The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1870-01-28
The Tornndo-Destr ut Cave City,
Kentucky.

The Louisville Commercial publishes de-
cidedly agonizing account of 'The Desolation
of the Cyclone, and Horrors of the March of
the Demons of the Air. otherwise the lorna
do few days ago at Cave City. We quote as
follows:
About half-past four the down train having
passed some time, distant roaring or rever-
berating sound was heard approaching from
the South and West Those who heard 1t
compare it with the sharp, loud roar of can
non discharged, which lasted but a few mo-
ments, when the wind monster swept over the
doomed town, and left destruction where
peace and quiet was nesting around. The ap-
preaching cyclone shrieking, whistling roar
ing on the ground in dense, black cloud, ac-
companied by sharp, loud, electrical discharges,
while, preceding the demon of the storm, balls
of fire burst and flew from its front, while
within it, continually curling and vibrating
with q terrible individuality, were pyra-
mds of electric spirals, all forming q
terrible cloud of such peculiar spiratory
motion that it appalled, the spectator
Professor Williams, a most intelligent and
scholarly gentleman, observed it from his win
dow on its approach, and says that it moaned
and shrieked as it tore along the ground with
an uuearthly sound. Before it reached the
| town, the air grew warm and thick with i'm
| pending misfortune, the flashing of the light
| ming became enc constant illumination, and
| suddenly all grew dark again. The demon Of
the winds, in the form Of this dense, dark
cloud, hugging the earth, came sweeping on
| with a terrible roar, and in a moment COM
| menced its wild work of destruction. Strik
| ing j. HI. Browns house, in which were him
self and family, in a twinkling it scattered 1t
piecemeal, iDjuriDg no one but Mr.. Brown
himself In front OF his house was timber
growth of red oak, post oak, black jack, and
| hickory, many of the trees measuring from
ten to twenty inches in diameter, which the
storm wrenched up by the roots, twisted into
fantastic shapes, splintered and threw down
again, carrying bodily an hundred feet many
of these huge riven trunks and sweeping the
ground after it as with gigantic bosom, car
rying like chaff heavy plank fencing hundreds
of yards strewing for miles, indiscriminately
the little hills with the debris and shreds Of
| house, and barn, and fence, leaving nothing
to mark where either stood, but here and there
| few Stats with lime adhering to them, and
| splitrails driven into the ground a nursery be-
longing to Messrs. Higgins & Son, numbering
| thousands of young peach trees, was whipped
| into smooth, bare little switches, their iringed
| tops showing how complete and entire the
| wind had shorn them of every vestige of foli-
age, and how biting had been the searching
wind Scorning such game, the tornado
leveled the timber right and left of the Bowl
ing Green turnpike, strewing the road with
shapeless heaps and confused piles of large
and small trees, carried bodily into and over
{ each other, as a child might fling handful Of
crushed and broken wisps of straw to the
, winds.
| [Although the Demons of the Air have
! subsided, the writer is supposed to be stlll go
ing on