1876.] CIRCULAR STORMS, 525 CHAPTER LXXXII. THE GREAT CYCLONE OF 1876. ON the 1st of November, there occurred in the Backergunge district of Bengal a terrific calamity, the cyclone, involving the greatest engulfment of man since the Noachian Deluge. These circular hurricanes are no uncommon event in the Indian seas, though none of such magnitude as that of 1876 is upon record. Backergunge, the scene of this calamity, had a visitation of the same nature in 1584, forming a desolating sequel to an invasion of the Mughs; and other parts of the Indian coast have been similarly visited. Splinter Stavorinus, Admiral of the States-General, records several cyclones in his time;, and how, in the month of October, 1754, five ships of the Dutch East India Company were torn by one from their anchors in Fulta Roads and cast ashore. Thus Coringa, on the coast of Coromandel-one of the best ports on that side of the Bay of Bengal, and defended from the south-west monsoon by the Point of Godavery-twenty years after we took it from the French, was utterly destroyed in December, 1789, by three great storm-waves, which rolled upon it in succession during a cyclone. M. de la Place, of the French frigate Favorite, who collected his account on the spot,* says:Coringa was destroyed in a single day. frightful phenomenon reduced it to its present state. In the month of December, at the moment when the high-tide was at its highest point, and the north-west wind, blowing with fury, accumulated the waters at the head of the bay, the unfortunate inhabitants of Coringa saw with terror three monstrous waves coming in from the sea, following each other at a short distance. The first, sweeping over everything in its passage, brought three feet of water into the town; the second augmented these ravages by inundating all the low country; and the third overwhelmed everything." 66 A The town and 20,000 of its inhabitants disappeared, vessels at anchor in the mouth of the river were uptorn from their moorings, and swept like corks into the plains surrounding Yonaon-a French village (nine miles above the embouchure of the Godavery), which suffered very much. In retiring the sea left vast heaps of sand and mud, which rendered all search for property or bodies impossible, and shut up the mouth of the river for large ships. The only trace of the ancient town *About 1840. Vol. I., p. 285. now is the house of the Master Attendant and the dockyards surrounding it. Coringa was visited by another of these inundations in 1839, by a single wave from the sea, when again 20,000 persons are said to have perished,† though this must be an exaggeration, while "vessels were drifted from the docks and rivers, and a large sloop (of 50 to 100 tons burden) was carried four miles inland." In 1805 a cyclone tore H.M.S. Sheerness from her anchors, and cast her a bulged wreck on the rocks in the harbour of Trincomalee; while on the Madras coast, which lies north and south, there are cyclones, at times, of such fury that no vessel can lie with the remotest hope of riding them out, and the surf breaks in nine fathoms water. It did this in 1809, when H.M.S. Dover was lost, and the wreck of an old vessel which had been blown up twenty years before was upheaved from its oozy bed in the sea, and flung upon the shore. Our great expedition to Java, consisting of many transports and men-of-war filled with troops, had sailed but a few days before, but, steering southward, fortunately escaped. "In the Bay of Bengal," says Mr. Piddington, President of the Marine Courts of Inquiry, Calcutta, "my researches, both published and unpublished, enable me to say that the storms (cyclones) travel at the rates of from little more than from two to thirty-nine miles per hour; but this last very high rate has occurred only in one instance, and from three to fifteen miles may be taken as the usual rates. The low rate of little more than two miles an hour (fifty-three miles in twenty-four hours) is that of the tremendous storm and inundation of Burrisal and Backergunge, at the mouth of the Burrampooter [sic] and Ganges, in June, 1822, in which upwards of 50,000 souls and vast property in houses, cattle, &c., perished. The great rise of the waters was probably owing in part to its long action over one point, and in part to its being then a south-east storm all day at Burrisal, which is exactly the wind required to dam up the stream of the great estuary of the Burrampooter and Ganges."‡ On this occasion no fewer than forty children were brought to birth by their terrified mothers #Piddington's "Sailors' Horn-Book; or, Law of Storms," 1848. + Asiatic Society's Journal, Vol. IX., &c. "Sailor's Horn-Book; or, Law of Storms." taking refuge in tree-tops-a circumstance which sufficiently depicts the terror and peril of such a visitation. Backergunge, the scene of the last great cyclone, is one of the strangest tracts of land in British India. It is in the Eastern Sunderbunds, bounded on the east by the Puddah or Great Ganges, on the south by the Bay of Bengal, and on the west by the Hooringotta, comprising a superficies of 4,564 square miles. situated on a small inosculation of the Ganges, to which it gives its name; but it has greatly declined since 1801, when, in consequence of the separation of the district from Dacca Jelalpore, the courts of judicature and revenue were removed to Burrisal; yet it has still an extensive commerce in rice, salt, and cotton fabrics. It is a moist and steaming corner of India, the whole district of Backergunge, yet not an inch of it fails in fertility; canes and reeds cover the shoals, mangroves fringe the banks, and nowhere in Bengal are there richer rice-gardens, more feathery topes of palm, or more fruitful orchards of plantain, tamarind, and mango, with plantations of sugar-cane, betel, and cocoa. Yet those who tend This territory, notwithstanding its proximity to the sea, is in some places remarkable for its fertility, though much of it is singular marsh land, called chars, khals, and dones, or islands—a kind of wilderness. Periodically overflowed by the waters of the Ganges, and enriched by their alluvial them, amid their toil have to contend, ever and deposits, every portion of the crop-growing part of anon, with snakes, tigers, and alligators; and there Backergunge has been brought down from countries | yearly a tribute of human life is paid, especially by hundreds of miles away, and piled up by the rest- the woodcutters. less rivers and the sea till a district has been formed large enough for a principality. "Two of the mightiest streams of earth are for ever at this silent work-the Ganges and the Brahmapootra—and their discoloured waves roll perpetually down, from the mountains of Thibet and the plains of the north-west, that red and yellow mud which has formed a province. The larger part of their labours is hidden under the Bengal Sea; and when the leadsman brings up silt off Sangor Island, it has, as likely as not, come 2,000 miles, from Gangotri or the Jumna. The two great rivers unite in the estuary called Meghna, sending out to the left a labyrinth of arms and branches which interlace the alluvial soil with a thousand channels, and turn into an archipelago the province which the Brahmapootra and its Indian sister have created." The waters teem with fish, some of which are great in size, and are the food of man and his four-footed enemies alike—as the spotted leopards devour them if they fail to find a child at the wells or a peasant in the woods. "It is a land,” says a writer, "of strange swooning sounds, of sweeping tempests and sudden dislocations, of earth undermined and carried off by the rushing rivers. There is an unusual thundering noise heard here, called the Burrisal guns,' and to this day nobody knows its origin. A well-to-do land-owner will wake up to find his property wafted away, by the Meghna or Madhumati, to the other side of the creek; and others who have painfully constructed valuable tanks for fresh water, see a single wave of the dreaded 'bore' sweep into the hollow and destroy it for ever. There is a regular name for such victims of nature in the Sunderbunds: they are styled nadi-bhangi-lôg, or 'river-broken people;' but, for the most part, the enormous population of these Indian swamps fares prosperously, growing betelnuts for half Asia, catching fish for Calcutta, weaving reed-mats and covers for the boatmen of the Ganges, and producing vast crops of paddy and sugar-cane. They are, on the whole, a gentle and simple people, largely Mohammedan in creed; for the Hindoo hates and dreads the sea and in these islands there is a marine peril twice a month, with a far more tremendous danger periodically. At new and full moon the 'bore' comes up the They are chiefly remarkable for the extreme Meghna in a wall of white water fifteen feet high, darkness of their hue. The river Dacoits-a crushing every boat not drawn up-a terrible rolling piratical horde, by whom the waters were long bank of foam, which, on account of its speed, the infested-have long since been fully suppressed by people call the shar or arrow; and, now and again, the arm of legislative authority. The town of the cyclone sweeps the Meghna and depopulates Backergunge, formerly the capital of the district, is its islands and shores." Flat and monotonous, yet fertile and green, these isles are like nothing in the world save themselves, and in some places raise two rice crops, which render them the principal granary of Calcutta ; but in others the soil and the water are alike infested by wild animals. In 1801 the population was estimated at only 926,725, of whom five-eighths were Hindoos, and the majority of the remainder Mughs and Mohammedans. Some Portuguese colonists, descendants of those who in 1666 were invited by the Nabob Hagta Khan to enter his service, still exist, but in a deplorable state of degradation. 1876.] THE STORM-WAVE. 527 There no help avails man or any living thing the horror of that scene-of that death so abrupt, caught in the swiftly-moving folds, or the irresistible pitiless, and inevitable. From the moment when tidal-wave that comes rolling in from the Indian the first howl of the cyclone was heard tearing Ocean, wrenching up, throwing prostrate, sweeping upward from the ocean, to the awful return stroke away, and submerging all that the hand of man has of the tempest, herding before it the dark waves of made. Such a wave, on the last night of October water, scarcely thirty minutes elapsed. Tens of and 1st of November, burst, without premonitory thousands of human beings were by that time warning, upon the unhappy people we have de- caught up and washed like drift-wood into the scribed, submerging, almost in a minute, three boiling bay; tens of thousands more were choked large islands-Dakhin-Shahabazpore, Hattiah, and in their beds by whelming waves and ruined buildSundup-numerous smaller ones, and also the ings; and all the work of their hands, all their coast for five miles inland, destroying, as reported possessions, and all their cattle were similarly by Sir Richard Temple, 215,000 human beings. seized in the black flood and destroyed."* These islands are all situated in or near the estuary of the Meghna, the stream formed by the confluence of the Ganges and Brahmapootra. The largest, being the first-named, is 800 miles square in extent, with a population of 240,000. That of Hattiah and Sundup together was about 100,000. Up to eleven p.m. there was not the slightest danger; but before midnight the storm-wave had swept across the isles-in some places to the height of twenty feet-and all was over.† * The natives usually go to rest at sunset, in the little huts under the bamboos, of which there are long clumps stretching everywhere; and, happily, it is the custom in these districts to plant dense groves of trees, but more especially of cocoa-nut and palm, round the villages; and almost all who survived saved themselves by climbing into the branches, when the strange screaming sound-the din of the cyclone, amid the dead silence that always reigns at night in Bengal-was heard, coming from the south-west. It is not, says a print of the month, the continuous whistle of a Western tempest, but a fierce overwhelming uproar, like the thundering of surf upon leagues of stony beach; and, in an instant, the isles of the Meghna and its broad channel became the very centre of that terrific circular storm of wind and water combined. The latter, piled up, "turned almost like a wheel over Lakhipar, and, whirling downward again, drove with its western segment the heaped-up waves of the two great rivers in a wall of death thrice as high as the 'bore,' washing clean over the rich and populous islands. They stand some twenty feet above mid-tide, yet this dreadful wave of the cyclone rose, at least, another twenty feet, high over the dry land, submerging every hamlet and cattle shed; drowning men, women, and children in their sleep; bursting over tank, and garden, and temple-in a few minutes slaying nearly a quarter of a million of human creatures. Imagine *Calcutta Gazette, November 25th, 1876. + European Mail, November 23rd. A few escaped, but their sufferings were great; in one instance no less than 100 were saved together, by floating on the strong roof of a large bungalow, belonging to Mr. Harvey, a wealthy European Zemindar of Dacca. In many instances, the water on entering the houses burst up the roofs, and the recession of the tidal-waves took them out to sea, with the wretched people shrieking as they clung to them. A few were actually taken thus from Sundup across the channel, ten miles broad, to Chittagong; but the vast majority were never heard of again. The flatness of the country made trees the only secure refuge, and almost all perished who failed to reach them. The whole town of Dowlut-Khan, the head-quarters of a subdivision, was swept away; and save one official, named Baboo Uma, and his family, all the people perished. In the town of Burrisal 3,000 houses were swept away, with their inhabitants, and the paddy-fields destroyed.t All the boats were swept away, and, as wheeled carriages are unknown, the survivors were thus deprived of all means of communication. Of those who escaped, many were betel-nut pickers and cocoa-gatherers, who are wont to be dexterous in clambering and swinging their light frames from tree-top to tree-top. Thus, these men, on finding themselves dashed against the stems of palms and areca-trees, managed to climb out of the whirling waters, and cling to the tossing branches till the wave subsided and the dry land was seen, covered with mud, the debris of houses, and the bodies of the drowned, with their cattle of every description. All the civil officers and police officials at DakhinShahabazpore perished, save the deputy-magistrate in charge. "A strange fact about the disaster," says the European Mail, "is that, in Dakhin-Shahabazpore and Hattiah, most of the damage was done by the storm-wave from the north sweeping down the Meghna. Several theories have been Daily Telegraph. + European Mail; Calcutta Englishman, &c. In this terrible calamity-the most devastating ever known-the Indian officials were not slow in doing their duty. Sir Richard Temple, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, with a numerous and active staff, was speedily at Backergunge, from whence he reported that 3,000 square miles had been laid desolate; the whole of that space, shore and island, being left ghastly, drowned, and bare; while there was every fear lest the as yet uncounted bodies of the dead, with the carcases of the cattle and of all the carrion-eating creatures in the jungles, where the rats, the snakes, and even the insects, had all shared one common fate, might infect the humid air and breed a pestilence. 529 but not destroyed; and wherever Sir Richard Temple and his staff went, he found the scared people drying their grain in the sunshine. The ripe cocoa-nuts also gave subsistence till the next THE DJANGAL, A SAVAGE OF THE SIRGOUJA. and that they were not suffering very seriously from want of food, while their recuperative energies -asserted themselves in a remarkable degree. For some days there was much distress; but as Backergunge is a great rice-producing district, the stores of its peasantry are ample, and mostly kept under ground. These were, of course, thoroughly soaked, *Government Gazette, &c. harvest, the growing crops of which had been seriously injured, and in many places swept away. The timely distribution of relief roused the people at once from dark despondency, and enabled them hopefully to apply themselves to such forms of selfhelp as were possible in their circumstances. One of the chief causes for apprehension, after that of disease passed away, was as regarded cattle for agricultural and other purposes; for, as the destruction of these exceeded even that of human beings, relatively to numbers, it was evident there would be a difficulty in meeting the requirements of the next sowing season as regarded the preparation of the land. two places might have been mutually relieved. For some days much disorder prevailed, and several robberies were attempted; but this state of matters was speedily rectified. About sixty relief centres were established; persons absolutely destitute were at once relieved; but no large sums were spent.* Sir Richard Temple went personally over the *European Mail. |