Sport in Bengal; And How, When, and Where to Seek It

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 Excerpt: ...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 Midnapoor 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 ti...