To the Editor of the "Norru-Cama Dairy News."
-Smr,—A severe flood has swept this district, and left in its track a scene of distress, and local desolation. Homes have been destroyed, lives lost, and crops ruined over considerable areas. On the night of June 29 the Kinghsien River began to rise, and created considerable destruction. It swept over the houses and huts on its banks outside the city, and carried away many of these. Four men in a hut were isolated, and were on the point of being overwhelmed, when the police rescued them. Four men at a dossing were living together in a straw hovel, when the water suddenly rose on them, and took the hut. away. They have not been heard of since. Then the water burst over the city wall, and swept into the city Mud huts fell everywhere, and by the morning of June! 30 hundreds were houseless. At a place called Chiensuichiang the river: ose to a height of five feet on the street, and over 100 people, it igs stated, were carried away and drowned. Past our own city gate a two-year old child was seen floating on the terrible current in a frame hed, the remains of its home. What became of it no one knows, and what of its parents, no one can guess.
To illustrate the prevalent distress let me quote an example of a family outside the city. A widow and her son and three daughters were living-in a straw house, with mud walls. They had under crop yellow beans, maize, and vegetables, with wheat stored in the house. When the waters came up they tried to save what they could, but the flood came into the hut, and they-had to fly. They gathered on a small green stretch of land, slightly higher than the surrounding fields, and there waited, with five other families. The son disappeared, on a few bamboos tied together, trying to save some of the things. The water crept up and up, till there was only a narrow strip of green left, about twenty feet long, and five feet across. Here they spent the night in terror with five other families, with no covering from the _pelting rain, and not knowing if they would be overwhelmed and swept away. The son, it was afterwards Jearned, was carried away by the current, and had to abandon the things. He finally found a knoll, on which he passed the night, in the wet. He received a wound in the foot, which is now poisoned. The house fell soon after they left it, and their little furniture was either swept away or destroyed. The crops were all destroyed, but they had the wheat left. When they went to recover that, however, it had sprouted, and moulded, and most of.it will be lost. For six days the daughter says she has not been dry, and the children are the same.
The above is a typical instance
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.