Carl Dambeck

“ The wave was noticed as far as Mehurpore, on the Matabangha, It caused the loss of 50,000 human lives, but the destruction of life would have been far greater had the cyclone occurred at night, and had the people, as at Bacarganch been surprised in their sleep. While this wave was ascending the Hooghly, and spreading over the neighboring districts, a portion of the same wave seems to have struck the coast near Chittagong, and, having swept along the same, to have overflowed the islands of Shahabazpore and Hattia from the rear. ”

“ Wherever the storm-wave struck, not a third part of the population, it is believed, survives. The islands have only a fourth of their former inhabitants. The odor of the decaying carcasses is intolerable, and a general outbreak of cholera is hourly expected. ”

“ Thus the country situated about the mouth of the former river was, on October 31, 1831, overflowed by a storm-wave to a distance of 150 miles from the coast, and 300 native villages with their 10,000 inhabitants were destroyed; and it was visited a second and a third time by cyclones on October 7,1832, and September 21, 1839. At the mouth of the Hooghly on the 21st of October, 1833, some 10,000 lives were lost in a storm-wave, and on May 21st of the same year, near Coringa, 600 villages, with 50,000 souls, were swept away. ”

“ Still the condition of the survivors just after the catastrophe was better than was to have been expected. The farmers of that region are the most thrifty in Bengal; the provisions are mostly kept buried in the ground ”