by those who have experienced it. From fire there may be
escape under most circumstances; and its victims are often
stifled before the flames reach their prey. For them who
cannot swim or are without an ark of safety, the lapping of
the rising flood as it mounts by slow but sure ascent before
sweeping off its victims is the most relentless persecutor.
They are unbound, but are as powerless as though they
were chained to a rock. The horror of the scene by day
becomes an agony of doubt by night.
One man with his wife, two children, and his mother, with three men, after floating seven miles on a stack of barley, escaped by the exertions of those on land. Tales of distress were relieved by heroic deeds of life-saving. One man swam a mile with a boy upon his shoulders, and swimming a mile in an enraged torrent bearing wreck with its foam is totally different from swimming in smooth water, and without encumbrance of clothes. The misery caused by the flood it was impossible to gauge. The loss of live stock and crops was estimated at £35,248. Hundreds of the inhabitants were homeless, and without means of subsistence. Two hundred and thirty-eight women, four hundred and sixty-one children, and seven hundred and ninety-four men, were objects of relief in a community of seven thousand five hundred persons.
While the waters were retiring, King issued an order (28th March) reducing the rations of those victualled from the public stores. On the 20th June the ration was further reduced, pending the reaping of wheat in November, and the arrival of rice ordered from India.
Special attention to garden cultivation was earnestly impressed upon the settlers, "and particularly turnips, carrots, and cabbage, for which the present season is most favourable." In June the Governor "observed with much concern" that many gardens were neglected in the time of scarcity, and "no vegetables were growing."
"As such neglect in the occupiers points them out as unfit to profit by such indulgence, those who do not put the garden ground attached to the allotments they occupy in cultivation, on or before the 10th July next, will be dispossessed (except in cases where ground is held by lease), and more industrious persona put in possession of them, as the present necessities require every exertion being used to supply the wants of families," &c.
