Destruction and Loss of Life In September, 1933, the news reached Shanghai of a great earthquake that occurred in West Szechuen and had its centre at Tieh-Chi, a walled town overlooking the river, 40 miles north of Maochou. Native reports at the time made it clear that Tien-Chi itself had perished in the upheaval and that great dams in three places had been made in the bed of the Min. The lowest of these dams burst a month later, sending down an enormous wall of water that carried death and destruction everywhere down the narrow valley as far as Kuanhsien, where the river broadens its channel on entering the Chengta plain, The damage first from the earthquake and second from the flood was known to be enormous but it was not til this summer when several foreigners travelled through the region that the unparalleled nature of the disaster became really known, The town of Rich-Chi was situated fon a plain 1% miles long and half a mile broad. Below it in a very deep ravine ran the Min River. At the Southern end of the plain a mountain stream had cut a big channel for itself, so that the town wall skirted the lip of the river ravine and ran along the upper sloping edge of this valley.
Behind the plain to the East rose high, steep mountains while to the West, on the other side of the Min, great beautiful peaks stood up like mighty bulwarks of eternal strength. No more enchanting scene was to be found in all these Western mountains, The plain itself was very fruitful. On the mountain slopes around it and in openings or valleys between massive peaks, could be seen the numerous villages or "forts" of the Chiang aborigines. Peace and_prosperity reigned unhindered. Every time the writer visited the place his Jament was that no artist had ever visited the locality to put its unsurpassed beauty on canvas. This year, contrast to this once fair ished gaze!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.