New-York daily tribune., 1856-08-19

Disastrous as the storm at New Orleans has un-
dcubtedy been, we are in hopes that more full
accounts will reduce rather than exaggerate the
facts alleged by the telegraphlc reports, as it is
almost certain that the dispatches contained errors
One of these was in the statement that caving in
of the river bank at Bayou Sara had carried away
three hundred residences" 1t is hardly likely
that the whole town has slipped into the Missis-
sipp; and, OtberSi-e, the number of dwellings
destroyed cannot be three hundred.
Last Island the scene OF the greatest loss of life,
is lot above New Orleans, as We understand the
term-tbat is, up the river. 1t Is on the Gulf
Coast, in the Parish Terrebonne about eighty miles
south west OF New. Orleans, across a tract of
try impossible for any thing but row boats that
navigate the bayOus aud lsgoOns, where the most
abundast form If life is found in musketOes and
alligators. The space not covered with water is
occupied by tall rusbes and grass; so that 40
boats may be within twenty feet and still out Of
sight of each other. Planters from the banks Of
the Mississippi, and from Bayou Lafoure1e, some
times take their families down to Last Island,
GraLd Gallon, or Barataria, in their own boats,
thr ugh these interior channels, though they more
frequently 60 by steamboats, down the Mississippi,
by its tortutus channel, rearly one hundred aud
fifty miles, and thence west yard. This Island and the
other places devastated by the storm are very much
resortd to in Summer time, hot merely for sea-
baihDg but because the residences of the planters
are often so unhealthy as to render temporary emi.
grafton Indispensable This will account for the
great number Of persons there, and the number on
the boats between there and the city.
The cause of so great a loss of life becomes
plain when the topography Of the country is under
stood. Upon coast the interior lands of which
are go little elevated above the water level it will
readily be believed that tn, islands are only fiat
sand-barr, over which the waves of storm. tossed
ocean may easily be driven with irresistible fury.
Such violent food, and not the mere de- tructon OF
the buildings by the wind alone, was, We doubt
NIT the murderous agent which killed 60 many
persons. The situation OF the people in the houses,
InaDy of which we're of the rudest kind, was very
much what it would be, in northeast storm and
spring tce, in the bathing g-houses on Coney Island
beach.
This is by DO meaps the first disaster of the kind
'Hot hos uSCuIIto VI tuht Cohsh' Au iO"Ot IL "p
remember rightly, during severe northeast
storm, the whole country below New-Orleabs vas
submerged. Lake Ponchartrain and the river
united, and the tide swept across all the Hat
country south and south west Of the city, covering
hundreds of plantations along both ba Ks of the
river; but, fortunately, without severe wind aud
not With such dephof water as TO destroy So m'nS
lives as the late storm perhaps because the issads
were not then places of resort. We also remember
similar storm which did great deal OF mischief
at SuhiyaD's leland another lO~ sindbank In the
hsrbor Of Charle,too, the waves sweeping across
the i,labd in the same way, carrying off the frai
tspeuents built there for the Summer residences
Of ciz,rs rs we'll as Of planters, obliged to abay..
dou their plantations in tie Summer to escape the
usiaria aud dsathly fever prevailing through al