The San Francisco call., 1898-04-27

many of the workmen losing all their clothing and personal belongings.
 Fortunately the powder works do not keep a great supply of the product on hand. Saturday night special train left for the East with eight cars of over forty tons of brown prismatic powder for ten-inch rifles.
 Both packing houses and all the oth- CT mills have all windows broken.
 Employed at the works were ITO men working elve-hour shifts.
 The elegant homes Of Superintendent Bernard Peyton aId Wilbain Peyton overlooked the powder works. Every window in these mansions and much in the houses were destroyed by the terrific shock.
 The laval Reserves have just re- turned from the powder works, where they have been engaged in fighting fire They succeeded in keeping the fire from the magazine. and the fire was quickly brought under control.
 The Coroner has brought in the bodies of Luther Marshall and Ernest Marshall. One was found on the side hill, the other in the creek.
 In one of the mills that exploded work had commenced only last Sunday, the building just being completed.
 The excitement in Santa Cruz to- night is high and the streets have been
  discuss the explosion. The men who are employed at the works each has his story to tell Telegrams by the score are being sent by the men who escaped to friends telling them of their safety.
 Hundreds of cords of wood used in the manufacture of charcoal for powder has been burned.
 Wilbur Huntington Jr. was at work within 100 feet of the explosion paint ing a house. He was twirled off the ladder and when he struck the ground the contents of the paint bucket had painted his face red.
 The work of erection of new mills to take the place of those destroyed will be commenced immediately. It will not take long. The work of making pow der will go right on without interrup- tion. There are a large number of mills.
 An eyewitness to the e-,Dlosion says that all that cold be SC was a whirling of clouds of smoke, then a tre- mendous explosion. Then could be seen the iron roofs. timbers, pieces of ma chinery, iron pipes in the air and next the falling to the earth, and the flames which devoured everything before them. All the buildings and debris were on fire.
 Another witness said he WIS seated on the front porch of the navy smoke less building. 300 ards from the rifle smokeless building, which was the first to go.
 The cause will never be known, as the men employed in this mill-James F.. Miller, Carlyle sKoss, Ernest Mar shall and l uther Marshall-will never tell the tale. All were In the building at the time of the explosion.
 The next bU lding was the shotgun ar Han6lau'c cr11OlralaSc it Is called. Handley. on hearing the first explosion, ran from the building where he was at work and had only got a short distance from 1t when it exploded. He as miracul Isly saved and was soon at the village to meet his wife. who had come from town almost frantic to find what had been his fate.
 The guncotton warehouse is supposed to have contained between three and four tons of guncotton, one of the worst explosives known. This created the biggest flames of any of the explosions, and when it went off the flames shot hi"h in the air affording a tremendous spectacle.
 The last and hardest shock of the ex- ploson was that of the vacuum dryer. Here is where the shotgun smokeless r -vder is dried by a new process. The new smol1eless powder building. which was near by, and w~s under construc- ton, was destroyed as result of the concussion of the explosion. There was no powder in It.
 The amount of powder exploded will never be known. but it reached into the thousands of pounds. The powder is shipped to the Government as quickly as manufactured. a fact which render cd the disaster less appalling than it might easily h.ve been.
 The scene at WeSSendorf &, StaffIer's undertaking parlors is a ghastly one. Here are the bodies of eight of those who lost their lives. Of the eight only two are recognizabl, The first one brought in was that of Edward Gil- leran, killed by a falling brick while on his way to his house. He was found by his son.
 Only one body of the seven who were killed in the actual explosion is recog- rizable. that of Luther Marshall He is the only one whose head is on the trunk. All that remains of two of the victims could be placed in lat.
 Al first there was wild talk that the exrlcsion was the work of a Spanish s;,y. but there seems no ground for this belief. The works were carefully guarded, and the men had worked un- der such pressure that it is supposed some of them got careless. At best. the danger of accident at a powder -mjll is always recognized, and no means of averting it has yet been devised.
 The eXploSiOn was confined solely to