The Magnolia gazette. [volume] (Magnolia, Miss.) 1872-current, 1883-09-27
The Yenr,s Cnlamlties.

~
The disasters of the current year haved
been most extraordinary. Their fire.
quency, and the appalling character of
most of them, are constant source of
remark. Leaving outpestilence, which
in Egypt is working frightfnl havoc,
having already destroyed 10000 lives
probably, the record of catastrophes is
most gloomy. About 400 lives have
been lost in this country by cyclones.
BY the falling of the pier at Tiyoli, near
Baltimore, 100 souls per.shed. In the
flood, invading the III ne at Braidwood,
n persons We're destroyed. BY the
burning of the Ncwhall House and 9th
er hotels, 100 human beings have been
done to death in the flames. BY the
upsetting of North Carolina boat Is
persons were drowned. BY the railway
collision at Carlyon 80 persons were
crushed to death The New York
bridge panic caused the death of 10 per-
sons. These are only the more conspic-
uous of the-catastrophes which in this
land have thrown shadow on so many
homes. On the other side of the water
the same law of casualty, only, if any
thing, more terrific, has prevailed. A
panic in "a factory at Bombay resulted
in loss of 13 lives. An avalanche on
Mount Ararat buried 100 souls. A boil
er explosion in France swept away 81,
a mine explosion 127, and an explosion
in Sicily 30. A fire in Hungary burned
up 30 persons. another in Italy AZ, an
explosion at Scutari 100 The circus
disaster in Poland killed PCS persons.
In the floods in Germany. and Austria
140 were drowned. The Cimbria car
ried down with her 434 human beings.
In the Sunderland panic POP children
were swept into eternity. More de-
structive than all was the terrible loss
of life through the earthquake in Ischia,
where 1000 persons are believed to have
perished. How far are these calamities
to be attributed to natural causes. which
man is powerless to control, and how
far to the ignorance or carelessness of
men? 1t seems quite certain that the
Newhall tragedy, the Sunderland hec-
atomb, the appalling destruction of
the Cimblia, are, to large ex-
tent, referable to human Responsiveness
that is to say, that the foresight and
knowledge of which men are capable
might have avoided these disasters
Liht tilS SlNdp llAfi liltN
a lesson of the reign of natural law and
the inexorable necessity that man con
form thereto Ii anything could move
the stony heart of nature il would seem
to be a gathering of fond mothers and
their iRpocent children at the North
Point pier, or that assembly of sweet
ness and love that was slaughtered at
Sunderland, or those poor girls flinging
their arms through the flames and
crying for help at Milwaukee, But
nature hears no prayer A fire-trap is
a fire-trap all the same though hum
dred homes be desolate, hole with no
exit is cage in which fright does its
appalling work precisely as though a
thousand hearts did not ache. Is the
saving now so common that ''human
life is the cheapest thing in the market
true? If so, all the worse for human
nature. It is much feared that this
saying, at least, is not quite lie, and
can not be regarded as slander until
parsimony and avarice shall be elimin-
ated from the causes or the occasions OF
disaster.
The disasters by cyclone and extra
ordinary floods are beyond criticism.
Science has not yet discovered what a
cyclone is; some. say a wind-storn, a
concentrated hurricane, others say an
electric storm, the very reservoir of
lightning dropping down to the level
of the earth, performance of nature
on lower stratum, such as is all the
time going on in the clouds. The
cyclone the prophets to the con
trary--can not be foretold as yet And
there is no defense against il but cave
in the earth. The belt of cyclones even
is uncertain within wide limits, so that
they can only be infallibly avoided by
the abandonment of any country where
the cyclone is known. Till science,
therefore, shall catch'up, at least, men
must call the desolation caused by
terrific whirls of wind and water and
electricity as being due to natural
causes, and in no sense refer them to
the responsiveness of men. The fact
that calamities come not singly, that
railway disasters, fires, and all the train
of woe come in groups, and that other
forms of disaster take the same occasion
to work ruin, is one of the strange
things which neither philosophy nor
religion is competent to solve. The fact
lis none the less glaTing, and the
current year is sufficiently conspicu-
Gus illustration. ~ Chicago Times.