A TOWN FIRED BY NIHILISTS.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1579, 12 March 1879, Page 4

A TOWN FIRED BY NIHILISTS.

[From the “ Globe.’’] A correspondent at Moscow sends the following particulars of a fire, ascribed to the agency of the Nihilists, which has just destroyed the principal quarter of the town of Eiazan : —At seven o’clock on the morning of the 27th October, a fire broke out at a largo fruit shop in the Gorschetochni-prospect, one of the leading thoroughfares in the town. Two hours later a second fire was seen in the Astraken-street, where the best shops are situated, and the firemen were endeavoring to extinguish it, when, at twelve o’clock, a third fire was announced in a street adjoining it, scarcely 100 yards away. Finally at one o’clock, a fourth fire broke out in the outskirts of the town. The simultaneous character of these four fires left no doubt in the mind of the Governor that they owed their origin to incendiaries, and fearing lest they should bo the preconcerted signal for an emente, he telegraphed off to Moscow, which is 120 miles to the north, for all available fire-engines, and to Yoskresenski camp for a regiment of soldiers. In reply to this demand Prince Dolgoroucki at Moscow collected thirty-nine fire-engines, waggons and hose reels, and with a number of firemen, sent them off by special train to Eiazan. On their way thither they picked up four companies of soldiers and Cossacks at Yoskresenski, and then with two locomotives sped their way to their destination. The conflagration was so vusb by four o’clock in the afternoon that the glare is said to have been seen fifty versts off, and at twenty the (lames also. In the course of the day the fire had spread from the four houses to the buildings adjacent, and when the Moscow express arrived twenty blocks were in flames. The engines belonging to the town were of very little use, as they were all of the manual description, and the water is not laid on to the streets of Eiazan. The efforts of the firemen and military were therefore directed to localising the disaster by pulling down the houses near the buildings on fire, and in this they were greatly assisted by some Cossacks who marched into the town at sunset. As for the inhabitants the fears they entertained of disturbances taking place in the streets kept them at home in their houses, and there were thus but comparatively few spectators to impede the operations of the firemen. Whore, however, the people were apprehensive of the flames extending quickly to their dwellings, the furniture was moved out into the streets, and it either lay there protected by soldiers with fixed bayonets, or was convoyed outside the town in waggons. In the evening the town is described as having presented an extraordinary appearance, the flames rising in four massive columns to the clouds, and the streets being enveloped in smoke.