Year: 1871

C'rent Height aud Immense Force of the Bill


damage 10 kniIrona Properly.


The Duluth Tribune of January II has II de.
tailed account of the great gale on the day pre- .
vious, and of the damage done to the break
water, etc, from which we extract the follow
ing


During yesterday afternoon the old lake pre-
sented view the grandeur of which no pen
can describe. The intense and unparalleled
fury and the great power of the wind Cor, more
properly speaking of the tornado) from down
the lake rolled up the waves in enormous bill
lows, from 10 to 20 feet in height, and some
times several hundred yards in length, which,
following each other in rapid succession, were
tossed about on the surface as though they pos
sessed no more weight than so many feathers,
or were rolled over and over again, one after
another, as though they were lignt cork cylin-
ders OF the huge dimensions above described.
These pillows striking against and rolling
the break water gave that structure the appear
ance of an ordinary mill-dam. Those abroad,
who have during the past few months visited
Duluth, can perhaps get some idea of the great
force OF the waves, when we say that the spray
caused by the dashing of the pillows against the
breakwater oftentimes reached to the top of the
elevator engine-house chimney which is 104
feet high, and when we say that the chimney is
this morning encased in ice on the lake side
from bottom to top.


But, although our breakwater Yesterday
demonstrated its ability to withstand the force
of all waves that could be brought against it,





nary or usual quantity of ice, yet such phe-
nomenon as that which occurred last evening
was not one which could have been reasonably
expected or which was fully provided against
in the construction of the breakwater; and the
result was that was for want of sufficient rip
rapping the incessant battering of huge cakes of
ice-some of them weighing many tons-aganst
the breakwater succeeded, at about ten o'clock
last night, in tearing away the upper portion of
one of the sections which not sufficiently
fortified, and which had more strain on it than
any of the rest. The crib or section thus in-
jured is the one ad accent to the foundations of
the elevator; it is some forty or fifty feet in
length, and is the same one that was partially
torn away during the great storm on the 4th of
last May, when only partially filled with rock,
and which was very hastily rebuilt Immediately
thereafter


After the tearing away of the upper portion
of the crib referred to, the ice showed through
the opening and piled up on the raildock and
tracks from one to five or six feet in height;
the small trestle platform on the outside of the
dock, near the car scales, gave way beneath the
great weight of ice piled thereon; one of the
great, wide doors of toe freght-house was
crushed in, and four or five tons of ice showed
in and deposited on the floor; a few feet of the
sliding on the southwest corner of the building
was torn off. The foundation, or that portion
of the injured crib of the break water which is
below the surface, is believed to be in place,
and not much, if at all, damaged: and it will re-
qure but n short time to replace the injured
crib with a new and more substantial one.