Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1881-04-30
The Recent Floods in Dakota.
AsroUx CRY Iowa special to the Chlcag

A SIOUX Cry Qowal special TO the Chicago
Tribune OF the 10Th says;
At little station, on what was once tho
Dakota Southern, called Mecklin, are ia peo-
pie, men, women and children. All are quar-
tered In Taylors Elevator, living on the bare
boards, without covering of any description,
and many of them destitute of the proper
clothing. Thirty ofthe number are seriously
sick-nearly all the women in fact-and their
condition is pitlable in the extreme. Yawls
from Yankton have carried them some food,
but they need, or soon will, much more.
Their homes are desolated or utterly annihi-
lated, their cattle and horses drowned, and
even the very land, once theirs so changed in
appearance end covered with ice and sand
that, the water gone, they can
scarcely tell where their several
boundaries are or their localities fixed even.
They can no more hope to ra,se crops this year
than they can to resurrect their dead stock.
Isolated from any but the rarest visits from
their fellows, the weaker among them gradu-
ally succumblng TO want, cold and despaii,
the long days and longer nights bringing
naught of hope or comfort who can wonder
that even frontier hardness and hopefulness
have waued TO the vanishing point They are
represented rs huddled in touching misery,
causing stout men to grow moist-eyed and
curse their inability to give speedy relief.
Even If they could be taken away there is
no place to take them. Their neIghbors are
nearly as bad OF, and lack the wherewith
TO relieve their wants. Your correspondent
has been asked over and over again to try
and awaken practical sympathy for them
among the Eastern people, and of my
own knowledge | can say that clothing, food,
medicine or money sent here would be faith
fully distributed and accounted for. Should
any donations be made i would advise that
they be sent here care of DIR. w. Z. Smith,
Mayor of Sioux City, or to Yankton, via this
place care of Captain d. d. Wheeler, United
States Army. AS soon as boats can run up
the river the supplies could be carried to their
several destinations. There need be no fear
of sending an over-supply The sufferers are
absolutely destitute. With one or two men
who have come down here in yawls have had
interviews, and they say it Is completely be-
yond them to conceive why the loss of life
was not as entire and appalling as the
destruction Of property. That women and
children especially should escape from such
an aggregation of terrible forces is mex
plicable, and possibly time may reveal
numerous casualties at present unsuspected.
Let me tell you of one terrible voyage. About
eight miles above vermillon stood before the
food two log houses, the property of Hanson
and Larson, brothers-in-law. On the day of
the breakup Hanson got uneasy, but seems
to have lost time trying to save his stock, so
that he and his hired man had to take a boat,
ana therein carried his wife and children to
Larison's house, which stood on a little higher
ho ho,r ,ld
Larson. who is so feeble as to require assist
ance. Scarcely had they entered the house
ere they felt it moving under them. Terror
stricken, they ran to the window TO find them
selves in the center of a moving, crashing
mass of ice and flood, steadily
going down the river. OF the terrors of that
dark riue who shall speak. The reverberating
detonations of the huge bio ks of ice, as
forced into the air, they fell again, grinding all
beneath them into powder, the almost abso-
lutte certainty that in few moments at best
the house would give way and leave them
struggling in tho fhr~-- ss,.-.l-s.,-,,a TIM
agonzing fears the husband and father must
have felt as to the fate of those left behind,
whom he had no reason to suppose would es-
cape, all made up situation as terrible as
any of Jules Verne's mos narrowing imagi-
nation. But the stanch logs fasten-
ed together by large wooden pins
held firm, and seven miles below Vermilion,
fifteen from the starting point, the ark of safe
ty found an Ararat and rested, IL not on dry
ground, at least on some motioness founda
ton. Forcing open the back door, fancy Han
sons astonshmcnt ut finding quietly chewing
her cud and standing securely on huge block
of ice the favorite family COW, who had shared
the perils of the awful journey, and is to day
alive and well in Vermilion, having climbed
the barrcades Of ice like a chamois. Hanson
and his man, after perilous journey over the
newly-formed ice, succeeded in making theii
way to Vermilon, carrying old Mrs. LarisoI
with them most OF the way. Meanwhile, those
left behind in Larison's house had really suf
fered more, though not in apparently so mucf
danger, for the house stood firm. A couple o.
brothers named Weeks, who live about fou
miles north of Vermilion, volunteered to go t.
Larison's in yawl, if possible and learn thu
fate of those left there After much DANCE
and difficulty they reached the spot finding al
alive though sadly distressed. Mrs. Hanson'
feet we're frozen solid. An had lived for tive
days on raw chickens, the fowls having beer
driven by fear into the house. Had hot hell
arrived when IL did death must have soon en-
sued. These incidents and the particulars
have given rest upon undoubtedly authenti,
reports. [ could multiply similar storie
dd tnfnitum.