The temperate zone has its occasional hurricanes, though they are by no means as powerful or as frequent as those of the tropics. It is stated that in the year 944, one thousand five hundred houses were destroyed by a tempest in London. In the year 1090, it is recorded that a violent storm overturned six hundred and six houses in London alone.
Terrible as is the destruction of the cyclone in the western world, its fury here can not give a fair idea of the awful havoc it makes in Oriental regions. All through the Malay archipelago, along the coasts of China, Japan, the Phillipines, Hindostan, and Farther India, the ravages of the Storm King have been appalling, far exceeding even the terrible hurricanes of the West Indies.
Hindostan affords peculiar facilities for destructiveness of cyclones. Both its great rivers flow, for the latter part of their course, through low alluvial plains, and their deltas extend into the ocean directly toward the region of monsoons; so that a hurricane may send a great tidal wave up the river: while the low rich plains for miles around are but few feet above tide-water, and teem with a population attracted by the amazing fertility. So a sudden great storm may totally submerge, without any warning, hundreds of square miles of these fertile tracts, with all their inhabitants. Even when the sea-wave is not added to the horrors of the storm, the losses are fearful. A cyclone at Calcutta in 1867, destroyed thirty thousand houses, wrecked or sunk six hundred ships and smaller vessels in the river, and killed ten thousand persons in the city alone. When to this is added the havoc committed by the storm--one hundred miles wide--in the rural districts, as it traveled on toward the foot-hills, it is clear that every reader may be devoutly thankful that such terrible visitants are altogether unknown in our land.
Terrible as this storm was, there was a greater one on the 5th of October, 1864. About one hundred ships were lost; and over sixty thousand persons perished; forty-three thousand in Calcutta alone. It was accompanied by a “bore” on the Hooghly, the water rising thirty feet, which is ten feet higher than the highest spring tides; whole towns were nearly destroyed. It indicated its approach for several days, and Capt. Watson, of the _Clarence_, seeing the barometer falling, knew a cyclone was approaching, and saved his ship by steering out of its range.