Travel Diaries and Journals

at Mud Point the house was found standing, all the bunds being washed away & traces of the fury of the storm everywhere visible. At Diamond Harbour the "Bentick" Sanatarium had drifted anchor & all over the land; an Arab ship was sunk in Rangafulla Channel (island) another at Hospital Point; trees blown down everywhere & some torn up by the roots. The banks of the river as well as the river itself, were dotted with the bodies of cattle & human beings, further up the effects of the storm appears thicker & more disastrous from the more populous nature of the districts, all the villages on the banks of the river being razed to the ground.

Midnapore

The following letter from Midnapore gives a graphic description of the storm by one who was travelling from Ooloobariah & was caught in the midst of it.

I left Calcutta (Garden Reach) at 5 PM on Tues- day Octr [October] 4th & reached Ooloobariah at about 7.30 PM

least 400 hundred people had accumulated at the ghaut hoping to get across & I had some difficulty first to procure myself a passage when the boat arrived, & secondly to prevent too many people coming into her. Thus I had been 35 hours at this river & with next to nothing to eat. On arriving on the other side I found my fresh bearers had gone away. My old ones being nearly starved refused to take my on but they got a lackey for my palkee & I walked the next stage where I found a Thannah (a station) & was fed & provided for arriving at Midnapore at 6 am on Friday Anything like the desolation on the road I never saw. It is no exaggeration to say ther is not a single house standing . The Darogah (superintendent) told me that up to the time he was speaking to me he had received reports of the deaths of 224 named persons within his Thannah alone, at Tumlook only 27 houses & they pucka are standing out of 1400. The pucka house in which I took refuge had had its top story blown down.