GREAT STORM IN ALGERIA.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 25, 3 February 1863, Page 3

GREAT STORM IN ALGERIA.

Setit'and the valley of Boumerzoug, near Constantina (Algeria), were visited last week by one of the most destructive storms of hail, rain, and Wind ever known in that part of Africa. The storm passed rapidly over Constantina itself without doing much injury, but burst with indescribable fury over the country of Kroubs and the OuedTraenia. In the former place not a vestige of cultivation remains. The hail literally cut all the growing crops to piecesj, and the river of Ain-Guedjaou, swelled to a torrent, swept everything before it, leaving a bed of mud in some places not less than three feet deep. Several houses '.vere thrown down, and one woman drowned* At OuedTrnenia and Setif, the hailstones were of enormous size, and the flood from the mountain torrents came down with such rapidity that a great number of Arabs assembled for the market at the former place were soon breast-deep in the water. Some of them took refuge on a large iron roller used for the roads, and weighing at least six tojis ; but in vain, for the water drove the roller a distance of 1,000 metres, and all of them were drowned. Ninty-five men jperished >nt thi« place, and of gSQ'pi^s

brought for sale only one escaped. When the Hood subsided the banks or the torrent were strewn wilb dead bodies of men and animals. At Setif, not less than 100,000 tiles wei'e broken by the hail, and nearly all the game and small domestic animals in the environs were killed. All the inhabitants forty in number, of a kabylu village, about ibur leagues from Setif, were drowned, and their houses destroyed. One dead body was carried by tho Bou-Selam to Djidjelli more than l\o leagues. During the storm the cold was intense, and many Arabs who had been carried nway by the torrent were found clinging to trees, and frozen to death in that position.— Galignani.