210 Pcdler and Crombie— Om the Tornado which [No 2, 



encountered a strong current of air blowing up this maidan from the 

 south ; for no sooner did the tornado enter on this maidan than it ab- 

 ruptly altered its direction, wheeled nearly at a right angle to the left, 

 crashed through the belt of trees between it and the river, and made for 

 the palace of the Nawab on the opposite side. 



On the opposite side it struck the Buckland Bund, opposite the 

 private apartments of the Nawab. The exact position of the vortex is 

 determined, as I have already said, by the points of the two walls of the 

 garden intervening between the Bund and the palace, where the railing 

 and wall were thrown down in opposite directions as previously de- 

 scribed. A line drawn from these two points shows that the vortex was 

 here directed north-east towards the middle of the western verandah of 

 these private apartments. When the vortex reached that point, the 

 whole of the advancing lateral radius was engaged in unroofing the 

 south verandah of these apartments as well as that of the Ahsanmunzil 

 to the right. The opposition offered by these high buildings to the right 

 or advancing radius retarded this part of the whirl, with the effect that 

 the vortex swung round to the right to the open space behind the Ahsuni 

 munzil, and started off nearly due east in the direction of the Sankar- 

 bazar and the Commissioner's house, As the vortex swung round behind 

 the Ahsunmunzil, it passed over the inner apartments, which were 

 gutted by the retrograding and posterior radii. As the vortex left the 

 open space behind the palace, it had the Nawab's offices close on the 

 right. These were demolished by the advancing lateral radius, wliile the 

 retrograding radius played with the roof of the stables, and blew the top 

 off the Nabatkhana over the main entrance from Patuatoli. 



From the point where it left the Nawab's premises, the vortex 

 worked low among the houses between it and the top of the road leading 

 from the main street to J. P. Wise's house ; leaving a track of confused 

 destruction, as if from a prolonged bombardment. It was here that 

 Jagabandhu Ray Bahadur was killed by the falling of his house, yet 

 in tli8 midst of this confusion of demolished houses, levelled walls, and 

 twisted and broken trees, and the remains of kutcha huts, there is stand- 

 ing safe, close behind the Nawab's school-house, which was partly wiped 

 out and wholly wrecked, the residence of one Bahadur Bepari, with its 

 ornamental plaster mouldings, only a little bespattered with mud. 



On reaching the main street close to Kabiraj's lane, the anterior 

 radius seems to have become entangled in the narrow lanes and high 

 houses of Sankari bazar, and the vortex to have risen suddenly into the 

 air. The houses in this part of the town are two and three stories high, 

 and only the upper stories are seriously damaged, though all the kutcha 

 huts and many of the low kutcha-packa walls are thrown down. Prom 



