Everywhere in its track it annihilated houses, tore off roofs, destroyed trees and crops.

The men were in the towns, the women and children at home in the country getting crippled, killed, frightened to insanity; and the rain deluging them, the wind howling, the thunder crashing, the lightning glaring.
This for an hour or so.

Then a lull and sunshine; many ventured out of safe shelter; then suddenly here it came again from the opposite point and renewed and completed the devastation.

It is said the Chinese fed the sufferers for days on free rice.
Whole streets in Port Louis were laid flat--wrecked.

During a minute and a half the wind blew 123 miles an hour; no official record made after that, when it may have reached 150.