first act of the magistrate is to haul in two or
three half-drowned creatures, and to set a lamp
as a beacon to others. In this way ten or twelve
are saved; and then the water gets into the
house, the chairs begin to float about and block
up the staircase; and the whole party, fearing
to be cut off, go into the upper rooms; natives
praying, crying, and then sleeping; Englishmen
getting into a sheltered corner, and then dozing
off, too, from sheer exhaustion, to wake just
before dawn and find themselves wet through,
while the lightning is playing over their heads,
the roof having been torn off, fortunately in one
piece, while they were asleep. What a scene
when the sun rose! nearly three feet of water
still over the low ground; corpses everywhere;
men and bullocks washed into verandahs, and
lying about in "compounds" (grounds round a
gentleman's house); the town nowhere; here
and there a baked-brick or chunam house standing
(mostly roofless) amid the waste. Not a tree
spared, except those which (like some palms)
yield to the blast. One wave had done it all;
but that wave spread so far that a lot of arrack
casks were found six miles inland, and was so
strong that it lifted up one of the harbour lock-
gates and dashed it on a strongly-built house,
crushing it like a nutshell. The sepoys' lines
were swept down like card-houses; the salt
mounds wofully shrunk; the rice in store all
damaged, so that every one had to be set to work
to crush the husk off the paddy (rice in the
hull), of which there was fortunately plenty;
and one of the things most urgently called for
from head-quarters was a supply of pestles and
mortars, that all hands might be kept employed.
Then the wells were all sanded up, or spoiled
with salt water: only one fit to drink from in the
whole place. The Treasury wrecked; all native
records and such of the English ditto as were on
the lower shelves destroyed; and among the
laughable incidents, "the whole stock of stamps,
official and postage, swept away;" a fresh supply
"urgently requested;" and (the doctor writes)
"my case of instruments was found, five days
after, full a mile off." Sad stories of European
suffering during that wild night: saddest of all,
the fate of the little scholars at Mr. Scharkey's
Church Mission School for native girls—thirty-
five drowned out of fifty. One poor lady,
writing "with a thankfully sorrowful heart,"
tells how she and hers "passed a night of terror,
with three feet water in the highest rooms,
huddled together on a sideboard, wet (for the
roof was off), and the children choking all the
time with whooping-cough." In every case
Europeans and Eurasians have lost all their
clothes and personal effects—no light loss, we
can readily understand, to people lately started
in official life. Everything in India, too, is one
hundred per cent at least above its English
price. Yet there is no sign of whining from any
but the missionaries. One of these gentlemen
from up-country, where they had only wind—
though that was bad enough, marking its track,
writes a native tahsildar (headman of a district),
by levelled crops, and cattle killed by falling
trees or buildings—finds time to groan over "our
vegetables which were promising so well, and
are now just spoiled;" and "our custard-apples,
which are stripped of their fruit and most of
their leaves;" and "the Rev. Mr. Darling's arm,
which has received some injury, we have not yet
heard what." These holy men are often accused
by old Indians of a little over-regard for creature-
comforts, and surely the reverend writer of the
above seems to justify the imputation when he
can talk of cabbages and custard-apples, while
one-fifth of the people of the Kistna district are
dead and four-fifths houseless, while there are
thirty-five thousand in Masulipatam who must
starve but for the immediate government help.
They get cooked rice now, and are paid for burying
the dead, and have leave to use up the fallen
trees for rebuilding their huts; so that, for the
present, they manage to hold out. By-and-by
will come the rub, for the crops along the whole
seaboard, soaked with brine, will never grow
again.

Naturally the first great want was coolies
to bury or burn the dead, to unstop the
wells, &c. These were soon sent in by the
different collectors up the country. The stench
is described as terrible (one writer says he
rowed up the river; "it was full of corpses").
Fortunately it is winter, but disease is always
dreaded for a population constantly at starving-
point. The Madras government talked of sending
off at once the president, &c., of the Sanitary
Board to "take proper measures." Of
course they sent tents, disinfectants, food, &c.,
freighting a steamer which was luckily at hand;
promising, too, to remit taxes, and relax "jungle
conservancy laws." The collector, who had
written for leave to spend thirty thousand
rupees, and who apologises for sending his rough
draft, being fairly beat after five hours' hard work
in the open air, is empowered to do "whatever
may suggest itself to him." Immense power
these civilians have. A young fellow not seven
years from England is found acting as high
sheriff and chancellor of the exchequer over a
tract as large as Devon. It is an ugly name,
"Collector," savouring of John Company's bad
old times, but they who answer to it have, on
the whole, always nobly sustained the English
character for uprightness, and self-restraint, and
perfect incorruptibility.

It took twelve days to clear away the worst
of the debris, and get rid of the dead men and
animals. The immediate neighbourhood could
not help much; for the storm was felt full
twenty miles inland. At Bunder, for instance,
almost the whole police force was killed: further
off, in a navvies' village connected with the
Kistna anicut works, not a house was left
standing. A resident in Nursapur, going into
Masulipatam to inquire after some friends, finds
the village of Kottha Savady entirely swept
away. Of a large choultry, where travellers had
rested for years, nothing was left but two strong
posts with their cross beam, by clinging to
which the only two persons who escaped out of
all the inhabitants were saved; some of the