Another Great Prophecy Fulfilled — Page 22
22 Again the Editor of the same paper writes " After touring for three days through the striken area, I can say from personal knowledge that the disaster that has befallen is incalculably greater than the reports of it so far appearing in the press would seem to indicate. What I have seen with my eyes is more than what I can describe in words. "\Vhat a disaster ! what a calamity ! what a misfortune ! In the twinkling of an eye a vast area, about two hundred miles long and a hundred miles broad, has been laid in ruins. Thousands of years old civilizations and centuries old valuable monuments and precious relics have been wiped out of existence. Happy homes, pround and stately palaces that used to be full of the bustle of life and were wont to resound with the merry laughter of children, have all become converted into dusty heaps of ruins over which clouds of vultures and crows are hovering. "Railway lines have become wrecked ; motor roads have broken up and become pitted with large holes and yawning chasms ; the fields of the husbandmen have turned into bogs ; about a thousand of the villages have become entirely cut off from all supply of water. During the earthquake most of the wells in the affecte:i area became transformed into so many craters of volcanoes out of which quantities of sand and a kind of black mud discharged. At many places the ground has ripped open and huge chasms have formed into which cattle have fallen a_nd been killed. " The earthquake has wreaked its greatest fury on Monghyr, an old town founded by Raja Kiran, with narrow streets and narrow bazaars and with houses three or four storeys high. On the day when the catastrophe happened, numbers of men and women from the neighbouring villages had come to the town to make their purchases for the coming Eid festival, while the Hindus were busily making their preparations for the Basant festival. Suddenly a dreadful noise was heard which seemed to be proceeding from the interior of the earth, and which grew louder and louder until it seemed as if it would pierce and split the very drums of the ears. Then a violent trembling siezed the earth and the houses began to rock back and forth drunkenly. Soon loud crashing noises filled the air. followed by thick clouds of dust. Every one stood transfixed with horror, unable to help either his neighbour or himself. After a few minutes, when the whirlwind had passed away and the situation had eased up a little, those who survived the shock looked round to find that all M 0 nghyr had been reduced to ruins, and heard on all sides ioud shriecks and moaning noises coming from under the debtis of tb. e fallen b. ouses. These were the wailings of the