DREADFUL EARTHQUAKE AT MANILLA.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume I, Issue 36, 2 September 1863, Page 6

DREADFUL EARTHQUAKE AT MANILLA.

ONE THOUSAND LIVES LOST.

Adelaide, Monday.

On June 3, at half-past seven p.m., a circumambient flame was seen to rise from the earth, and gird the city of Manilla. A most terrific shaking of the earth thin took place, lasting scarcely a minute, but in that short time nearly the whole of Manilla was reduced to a heap of ruins.

Upwards of a thousand persons were killed, and manv thousands wounded.

The British Consulate was entirely destroyed. The city is nearly deserted, as the edifices left threaten to fall.

Suddenly before the earthquake took place, sulphurous odours were perceived, a rumbling like the firing of ordnance, and then like the approach of an immense locomotive and train. Not a single foreigner was killed.

The palace, cathedral, and all the public buildings were thrown down, or shaken from their foundations. The survivors are fearful and nervous of another visi.ation.

Singular accident.—A very extraordinary circumstance took place in Regent-street on Monday afternoon. A groom was exercising a horse in a gig belonging to a livery-stable keeper, when the animal bolted from the Haymarket along Jermyn-street, and arrived in Regentstreet just as the driver of a cab was ' erawling' down the street. The horse in the gig had too much way on to be stopped, and the cabman could not wake up his animal in time to avoid a collision, the effect of which was most extraordinary. The gig horse, a showy grey, went completely through the cab, dashing in the near side, and thrusting his head and shoulders out at the other, in which position it remained firmly fixed. The cab was, of course, upset by the impetus, and the hind axle was snapped in two. The gig was as much a wreck as the other vehicle, but both drivers, though pitched out into the road sustained no injury. The crash of the colhsien was so loud that a crowd was drawn together from the surrounding neighbourhood in a moment, and amongst those who ran to help was a carpenter with a saw, who, in a short time, by cutting in two those portions of the wreck which held the gig horse confined, succeeded in releasing it, to all appearance but little the worse for the pantomimic trick in which he had been the chief performer. Fortunately there was no " fare" in the cab, lor had any person been in it, death would in all probability have ensued.— Dispatch, May 24.

There is a well-known custom in criminal courts of assigning counsel to such prisoners as have no one to defend them. On one occasion, finding a man accused of theft, and without counsel, said to a lawyer who was present, " Mr. fer with him, and then give him such co insel as may be best for his interest." The lawyer and his client then withdrew, and in fifteen or twenty minutes the lawyer returned into Court alone. "Where is the prisoner?" asked the Court. "He has gone, your honor," said the hopeful legal limb. " Your honor told me to give him the best advice I could for his interest, and, as he said he was guilty, I thought the best counsel I could offer him was to ' cut and run.' which he took at once."