THE LATE TYPHOON AT HONGKONG.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4283, 11 December 1874, Page 3

THE LATE TYPHOON AT HONGKONG.

(By AEgles, in the Australasian.) Up to this time I have not seen in the Melbourne journals any detailed account of the typhoon which lately wrecked Macao and half destroy eJ A... —hi fi-iaml w»>l ttAO. me (sth October) ;—-“Did you ever experience a typhoon, or cyclone, as they are sometimes called ? I have, and pretty bad ones, too—as, for instance, one in Wampoa (near Canton) in 1862, when some 50,000 people were drowned and- killed in the province of Kwaug-Tung. Hongkong only got a spit of that one, but unfortunately the full force of the last apparently expended itself over Hongkong and Macao. The appearance of our pretty colony is spoiled, for nearly all the trees and shrubs are either up-rooted or blown down, and 15 or 20 years will scarcely put the place in the same condition it was in before the typhoon. Macao, less substantially built and more exposed to the force of the sea, may be almost said to no longer exist. The papers I send will give you a faint idea of the loss of life ashore and afloat, and the terrible destruction of property. Of II vessels at their anchors at Macao before the blow, only two remained afloat. A Portuguese man-of-war was carried 12 miles inland, and is stranded in a ricefield. In Typa harbor, out of COO junks only II were found after the typhoon. The loss of life amongst the native floating population will never be ascertained correctly, but it has been terrible, and amounts to many thousands. In Macao (Portuguese colony) they had to resort to wholesale cremation, and for many days hundreds o£ bodies were regularly disposed of iu this way, and on one Sunday 1000 were burnt. In Hongkong (British colony), owing to the disgraceful and inconceivable remissuess of the authorities, nothing was done towards clearing tho harbor of corpses, and consequently they were floating about in hundreds, and washing up against the Praya wall (what was left of it) close to the houses, and the stench was something fearful. In every direction I turn nothing but wreck and ruin meet my eye —here a whole block of houses blown down ; there tho side of a house blown in. Scarcely a house iu the place had a whole roof. Two steamers sank close to the Praya, alongside what was our wharf. You can form some idea of the state of.the atmosphere, and force of wind and sea, when I tell you that, although these vessels struck within 30ft. of the Praya, and therefore close to the houses, those who were saved from them did not know till the wind was taking off where they wore ! Had the wind lasted two hours longer, Hongkong would have been a heap of ’•"ins.” T ni'"' l llot recount how my friend’s own housotvas blown i.t... came to tho conclusion that I would almost as soon live in Melbourne as in Hongkong diu-ing the typhoon months.