AN APPALLING DISASTER.

Manawatu Times, Volume III, Issue 104, 3 January 1880, Page 2

AN APPALLING DISASTER.

Thb news which reaches us by wire of the lamentable .sacrifice of human life by the falling of the Tay bridge, is calculated to wring the s^putest heart with grief. Fortunately, wo in the'colonies have b^t little experience of the calami* ties by rail, road, or river, which periodically swoop down upon some portion of the Old Country, only to leave disaster and desolation, and sorrow and suffering in their tracks. Within the past year or two we have had a taste in a smal) degree, by the fatal explosion at HCaitango-ta, and later still, in the melancholy fate of the Wilson family, of those public -calamities which laige populations arc heir to ; and the thriil of horror which peryad?d the community as^ the sad tidings * bffe^"ic known, was only equalled by the nobLi uutiring effort*, made to lessen the burden for those who iyer,e destined to bear it. We do not know of a single catastrophe wh'ieh for the horrible suddenness of eKoeution «an at all approach the Tay disaster. No matter whether a ship founders or gets on fire, a train collides or a -boiler explodes, there are always some miraculously left unscathed, while even the -very vic'tinjs are allowed time to turn their thoughts upon that God before whom they hare been so hastily summoned to meei, when "between the stirrup and the ground, mwy can bo sought and mercy found." In the case: under review, however, • not one of the ninety souls which were hurjed into efernity had time to even draw breath until they were engulphed \\\ a watery grave, with the doors of Jthet* prison, doom firmly locked upon £hem. Tho telegram states that not a soli ta 17 passenger escaped, from which we surmiso that tlio style of carriages in which its passengers were seated were those man-traps into which a too compliant pubjiu are locked. Had the platform carriages been in use, there is very little doubt a good number of the passengers would have been saved, in r stead of bring drowned like so many imprisoned rats. Jt is stated the terrific force of tlie' gale, "which was raging at the time, meeting thp resistance of the train caused the disaster ; but no matter what may have been the cause, the result will carry sorrow and mourning into hundreds of families in the Old Country, and awaken a feeling of sympathy in the breast of every New Zealand colonist, be he Briton or Teuton, Scandinavian or Slav.