The Potteries Examiner : — 1879-12-13 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

WAS WORKED.  The Times correspondent at Berlin telegraphs:— The assassins who attempted the life of the Czar the other day at Mosner seem to be still at large. In St. Petersburg it is now believed that the young man previeusly arrested at Elizalatgrad with canieters of dynamite and packets of poison on his person belongs to the nefarious ring of conspirators who mined the Moscow line; but he obstinately refugee to give the least account of himself. The police, however, have subjected to a searching examination the Moscow notasy in whose presence last September was executed the contract for the sale of the house adjoining the railway which served the conspirators as poiat d'splout in their murderous enterprise. The price of theotenexhent was 2, Vie roubles, or about £'d7o sterling—a proof among others that the plotters were possessed of wealth. Few were observed to enter their dwelling in the daytime, though equipages were often heard to draw up before their door at night. Sedulous care, howeyer, it seems, had been taken by the solitary inmates of the cottage to make a very favourable impression on any casual corners. That the patriotism, for exe I ample, of the indwellers might never be so much as doubted, portraits of the Emperor and of members of his family were hung conspicuously round the walls, while their fervid piety was attested by the dispiay of several images of the saints' before which the pale and penitential taper was constantly burning. Certain appearances once, indeed, attracted meghbourly curiosity as to what was going on within this monastic domicile, but the occupant seems to have obviated all further inquiries by ex• p:aining, that he was merely seeking to enhance the utitity of hie dwelling by having a cellar sunk in it. As a mutter of fact, Lowenr, the late explosion has revealed what he and his accomplices were doing. First c,f all the assamins sank a shaft about 18ft. deep under the tloonf their dwelling, and from which they laboriously bored or tunnelled a passage to u point about 50 yards distant, under the per. manent way of the adjacent railway line, where they construeteal a spacious chamber for the fatal charge, which one authority estimates to have consisted of about 100 pounds of blasting powder, though molten-glycerine would seem to have been also used. The connecting tunnel or passage aforesaid, of triangular form, measured over Oft, high, and about Olin. at the base, being walled with planks and even bricks to prevent its falling in. In the course of their excavations the murderers, it is calculated, must have had to remove 00,000 lbs. weight of soil, and the silent secrecy with which they did their work testifies to the terrible earnestness of  their rjeclution. That they bad wealth at their i command Las been already indicated, while the fact of their having planned and carried out a mining operation which would do credit to the ablest heads among the Imperial engineers proves them to have been no mere vulgar criminals. Their infernal purpose, however, would probably have been bellied in its full extent even had the passage of the Imperial trains in their usual order enabled them to apply the electric spark at the proper moment, for the line at the spot is double, and the engines, it seems, contrary to custom, did not on that particular evening approach Moscow by that set of metals directly under whims the charge was stored. How destructive this was may be judged from the fact , that the mere shock of the:explosion was felt at the . distance of a mile, and that the steel rails were oompletely shivered, sleepers and heavy clods of frozen earth being flung about fifty yards away from the line.