Friday, May 25, 2012

Tremendous Inundation In Germany And France


The Augsburg Gazette contains letters from Munich, Nuremberg and Stuttgard stating that all the rivers are overflowed.  Between Salzburg and Linz railway communication is cut off.  The waters of the Iser have left their bed, and at Nuremberg the Peignitz has become a great river, so that many of the streets and squares of the city are completely inundated.  A temporary bridge connects the two portions of the city and the Nuremberg correspondent could not appear on the 31st of January, because the building in which it was printed was flooded with water.  At Cornstadt the Neckar has risen nine feet above its usual hight [sic] and at Halle boats were plying in the market place, and crowds of people had to make their escape from the lower floors of their houses in skiffs.

The Garlarnhe Gazette publishes a letter from Mannheim dated the 3d of February stating that the waters of the Neckar were still rising and that every spot was overflowed clear to the Heidelber turnpike.  The Rhine, too, was ten feet higher than usual and still rising.  At Roxheim an arched bridge had been carried away, and the great dyke ant Rheingennheim was broken.  The Neckar was filled with wreck, among which barrels, doors and various domestic utensils were seen floating off.  At Wertheim, the Main rose eight feet in twenty four hours and people were navigating the streets in boats.

In France and Belgium the floods were still more disastrous.  In the latter country, the whole valley of the Meuse is desolated, the great accumulations of snow in the Vosges mountains in France having melted very rapidly under the influence of the late rains and mild weather and precipitated themselves into the Meuse river.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 3

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