Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1878-02-16

- A-ANCn -
COnAtRnttDOple-''F Fire Rmd sword
Behlpd snow ard Starvation All
Around ''-SOins Terrible scenes.
A correspondent writes as follows
from Constantinople, under date of
January IS:
From Sophia, Tartar Bazardiik,
Philippopolis, and from some hun
dreds of intervening townlets and
villages, pours an ever-swelling
stream Of fugitive "anti-humans."
Their numbers have clogged the
railway, and the stream has been
damned at Rouleti Bourgas, where
the branch turns off to Dede Agatch.
There the way Of fugitive-laden
traini SIS barred by troops, which turn
them off to the soath-running line,
the Bgean coast, the bare, bleak,
feverish, fOodless region beyond the
lagoons of Enos, in whose road
stead lie waiting some old sea.
worthless craft, to bear away the
few to the ports of Caramania, while
the rest lie on the shore in naked
ness, hunger and disease. CoHstan-
tinople can bear no more. In one
week thirty-fye thousand desti.
tules-for whom one would feel
sorry if they were not anti-hu-
mans have poured into the capi-
tai, and they flow in still, paralyz-
lug every resource of aid, and driv-
ing the prefecture (Which faces its
labor manfully), the compassionate
commissioners, and all the rest of
the philanthropic hierarchy to des-
peration. When the last train left
Tartar Bazardiik the town was
burning, and the Russians with
the contingent of the Bulgarian
Vengeurs, were close at hand. The
station was thronged by thousands
of fugitives with "bag and bag
gage old, young, women, maid
ems, children. Fire and sword be-
hind; snow and starvation all
around. The train, the last posi-
ble train, and a precarious one,
too, for the Cossacks had been seen
about Hermanli already--was the
last desperate chance of escape. In
their anti-human peryersity these
folk did not go for tickets in or
derly fashion, but they threw them
selves on the train, filled every
Granny, hung on between the car
riages, TO buffers, and anything
that offered grip to their despairing
clutch. To dislodge them was i'm
possible. The train left. Comes
the incline. The overloaded train
parts, and the severed trucks glide
backward. The engine is reversed.
A slight shock runs through the
part of the train still attached; the
grasp of benumbed hands relaxes
with the jerk, and off they drop.
The wheels crush off extended
limbs which ought to have been
kept within the gauge; but the
cow-catcher of the engine gathers
a dozenSo Sor so in its concaye bars as
it backs, and speedily reduces the
fdgety mass to uniform but un-
slightly rest. What is raked out
from under the engine is politically
uninteresting. 1t merely swells the
carrion crows share in the Eastern
question, which in point of profit
has SO far been the largest, The
lightened train goes on its way, hav-
ing recovered the backsliding
trucks. 1t is at Tchorlou and the
stations just beyond where the fu-
gitives have most accumulated.
Famished masses are there to be
counted by thousands, dependent
for a morsel Of bread npon what
charity sends to them from here.
This flight is the most fearful phase
of a war already literally garnished
with horrors; and the worst of it is
yet to come, for what we see SO far
is only the beginning. At great
council held to-day at the Seraskie-
rate, his majesty presiding, it was
decided to evacuate Adrianoplo; and
unless we get peace in less than
a week the population of that great
town and the thousands of fugitives
which it shelters will be streaming
down here, barring those which are
turned off to the coast towns of the
Marmora and the Egean. SIAM
boul is in utter dismay. The whole