Year: 1871

A FEW minutes past 3 o'clock the awful
visitation opened its fury without a mo-
ment's warning, blowing from the south
west, coming up the river in diagonal
line inclining eastward in its ADVANCE
terrible whirling force, compacted in q
path of about 600 or 800 feet wide, and
rushing onward with roar like an angry
sea and the velocity of birds flight. AT
another time perhaps it will be possible to
collect particulars of the coming of the
tempest, but yesterday hardly a witness
could be found who could give coherent
statement. They all seemed TO think that
it smote the earth as with sudden blow,
and they knew not that it was coming
until it was upon them. They did not see
it coming, but only felt its awful seizure.
The tornado seems TO have barely touched
our southern limits, but to have kept east
of the city, and no very alarming damage
was done until it struck East st. Louis
Here it manifested its dreadful power,
within q space of three minutes, in man.
ner never before equaled in this part of
the country, and almost indescribable.
Let the reader imagine an irresistible air
torrent rushing against the frail, artificial
structures of man, situated on an exposed
river bank. In moment the air is filled
with splinters, dust and fragments of all
kinds. Houses, sheds, and other structures
disappear as if leveled by the blow of a
Titan, or fly to pieces and are borne along
in the stream of the storm. The East st.
Louis elevator was the first edifice struck
on the Illinois shore, strong frame build
ing. The roof was torn to ribbons, and a
large portion of it, like a black meteor,
shot northward and fell far away in the
river. Then came the destruction
of other houses; some were un-
rooted, and some were rent to pieces, walls
and all, and the unhappy inmates buried
in the ruins. The stately steamer Mollie
Able, lying at the East st. Louis wharf,
had her texas blown off and hurled in the
river. The bridge tug Hewitt had her
wheel-house disposed of in the same way,
and became a wreck. The whole forest of
framework over the east .abutment pier of
the bridge was twisted up like bunch of
reeds, in the fingers of the storm, and
crashed down in a pile of chaotic ruin.
Railway cars and engines were dashed
down on their sides, or whirled off the
tracks, as if they were paper boxes. Whole
| trees were either struck to the earth, as If
the trunks had been severed by cannon
shot, or lifted bodily, and carried yards
away from where they a moment before
stood. Put all these distinctions together


and hundred others; fill the air with a
maze of whirling objects, and imagine
sky as black as ink, scanned every moment
with tongues of lightning and reverberat-
ing with thunder crashes, while there is a
steady roar of a great rushing on earth,
and some idea may be gained of the out
burst of the tornado on East st. Louis. 1t
was an awful someone never to be for
gotten. The very suddenness was terrible.
Here, moment before, business of all
kinds was In progress, and now the whole
population is shivering aghast, while tur-
moil, and destruction, and great noises rage
all round them, on all sides, mingling with
which is the piteous cry of the agonized
sufferers, caught between timbers or pres
sed between weights that crush them
to death. So swift, so sudden, so short
was the storm, that it seemed like the pas
sage of some enormous invisible missile,
dragging ruin in its train.


The tornado did not last more than
three minutes. As above stated, il
seemed to come from the southwest,
and, touching the Illinois shore first al
the elevator, passed along the river bank,
incliaing eastward and terminating at the
track of the Toledo, Wabash & Western
Railroad, nearly at the head of Bloody Is
land, and, at this point, about 500 yards
from the river, Its speed is estimated at


between go or 20 miles an hour, and its


strength was almost irresistible where


any flat surface was exposed. What dam.


age was done south of the city was moi