danger, but before midnight the storm wave swept over the island 

 to a depth in places of twenty feet, surprising the people in their beds. 



