Connecticut western news., 1880-04-28
THE MISSOURI TORNADO.
The Horrors of the Hurricane which Created such Devastation in
 the Southwest.

Additional particulars of the great Missouri tornado only add to the horror of the story. The enormous and un- 4eontrollable forces of Nature spread destruction far and wide. The distress in the utterly ruined town of Marshfeld, Mo, naturally arouses the greatest sympathy, as it should. There was re- peated, upon smaller scale, the awful tragedy of the great historic earthquake at Lisbon in 1755, in which over 10000 persons perished The fourishing little town is almost literally swept away.
 Shere 200 happy dwellinghonses stood 1on1y twenty are left. Of SGa ialias1isitalrts, nearly one hundred were killed. Of families, 150 are homeless and in need of everything. Then the destruction ex- tended in every direction. The tornado travelled far and travelled fercely, and the mortality, when it shall be definitely re- ported, will be found still larger. It Is seldom that any catastrophe occurs of such proportions. There is sad con- solation in the reflection that this literal fatality cannot be attributed to human carelessness and negligence. Even if it could have been foreseen, how could it have been guarded against? Smitten by the enormous forces of nature, how powerless is man And still, our friends on western prairies might earlier push the work of tree planting. Considerable groves check the sweep of high winds and effect important climatic changes As these western communities prosper, they ought also to put up stronger buildings. The lathe and shingle struc- lures are swept away by the whirlwind like chaf. Possibly no edifice could be constructed strong enough to resist the fury of such storm as the last; but 1t would be better to try the experiment. It is pitiful to build a town which in a moment may be demolished with 8 con- siderable portion of the population buried under the ruins.
 Meanwhile the story of this disaster reads like fable, or leaf out of the ad- ventures of Baron Munchausen. It is almost impossible, even by the aid of the iveliest imagination, to conceive of 8 wind strong enough to strip the bark from the trees. It is hard to believe that carts, animals and other ponderous ob- iects were carried like bits of paper or like straws through the air. We are not accustomed to such suspension of the laws of grayitation If a returned traveller should tell us of storm in Central Africa which swept a child for two or three miles through the sky, and then lodged it safely in a tree, we should not believe him. Though this western in sanity of nature, if we may say so, must have been fearful to those who ex- perienced it's direful effects, the imagina- tion takes a strange pleasure in dwelling upon the hurly-burly which spread SC far and was so fearful-upon the gather ing cloud no bigger than mans hand which spread to such @ universal pail upon the howl, the crash, the shrielz, the wondrous commotion which threatened terrestrial destruction. Alas to the poor people bereaved of those they loved, and driven from their homes, there was probably nothing sublime in the spectacle; and even the professed lover of the strange, the supernatural, the un. precedented, may well ask to be spared the experiences of such sight.