SAN FRANCISCO MAIL NEWS.

Kumara Times, Issue 2329, 14 February 1884, Page 2

SAN FRANCISCO MAIL NEWS.

[new ZEALAND PKESS ASSOCIATION.]

London, January 21. Coney Island, of late years the great pleasure resort of middle classes of New York was almost completely inundated by sea in a terrific gale on January 9 th. Brighton Beach Hotel was demolished, and all the bath houses washed into the sea.

At Bradford, on January 15th, a stream of waste oil flowing from a tank across the Bradford, Bordell, and Kingswell Railway line caught fire. The passenger train ran into it, and the train was immediately enveloped in flames. The track for a distance of fully 100 yards was covered with oil. It is definitely known that only three persons (women) were burned to death. Thirteen other persons were severely burnt, and numbers will die.

A terrible calamity happened in the neighborhood of Toronto, Canada, on the Grand Trunk Railway line, on the morning of January 2nd, by the collision of a car attached to a durum}’ engine and carrying employes to their daily labor, with a freight train. Some twenty or thirty persons were killed. GENERAL GORDON’S MISSION TO SOUDAN. The London Times of January 20th says General (Chinese) Gordon goes straight to Sonakim, via the Canal. He will meet Baring, British ConsulGeneral, at Suez, and come to an agreement in regard to the co-opera bion of the English authorities in Egypt as far as may be necessary. Moussa, chief of the Hadenbowa tribe, whose sons General Gordon saved from death, to which they had been condemned by the Egyp tian officials for making raids, will be summoned to Souakim, and General Gordon will go with his escort to Khartoum, where he will assemble the heads of the tribe and announce that he has come on behalf of England to restore their liberty, and remove adventurers who have recourse to the country. He will also inform the Chiefs that the slave trade must cease. So soon as he has finished his task in the Soudan he will go to the Congo country and deal with the slave trade in its head-quar-ters. General Gordon expects to be five months in Soudan. The King of the Belgians has asked the English Government to send him English officers to act in General Gordon’s place in the Congo country until General Gordon is ready to fulfil his engagement. A dispatch from Khartoum on January 18th says it is reported a number of Dervishes here have summoned the people to join El Mahdi. English sovereigns, recently popular in bazaars, are now refused, or only taken at a discount. This is regarded as ominous. The bearing of the people has been totally changed, and some very strong influence is at work. FRANCE AND CHINA. A private letter from a gentleman residing in Canton, December sth, was published in New York on January 16th. It is to the effect that China is determined to fight, and war can only be avoided by France backing clear down to the ground. France has made an awful muddle of the whole affair. Had she acted with force at first Tonquin would have been hers, and everything would now be quiet. The idea of occupying the country with a thousand or two of troops is too absurd for serious contemplation, but that is just what France attempted, France in her delay and want of resolution led China to believe that fear kept her back, and this idea took such hold on China that she will not be satisfied with anything short of a complete surrender of the position which France has assumed in Tonquin. Troops are pouring into the north, and are being raised here. I

An intelligent Chinaman who had returned to Portland, Oregon, January 16th, from a visit to China, gives a very different version of the storming of Sontay to that published by the French. He acknowledges that 3000 Chinese were killed, but declares the French were almost totally annihilated. The Chinese, he said, had mined the ground and had lured the French over the mines with most disastrous results. He is confident the French will not have a “ walk over ” at Bacninh. An attache of the French Legation, being interviewed on January 19th, said—- “ France is determined to take Bacninh at all cost. When that is accomplished, she would be ready to accept the mediation of England and the United State.” FEARFUL SHIPWRECK. Despatches of January 18th report the total loss of the steamship City of Columbus, belonging to the liii<-» between Savannah and Boston, and the

loss of move than 100 lives. The scene of the disaster was on a reef called Devil’s Bridge, off Gay Head, near New Bedford. The steamer left Boston at three o’clock on the afternoon of the 17th for Savannah, and struck at 8.45 next morning. The cause of it seems to have been want of attention by the pilot, as he told a passenger who was in the rigging with him after the vessel struck, that he had fixed the course of the vessel and fastened the wheel, and as he was very cold he went to the smoke stack to warm himself. He remained there twenty minutes, and when he returned to his post he found the ship had veered round. When he ascertained that the vessel was among the rocks, and it was, probably, impossible to save her, he put her right in shore, and ran her as high as he could, with the result, that although she drew 17ft. of water the forepart was in lift. Among those who perished was Oscar Tsiag, Turkish Consul-General, and a journalist named Morton, of the Boston Globe, going South for his health. One-third of the passengers were women and children, not one of whom, so far as is known, is saved. One survivor says it was fearful to see women swept off. Some rushed on deck with their husbands, and as the full force of the storm broke upon them, realising ail was lost, they threw their arms around their husbands’ necks and bade them good-bye. A few moments later they were swept overboard, A mother with a child held tight in her arms was borne away by the waves almost before reaching the deck. Not one woman reached the rigging, and a majority were washed overboard by the waves, A number were probably smothered in their berths. The steward, who was in the rigging with about forty others, say they clung to the shrouds with their fingers. One of his companions would, from exhaustion, lose his hold and drop into the raging sea j but most of those who were fortunate enough to gain the rigging were rescued. Out of a passenger list of eighty and a crew of forty-five, only twenty-nine were saved.