CHAPTER XXI.
Great Calamities Caused by Flood and Gale During Past Centuries—Millions of Lives Lost Through the Fury of the Elements.
Since the great flood which covered the earth, and of which Noah and his family were the only survivors, the world has seen many calamities of this nature, and millions of lives have been lost through gales and rushing waters.
At Dort, in Holland, seventy-two villages and over 100,000 people were destroyed on April 17, 1421.
At a general inundation of nearly the whole of Holland in 1530, upward of 400,000 people lost their lives.
In Catalonia, in 1617, 50,000 persons perished by flood.
Six thousand perished by the floods in Silesia in 1813, and 4,000 in Poland in the same year.
The loss of life during the recent floods in Austria-Hungary and in China have never been fully reckoned, and though 100,000 persons are said to have perished in the Chinese inundations, the figures are not regarded as trustworthy. These are the only floods on record where the loss of human life has been estimated at over 5,000. The list of smaller similar disasters is almost an endless one.