TREMENDOUS WHIRLWIND.

Dunstan Times, Issue 708, 12 November 1875, Page 3

TREMENDOUS WHIRLWIND.

The proceedings of the Asiatic Society give the following interesting particulars of a recent whirlwind in a district of Lower Bengal. The breadth of the path of the whirlwind was only 250 yards, beyond which no damage was inflicted; while in the path itself, for a distance of about two miles, both on land and water, the destruction of life and property was terrible. The time of occurrence was an hour after sunset, the day had been hot, without a breath of wind. On the Jumona river were moored thirteen very large freight-carrying boats. All these were instantlv over-turned, shattered, stove in. or flung ashore ; one large boat was lifted bodily into the air, carried over the bank fifteen feet in height, and was literally dashed to pieces in a field fully thirty yards inland ; another small boat, carried a somewhat shorter distance, was found in a field with the keel smashed and the ends split opon. A large boat was lifted up and overturned, and was flung down on the beach, then struck down a man, crushed him into the sand beneath it, and killed him. Another man, carried off his feet, was dashed down and killed. A third man, who was struck down, aiid had his skull fractured by some loose fragment, lingered an halfhour and then died. The whirlwind passed, on north-eastward over a halfmile of maidan covered with cheeniv crops ' Here no trace of its progress appeared, and the crops were unhurt. Then came the village of Hladah, stretching north and south half a mile. In a moment the hurricane had passed through, leaving a strip of 250 yards broad of utter devastation, while all remained untouched to the north and south of its pa'h. In this strip not a houso was left standing: the roofs were whirled off and the walls stripped, the wooden posts were carried away with such violence as to break up and disintegrate the earthen mounds in which they had been fixed. All the plantain trees were wrenched off Or np-roo!ed; twelve large mango trees were torn up by the roots; all the trees that remained standing were stripped of their branches, large and small, which were snapped off close to their trunks. The bamboo clumps were twisted round and laid flab, the stems being broken near (he roots. In this village 140 huts were destroyed, seventeen people were hurt, some badly, and seven cattle killed. A dead cow was found among tbe broken branches of a broken mango tree, thirteen feet above the ground.