Murcia Flood Devastates Spain and Signs of Physical Disturbance
Full reports from the recent flood in Spain show it to have been more disastrous than any event of the kind on record. Almost the whole Spanish province of Murcia was engulfed. Towns were swept away, and over three thousand people were swallowed up in watery graves. Preceding months had been months of intense heat and drought. Not a cloud had been seen, and the river had become so low that carters drove along its empty bed. At 9 o’clock Sunday evening, Oct. 19, the approach of the “mistral,” a cold, biting wind, from the direction of Cartagena, was felt. The heavens were almost instantly overclouded, and the storm burst upon the people. By midnight the river was overflowing its banks in the city of Murcia, and the watchman, by ringing the alarm bell, aroused the inhabitants just in time for many to escape the sudden ruin, while in that city alone more than one thousand perished. Seven villages are reported as swept entirely away, and the devastation through all the province is complete. This, with the double flood in Hungary, the memory of which it so vividly revives, the succeeding earthquakes, the disastrously wet season in England, and the drought in France, with cyclones and famines in other places, show uncommon disturbances in the physical world.