New-York daily tribune., 1858-10-01

In tne bPpaIHug tTukcuy vi enc uoo'iuCuVu VI
the Austria. the details of which we have given 80
minutely from the lips Of the survivors, there are
two points which have nOtyet received the attention
they demand, and which, unless elucidsted as far
as possible. will leave this terrible calamity q
warning which may well dismay and alright us;
but not lesson from which we may gather some
precious wisdom. If our high civilization, in its
war with the elements is to bring with it such
terrible defeat and disaster as this, when the ten
derest and the weakest, those who appeal
most to manly strength and manly love for
protection and care, the little chldreL and the
helpless women, are called upon to face death
in an intenser agony of the mind and more e1-
Quisite torture of the body, than it had ever
seemed, to the widest dreams of the most in
genious cruelty of the wickedest of men, horrible
to devse-if such are to be the periodical revenges
which the elements are to take upon man, be-
cause he has bound the sea and the Winds the heat
and the cold as slaves to do his bidding, it were
better to 20 back to those primitive and early
ages when men feared the forces of nature and
escaped their anger by not braving their power.
II such awful catastrOphes must come, at least let
us try to gain from them such knowledge as
shsll prevent the recurrence Of others precisely
similar five must run the risk of roasting alive
before huge slow fires. or leap. to escape that
painful death, blazing into the remOrseless sea, or
drop stfed and helpless, like wasps sufocated
with birthstone, into consuming fire, let us hope
that those who may come after us may, from our
wretchedness, grow wiser, and avert just such
cslamities as have overwhelmed us.
What was the origin Of the fire on the Austria !
And why did if 80 instantaneOusy fill the ship with
flame, as if she were some huge gasOmeter, sufo'
eating and torturing the poor human creatures who
had no time to escape to the deck 1t seems GER
tain that the origin of the conhagration was in a
single bucket of tar, and heated iron; and it il
equally certain that such fire could at the outset
have been covered with mans hat, or, at least
smothered by a single blanket, But instead of
this. the alarm, though given on the instant, was
already too late, and the ship was as completely
filled v th fame below the deck as though upon
ever, lumber, and in every creyice from stem to
stern, she had been covered with gunpowder
There must have been some unusual condition Of
thinps 10 account for this swift destruction which
requires explanation.
Some Of our contemporaries We observe. are
enforcing the necessity Of such an arrangement Of
water-pipes and stop-cocks on ship board as to
render il impossible that disastrous FIRE should
ever again occur at sea. The suggestion is un-
ouestionably good one, but it would have been
of no avail in such case as this Of the Austria
The misfortune there was not that they hsd no
water, but that they had too much. There is but
one way TO account for the universal and rnstsn.
taneous connagrstion which enwrapped the whole
interior Of the ship in dcvouring fame; aud that
+. that upon TINT first germ ind nucleus Of Gre in
the overthrown bucket Of tar, pals Of water were
dashed, ard along her tarred decks. down into her
lod over the tarred sesms Of her plhnk cornbusti.
5lr az gunpowder, and into every creyice and cor.
ner where liquid could run, rushed the whtcr bear.
ing along with it fierce and hungry fame, feeding
answ upon eyer-fresh material. and growing every
secor,d hungrer and hercer the more It bckod up
sith its deyounng tongues. Quicker than words,
almost quicker than thought It consumed tho vital
air and left the victims about whom Il wrenthrd.
srd CURED and scorohsd. nothing but Hane and
smoke 10 breathe. The only one comforting
thought in imagining seems ~ frgbtfol is. that
the struggles Of these helpless beings were brsi