A HORRIBE EXPLOSION.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 132, 25 June 1880, Page 4

A HORRIBE EXPLOSION.

Over the Bay (writes the San Francisco correspondent of the Auckland Herald) there stands a pretty little village called Berkley, where the grass is green, and the flowers are beautiful in a superlative degree even here. Near Berkley stand the Giant Powder Works. One evening lately, when stillness had fallen on the world in general, and quiet people were sitting happily over the 5 o’clock tea, in country fashion, a terrific sound caused the entire population to turn out. As we have had during the whole of April terrific rainstorms, with shocks of earthquake and other novelties, caused by the breath of the weather fiend, everyone expected that one grand earthquake was about to swallow up the whole village, or that a thunderbolt had the intention to finish it off after its own fashion. It proved, however, to be the powder works, which had blown up, carrying four and twenty human beings— Mongol and Caucasian —into eternity instanter. The scene of the disaster was quickly found out and visited, but no words can print the horrors that met the eye. Five thousand pounds of giant powder had exploded, literally cutting up the victims into shreds—toes, hands, and feet were distributed freely about, the pigtails of the Chinese being the only things that escaped unharmed, one being found in a tree 300 yards from the spot. A shower of human flesh must have literally fallen for the space of two miles from the spot, as lumps of such, varying from an inch to a quarter of a yard, were found in the trees, on the housetops, and strewing the fields and gardens far distant, the larger fragmeuts having been hut led into the Bay. "Windows of houses three miles away were dashed to atoms, and the largest trees in the vicinity were twisted like reeds. For two days afterwards the hills were covered with women and children picking up the fragments of the dead and putting them into sacks. No remains were found perfect, but the coroner sorted them as well as he was able to, filling eight coffins with the ghastly debris of the white men, and six coffins with the remains of the Chinese. A boy who was driving a team fifty yards from the spot was blown to atoms together with the team, and not a particle of them was ever found. The funeral of the whites was a terrible spectacle—mothers, wives, and children rending the air with their cries. Truly the happy smiling month of April has been one full of ruin and disaster.