Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 2 December 1893, Page 3

Notes and Events.

» Writing of the greafc storm in the United Statesman American correspondent says : - Closely following upon fche hurricane which swept fche Atlantic coasfc from Maide fco Carolina came the awful tidal wave, wifch its rush of waters upon the low-lyin> lands and group of islands off the coast of Louisana. Tongue nor heart cannot conceive or name the horrors of the last and greatest catastrophe. Islands havo been blotted out, ships carried far inland, villages destroyed, crops and orchards and vegetation obliterated, whole families carried iuto eternity, and a smiling, happy and contented people almost annihilated, Nothing now remains but a tew survivors reft of home and living, and filled with a despair such as can only come from so dire a calamity. It has been found impossible to bury each body, or even family, by itself. Huge pits have been dug wherein father, mother, child, brother, sister, and all in one burial blent. Official figures, which are even less reliable, for obvious reasons, than usual, give 2100 known deaths. The probabilities are thafc this total is under the. mark. The wave came as a thief in the nighfc. Men saw ifc and were powerless. The seething, hissing wall of water swept on, and a few fishermen who were toiling with their netfc and were tossed like weeds upon ifcs crest lived to see whole islands and villages disappear and give place to a boiling waste of wateis. : .

The last possessor of a name that once rang through Europe and was unpleasantly familiar to Englishmen passed away last month at Baden in the person of Prince Menschikoff, known only as a keen sportsman and a grand seigneur of enormous wealth. - - The Menschikoffs, like many other aristocratic families in Ru3sia r trace their origin to a very humble source. Alexander Danilovitch was about three centuries ago a pastrycook's errand boy. j Somehow or other he attracted the j notice of Peter fche Great, became a favourite afc courfc and a distinguished soldier, and held his own through the reign of Catherine, until Peter 11, fearing his power and riches, sent him off to Siberia, where he died in a hovel. His great grandson, Alexander. Sergevitch, was Lord Stratford de Redcliffe's adversary in the Conncil Chamber of the Sultan, and Lord Raglan's opponent; on fche field of Alma. His failure to win the battle led to his recall by Alexander 11, and he ended his days in honourable retirement, the old Russian sentiments finding no favour with the emancipator of the lerfs.