The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-05-14 00:00:00

THE AMERICAN EXHIBITION.

The American Exhibition of the arts, inventions,
manufacturas, products, and resources of the United

. .
States—such being its official and advertised descrip-
tion—opened on Monday at Earl's Court, and it will
remain one of the sights of the London season, until
October 31. If with regard to our exhibitions at ,
home, in London or elsewhere, difficulties are always ' A number of fires of a disastrous character are re-
found in getting exhibits ready to time, it could ' ported from different parts of Hungary. During the
hardly be expected that an exhibition composed whole of last week a dry, hot sirocco was blowing from
entirely of American productions, which have to be the south-east, parching up the vegetation, and render-
collected from different parts of a very big country ing- trees and timber of all kinds more than ordinarily
and conveyed across the Atlantic, would be an exceP- inflammable. Amongst the numerous conflagrations
tion to the rule. As a matter of fact, the practical that followed, one of the most destructive took place
portion of this American Exhibition is not complete at Toroczko, in Transylvania, a village with a flourish-
ss yet, and some days must pass before the
ing manufacturing industry. The place has, in fact,
block of buildings 1200 feet long by 120 feet
been totally reduced to ashes. The fire, in the course
wide, planned in sections with intervening streets duly
of two days, destroyed no fewer than 300 houses,
numbered, will be quite ready for critical notice.
Nothing has, however, been more striking than the while four persons, in addition to numerous oxen area
rapidity with which the Exhibition as a whole has other domestic animals, perished in the flames.
In another fire that broke out in tlae little town of
been brought to its present state. A few weeks ago
all was a very chaos of building materials. Ruszkberg, on the frontier of Hungary and Transyl-
vania, 37 houses, besides the church, the schoolhouse,
Now the grounds are prettily laid out, and the great
pouse of iron and glass is built; and the balance of and a large number of stables and outbuildings, were
burnt to the ground.
work left for the future will speedily be mastered.
The Wild.. West Show, however, is already in full A still greater disaster, however, is that which took
swing. Colonel Cody, his Indians, his buffaloes, place at Eperies, the centre of North Hungarian
horses, and deer have not only arrived in this country, Lutheranism. In that place 400 houses have been
destroyed, together with the Town Hall, the Evan-
but have for three weeks been established upon their
own territory at Earl's Court. The Exhibition gelical College, and the old Lutheran Church. The
total of some
23 acres, offered to the proprietors by the Metro- flames caught the latter during a Divine service that
grounds are in two sections, a to
was being held in commemoration of the bi-centenary
&tided by the West London Railway. of the execution of the Protestant martyrs who on
politan Railway Companies to whom the property the Bth of . May, 1687, were decapita.ed by the
belongs, and
The sections are united by a substantial bridge from Austrian General Caraffa. Other buildings burnt
down at Eperies are a Catholic monastery and chapel,
Fourth-street of the Exhibition's township, to the
ceLt e of the `',i the post and telegraphic offices, the savings bank, and
rand Strand, stretching in horseshoe
shape round a part of the track round which the the district • courts of :ustice. The fierceness of tie
fire may be gathered prom the fact that the flames
Red Indians, cowboys, and scouts career on horse- wafted over the cemetery have ruined most of the
back. The opening day was in some senses cere-
monial in character, and the admissions were chiefly , tombstones in the grounds. There have been many
lives lost, most of the victims being children, and a
restricted to the holders of season tickets, and special
guests to whom invitations had been sent. The grand numter of charred bodies have already been dragged
from among the ruins, four of them being those of
stand, acccommodating 20,000 people, is the largest
erection of the kind we have ever had. The Prince Young girls. Of the 12,000 inhabitants of Eperies
5000 are ruined and at this moment without shelter,
of Wales, Mr. Gladstone, and a large number of and their sufferings are terrible.
notable people have already visited the Indian en- A fourth great conflagration that took place about
campments, Mexican village, corrals, and stables, the same time was at the town of Great Karoly,
and a private rehearsal of the performance was given when °GO houses, the Town Hall, a church, two
before the Royal visitors last week. In London much school houses, and the buildings attached to the
interest has been aroused in Buffalo Bill and his Castle of Count Stephan Karolyi were destroyed. It
company of the 200 persons who are representing was only by dint of the most strentious exertions that
ei,•isodes in the adventurous life of the Wild West: the castle itself was saved from the flames. At Great
There are a score of items in the programme—all Karoly there are now 3000 persons 'Tined, and with-
being characterised by picturesque groups and colours,
out a roof over their heads.
dramatic and rapid action, wonderful feats on horse- The last cases are those of the market town of
back, and with the rifle, suggestions of prairie war- Kurtics, near Arad, where 514 houses have been re-
fine, camp life, wigwam customs, buffalo hunts, and duced to ashes; and, finally, the village of Meregyo,
savage attacks upon travelling emigrants, an the near Klausenburg, in Transylvania, which was burnt
d
log cabin of the white man. The painted and half- , down on Sunday.
naked Indian warriots do not actually destroy their i The losses caused by the great fires at Eperies,
victims, but they carry the action with marvellous Nagy Karoly, and several smaller places in Hungary
effect up to the very scalping point. The feats: of
the Mexicans and the cowboys with the Broncho and Transylvania are estimated to exceed 5,000,000
florins. All the Hungarian and most of the Austrian
horses and mules, and steers, are as amusing as they
are exciting. insurance companies are heavily involved, and many
mercantile houses of Vienna will be great losers.
Eperies has been burnt down no less than 14 times
during the past seven centuries.