Another Great Prophecy Fulfilled — Page 26
tha~ lu. . IJlllCh·: ~f. _. tlle. affe~4 ·-. a~e~ · t\!'e "p:~44-' ;-:c;,roP:- ~QS been destroyed by-floods. · "The most serious blow to cultivati~n at the moment pro. bably arise~ from the destruction of su'gar factorie3. As His Excellency the Governor pointed out, the three districts affected contain :;i. bout 20. 0,000 acres of sugarc_an~, producing two and a quarter m1llioh tons of ·cane. At least half the ~"ills whi_ch deal with cane have been put out of action. This creates a serious problem for the cultivators. " (The Civil & Military Gazette, Lahore, January 26. ) In the; comse of his appeal for the Viceroy's Earthquake Relief Fu,nd,. the Governor of Bihar said It w:ill convey some idea of ·the extent of the area affect- ed by the earthquake if I say that the areJ. of greatest destruc- tion is as large as the whole of Scotland and supports five times its populatioti and does not include those parts of Bihar lying to the south · of the· Ganges, where loss of life and damage to property was on a lesser scale. " In the towns of North Bihar there is probably not one masonry house which is altogether undamaged, while thousands of houses are completely destroyed, with not a wall standing. In' one congested bazaar of Monghyr the ruin was so complete that for days it was not po:;sible to see where lines of streets had been amid areas of destroyed houses. " Some thousand. s of lives !lave been lost and those thousands might well have been tens of thousands if the shock had been at night instead of at mid-day. The urban population affected is r. ot less than half a million souls, some of the towns having a population of from 50,000 to 60,000, while altogether there were 12 towns, with between 10,000 and 60,000 inhabit- ·ants that have been wrecked. " Soldiers, who have flown over Bihar, liken it tQ a battle. field in the destruction of land. Over a large area ryots have had their lauds spoiled by fountains of water which poured out from the fisi;ures and gushers and spread over fields sand to a depth, varying fr:otn a few inches to three feet or even more. . . . . . The full extent of this damage to some of the most fertile terdto_ry of India wilLnot be known for. a long time, but in the part, which has been visited by the Director of Agriculture and the Director of Industries their estimate is that over an area of 2,000 squaremiles near Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga o~e-half. . of the la:nd bas been affected in this way and iri one-sixth ,. de_p. osi t JJf ~:;m4 ill very. deep. . Air: re{:onnaisi;ance has ·shown