106 Whirlwind in the Maimansingh District. [June, 



north, and encountering nothing hut a fence a foot high edging a field ; 

 this it destroyed, breaking off and throwing down the branches of which it 

 consisted. That part of the whirlwind which struck the village encountered 

 first a dense mass of tall u baini" jungle, such as would afford cover for 

 leopards. This was beaten down fiat, as though it had been thoroughly 

 trampled by beating elephants. Chats, mats, and beams lie confusedly 

 amongst the flattened and prostrate masses of " baint." Beyond the baint 

 lay the bamboos and bans of the village ; these were destroyed as in the 

 former village, the devastation here being equally complete, and the breadth 

 of the path the same, some fifty yards of it passing clear of the village to 

 the north-south of the whirlwind's path ; the plantains, bamboos, bdris, and 

 jungle stand entirely intact and undisturbed. In this village 89 ghars 

 were destroyed, 19 people injured, one woman killed. No cattle were killed 

 or hurt. This, the people explain by saying that the cowhouses bore the 

 brunt of the storm, and were whirled off, leaving the cattle safe, while the 

 people running out into the open were struck down by branches of trees and 

 other whirling debris. Everything was over in a moment. This village 

 stands at a bend of the river Lohai, which comes down towards it from the 

 north-east, and turns off south-eastward, passing the east of the village. 

 The whirlwind then passing the village entered upon the course of the river, 

 and passing upwards a short distance along the north-eastern bend of the 

 stream, gradually dissipated itself and sank to rest. The course was thus, 

 as here sketched, about 250 yards broad and two miles in length. 



5. No one seems to have seen the approach of the wind in either of 

 the villages, from which it seems that it must have travelled fast, though 

 the onward course of a storm of this kind is not necessarily rapid ; it is the 

 rapidity of the whirling motion that does the mischief. But alike at the 

 khal, at Uladah, and at Chanbari, the story is, " we suddenly heard a boom- 

 ing, whirling sound as loud as the firing of cannon ; all became dark, but 

 with a sort of fiery glare in it ; there was a sense of suffocation from the 

 tremendous whirling of the air, and in a moment everything was swept off 

 and whirled away in all directions. In a minute it was all over." The 

 weather was hot and clear up to the moment of the whirlwind ; after it 

 passed, heavy rain immediately followed. I asked a wounded woman how 

 her child escaped. She showed me by gathering it up and crouching 

 over it on hands and knees, saying this was what she did when the storm 

 struck them. 



6. It does not appear from the debris whether the revolution was 

 from right to left or from left to right ; the broken plantains and flattened 

 bamboos lay in different directions. One ghar in the edge of the path was 

 merely crushed in, the posts being broken and the roof fallen inwards ; but 

 everywhere else the wall and roofs were stripped off upwards and carried 



