The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1893-01-17
THE ROUGH UP-ENDED FRAGMENTS
The Mass Has Become Perfectly Solid
For Six Feet Through.
GREAT DESTRUCTION OF Property
the Barges and Steamers sunken
and Loat-Other News.


special 20 1HE CHKONICLEl
CISo1NNATI, Jan. IL 1t requires
stretch of the Imagination to picture
5000, 900 tons of ice moving at five
miles an. hour down the Ohio river.
The ice in forming gorge in the river
does not lie fiat. Gorges are formed of
up-ended fragments of ice inclining for
ward and downward in the direction of
the current. In this way gorge may
be four to Elk feet thick. Its upper
surface is craggy and jagged. Water
rising in the interstices freezes. The
mass thus becomes more or less solid.
pecially at the present stage of the
river, twenty feet and rising, is a con-
slant force tending to tear the gorge
loose. Floating ice accommodating at the
upper end affords another power to tear
the gorge from the banks.
At two O'Clock yesterday afternoon
this mighty glacier of 100000 tons be-
gan to move with horrible groan and
the hills echoed with the terrific scream
ing of score of steam whistles. Slowly,
as if with great difficulty, the mighty
mass began to move, at first fracturing
it's icy body with detonations like the
sound of musketry. Crunehing and
grinding the shores, crashing against
the great stone piers of the five monster
bridges, on it went with force no NOR
tai power could resist and increasing its
speed every minute. Nineteen steamers
and a hundred coal barges, empty or
loaded, had but two or three inches of
oak plank to present resistance to this
ponderous aggregation of power. Every
man was at his post on the steamers,
and every man was hero. Again and
again the pondero GUS chains that held
the steamers and wharfboats to their
moorings were parted and as often skill
full hands repaired them. The two
bridges above the public landing broke
the ice somewhat and prevented the
otherwise inevitable destruction of every
packet.
BY 8 O'Clock all apparent danger to
the steamers at the landing was over.
The gorge had passed and the river was
comparatively clear. One towboat, the
Mattheson, valued at $4,000, was sunk
and destroyed. Down below the des-
truetion of coal barges and other prop
erty, from accounts at this hour, has
been terrible. The harbor towboats
Comet, Benwood and Alice Barr were
going down with the gorge, fully manned
and working heroically to break the ice
and save property. The gorge that
moved past Cincinnati extended from
Cooney Island, above the mouth of the
Lite Miami, to below Anderson's ferry,
distance of nearly eighteen miles. For
two miles below this the.water was clear
and open. Then came another gorge,
beginning at the mouth of the Great
Maimi and extending below Lawrence
burg. This lower gorge was about five
miles long. The upper gorge with its
doomed coal fleets crashed into it and
tore it out, and now both are grinding
their way with q terrific roaring far
down the Ohio at five or six miles an
hour. Here is the nearest approach to
an approximation of the destruction of
coal fleets: Forty five loaded barges,
worth $4,000 each, $3.50, 900; sixty empty
barges, worth $1,000 each, $120, 900.
total $4,000. Not one cent of in
surance is held on any of this property.