Fortunately this great flood did little injury to life or limb. A certain
amount of destruction of crops and other property was inevitable, but on
the whole the loss was not so great as was at one time feared, and much
was saved that at first seemed irreparable.
A well-known lady artist came near to giving the note of tragedy to the
British community, and losing the number of her mess (to use a nautical,
and therefore appropriate expression) by reason of a big willow tree,
beneath whose shady boughs she had moored her floating studio. This
hapless tree, having all its sustenance swept from beneath by the greedy
water, came down with a crash in the night upon the confiding house-boat,
and all but swamped it.
The cook-boat, occupied as usual by a pair of prolific Mangis and their
large small family, was saved by the proverbial "acid drop"--the children
crawling out somehow or anyhow from among the branches of the fallen tree.
The fair artist, having with shrieks invoked the aid of a neighbour, he
promptly descended from his roof or other temporary camp, and helped her
with basins and chatties to bale out the half-swamped boat. The lady is
now safely moored to the mudbank on the other side of the river where
willow trees do not grow.
The whole bund is in a very unsafe state: it was raised three feet after
the last flood, but its width was not increased correspondingly. Now that
the water has fallen, great fissures and subsidences have appeared, and in
many places large portions of the bank have fallen away, carrying big
trees with them.
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