San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1883-02-22

tan was seized by the police on the
Odd. Her captain then claimed that
he had waited twelve hours at the
scene of the collision.
The calamity on the Southern Pa.
cifc Railroad in California was due,
according to the verdict of the coro.
ner's jury, to neglect ON the part of
conductor Reed and brakeman Pat
ten. The overland express train
which left San Francisco on the 10th,
stopped at Tehichipa to take on an
extra engine to assist in pulling up the
Tehichipa grade. BY some means or
other the train got away, and started
back down the grade of 100 feet to
the mile. The train consisted of two
engines and eight or ten cars, some
of them sleepers filed with passen-
gers. The train went wherling down
the grade at II frightful speed for q
distance of four miles. Then a curve
was reached, and two sleeping cars
and the mail, baggage and express
cars jumped the track and went down
an ,enbankment fifteen feet
high, where they lay piled in shat
tered heap. They caught fire, and
passengers who were imprisoned in
the wreck were burned to death.
Many of the unfortunate victims were
held down by pieces of timber or
heavy iron. Only one man was dug
out alive from under the first car.
There were sixteen lives lost.
California had another accident
that day besides the railroad horror.
The Atlantic Giant Powder Works,
near Oakland, was the scene ofalmost
five simultaneous explosions. Nearly
forty men were preparing twenty-five
tons Of the powder for shipment to
Portland, Oregon, when the explosion
occurred. The men were blown to
atoms. The shock of the explosion
was felt seven miles away, where the
people ran from their houses, think
ing it was an earthquake. Houses
for distance of half a mile from the
scene of the explosion were shattered,
and men painfully wounded.
On the same day the ship Vorwarts
was sunk off Libau, and eightpersons
were drowned.
The day following witnessed the
death of another famous man in
France, Gustave Dore.
The same day three coal trains,
consisting of three engines and sixty
nine cars, became unmanageable on
the Georges Greek and Cumberland
Railroad, near Cumberland, Md. All
were coupled together, and when they
got in motion their. momentum was
so great that it was impossible to stop
them. They went down the steep
grade with frightful rapidity, until
one of the engines jumped the track,
and the rest of the train went crash
ing down an embankment. An en-
gineer, d fireman, and three brake
men were killed and several others
mortally injured.
On the 26th the steamer Agnes
Jack was wrecked near Swansea. She
went ashore on q reef, and was just
out of range of rockets, and utterly
out of reach of boats. The people on
shore saw twelve of the crew clinging
to the mast Of the ship. One BY one
they were swept away. At last the
captain stripped off his clothes,
plunged into the waves and swan for
shore. He too was drowned.
On the 30th Of the month great
slides swept down the noun
tain sides of Colorado, and hurled
miners and their buildings to de-
struction. One slide started at the
top of Ruby peak, near Irwin and
rushed with terrific velocity down to-
ward the valley. 1t travelled a mile
and half, carried away all the shaft
houses and machinery belonging to
four mines and buried eight men. In
three other places in Colorado slides
occurred that day which resulted III
disaster and death.
On the last day Of the month came
the news Of the wreck of the Italian
steamer Ansonia off the coast of
TripoH, in which twenty persons per-
ished.
Ics twenty Feet Thick.