THE FLOODS IN FRANCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 222, 3 September 1875, Page 4

THE FLOODS IN FRANCE.

We take the following from the London letter, dated July 9, of the correspondent of the Australasian : — ■ Many singular and pathetic incidents are narrated. The clergy of one of the churches of Toulouse made a pilgrimage to the Black Virgin of La Dauradi, but on returaiog were' overtaken r by the waters, and obliged to take refuge in a bouee, from which they only escaped after eight hours of extreme peril. The awful suddenness of the calamity was apparent io the strange medley of thioga which the river bore down on its surface. We readj for example, that one of the waifs was a showman'a van, which was surprised by the Garonne at a village fete, and carried down to Toulouse scarcely injured. The company inhabiting , it had not time to escape from tbeir itinerant dwelling. An unfortunate watchdog chained to the axle was battered almost - into a pulp. All the traps were stowed away in backets covered with farpavlin, which served as beds to the drowned players, and came out fresh and gaudy in the midst of the wrecked objects heaped about for transportation to the mayoralty* A little girl, supposed to have been a dancer, had not washed her face on going to bed, and the vermilion was bright, as if baked in fast colors, upon her ghastly cheek. The female giant, with a pair of artificial legs, to which her feet were, strapped, was in her tinsel crown and dress of crimson cotton velvet. She and her husband hua probably been sitting up late, and were only thinking of divesting themaelyes of their finery when a wave swept over the plain, and its recoil drew them into the central current. Bodies wearing the country costume of districts twenty leagues distant were washed down into Toulouse,' and the river swept its burden onward, ever adding to it, far down towards Bordeaux and the sea. Graves could not be dug fast enough, and bnriais went on without intermission by night and day — now by torchlight, and now under the bright sun and the blue sky which succeeded to the heavy cloudß almost before the work of rqjn was completed. The whole region suffered an agonising surprise. At the extremity of one little village, for instance, was a small holding occupied by a farmer, his wife, and three children. The villagers generally had been warned in time of the inroad of the waters, and had been able to save themselves, but the unhappy farmer and his family were surprised ' by the inundation. Awakened by the rush of the water, they climbed half naked to the roof of the stable. ' Here the mother, shivering in the cold, attached herself by a rope to the chimney, while she held convulsively an infant at the breast. The father, with his two littfe girls on his, shoulders, held on to a projection of the roof. — Tfcro-unfortu-nate creatures', livid with cold and fear, and not haying evep strength to cry out, felt the walls giving away under them from the fqrce of the flood, and awaited death. At last, two heroic soldiers mounting a bank and carrying torches approached the farm. At the very moment of their arrival all gave way, and the walls in falling in formed a kind of pit, which engulphed the unfortunate beings — those who bad been in such peril and those whc came to save them. Other parts of Europe have suffered, especially Hungary. A fearful hurricane swept over Buda, Pesth, on the evening of the 26th of June, only two or three days later than the catastrophe I have just described, tearing the branches trom the trees in the gardens, and followed hy a thunderstorm with tremendous hail and rain. The ligbtniflg shattered several trees. The hailstones are said to have been as large as walnuts, and horses were killed by them. The rain was like the bursting of a waterspout, For five hours the flood came down. The mountain valleys were changed into turbulent water-courses. The torrents carried down huge boulders and trees in wild confusion. The neighboring railway was half destroyed. The streets of the city were some sft or 6ft deep in water, and the drains all burst. Twenty houses were entirely washed away, and tlie wreckage of the storm — furniture, cattle, men, women, and children — was soon sucked doWn by t the whirling Danube. It is estimated that some 200 people have perished. If one may credit the details of a private letter received from an eye-witneee, the storm must have been one of the most terrible on record, and making some allowance for the excitement at such a time enough remains to show how almost unprecedented was the calamity. "You will scarcely credit me, " says the writer, " when I tell you that a house situated at the bottom of the valley and the railway station, was literally battered in by a drift of hailstones. The doors and windows were burst before the inmates could escape, and they were actually buried alive in ice. When I saw the house 24 hours afterwards, ,it was still about 4ft deep in hailstones, though they had Deen clearing them away with spades. Just as I got there, they recovered the body of a poor woman who had perished oa this spot, and from about a mile vp 1 the valley no less than 57 bbd'es were found." One ssd incident among many others was the finding the boty of a lady who had been recently married. She was discovered on the road opposite the railway station. She was kuown to have left Buda in her carriage aad pair, but no remains were to be

teen of either horsea or equipage. Fhey were all probably swept away into the Danube. There are many people still missing, and the recovered lead, I fear, do not represent the number of those who have perished. We lavo intelligence to-day also of a terri1c storm in the canton of Geneva, where on the night of the 7th inst. the lailstones broke the windows of the vhole country side, and many lives we're loat.