ENGLISH NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16, 3 December 1861, Page 2

ENGLISH NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Through the courtesy of the Captain of the Oscar barque we are in possession of the " Argus" containing the news of the arrival of the English mail steamer, the telegraphic announcement of which was previously received from Adelaide. We extract the follow- , ing items from the letter of the '* Argus" correspondent:— DOMESTIC NEWS. We have breakfasted, and dined, and supped off horrors during the last few w»cks. One billow of disaster has so rapidly succeeded another, that the public mind has been overshadowed with gloom. A frightful accident has happened near the Kentish Town Station of the North London Railway. The mischief occurred to an excursion train, which was returning from Kew Gardens, about seven o'clock in the evening. On leaving Kew, six trains were found necessary to convey the passengers home. The first of these reached its destination in safety. The second at dusk had retched the Kentish Town Station, which it passed without stopping, at the rate of thirty miles an hour. At that moment a train of ballast t ticks was being leisurely shunted on to a siding. Before the operation could be completed ( and within sight of persons in the neighbouring houses , the excursion train dashed into the ballast train, cutting it in two, and crushing up the trucks. The engine of the passenger train was thrown off the embankment, and dragged four carriages after it. The scene, as witnessed from the fields, was terrific. Immediately the engine had Htruck the trucks, and shivered them to atoms, it leaped from lli3 rails with a sort of half-puff, half-bellow, which was heard to a distance of fully half a mile, and rolled down the embankment on its own side of t'.ic line with a hideous dull sound, and one or two frightful screeches. The carriages which followed ran on a few feet ; but just at the spring of the. arch of the bridge, the break bounded right over, and was followed by four carriages, in which were a number of passengers. The first two jumped clean into tne field, a depth of forty feet, where they lay on their sides, one over the other. The awful scenes that ensued, equalled the horrors of the Clayton tunnel slaughter. A dozen persons were instantly hurried into eternity, while fifty or sixty were maimed or mangled, some of whom ''have since sunk under their sufferfngs. " Light was all important (says one of the reporters), and the remains of the break which had fallen over, were set fire to. There was no need to chop it up small, fur it had been shivered into a thousand fragments. When the pieces were in a blaze the spectacle was more awful than it had hitherto been. The glare discovered the wounded men, women, and children that lay about surrounded by little groups, who rendered them such assistance as could be procured on the instant. Two or three of the smashed carriages formed one monster fire that shot up its flames to au immense height. The wounded lay here and there writhing in agon}-. Meu were engaged in dragging corpses from under wheels and axle-trees, and our of carriages that had been crushed like pasteboard. Gentlemen and ladies carried water-cans, bottles, and other vessels, and Avere constantly giving those drinks which the mangled so greedily asked for. Many ladies ran about with linen to bandage the wounded, and themselves assisted in the kind I office." ! While in this dismal vein, I may as well mention a fresh disaster which has happened to the unfortunate Great Eastern. She left the Mersey on the 10th instant for America, with 400 passengers and a far larger cargo than she ever before shipped. On the 12th, when she had attained a distance of 2«0 miles west of Cape Clear, the great ship encountered a terrific gale, which swept away both paddles, tore the sails into ribbons, and wrenched off the top of the rudderpost, a bar of iron ten inches in diameter ; so that, all power over her helm was lost, and the huge hull lay like a log in the trough of the seas from Thursday evening until two o'clock on Sunday. For nearly three days the fury of the tempest continued unabated, and the ship rolled so fearfully, her bulwarks almost touching the sea—that ail on board were in constant dread of her going over, and expected every moment to be their last. Every movable article got loose ; the furniture of the saloons and of the cabi is, ! all the earthenware and glass, and most of the passengers' luggage, were smashed, destroyed, and in some cases reduced to a pulp, by sixty hours' churning ; while many of the passengers, including several ladies, were most seriousty maimed and bruised. The great ship, in fact, p.-esented the appearance of an utter wreck. On Sunday a temporary rudder was fitted, and the disabled vessel thus once more under command, made for Cork, running with her screw alone at the rate of nine miles an hour. She was towed into Cork harbour on Tuesday evening, the 17th. Another source of terror to the inhabitants of j the metropolis consists in the immense niultipli- j cation of great fires ot late. Ever since the tre- I mendous conflagration in Tooley-street, we have j ha 4 a succession of alarming and destructive fires ]

beyond all former precedent. It is no uncommon, tiling to see the announcement of three in a single morning. In a few hours, some extensive sugar-works were utterly destroyed, involving a loss of property valued at £30,000, and imperiling a forest of ships in the London Docks. Paternoster Row has had a narrow escape of being laid in ruins ; as it is, an immense chasm has been burnt, bordering on and including part of Messrs. JLongmans' establishment. Space would fail me to tell of numerous similar disasters. The public is chiefly disquieted at the utter inadequacy of the ordinary means at our disposal for preventing or extinguishing these huge city conflagrations. Of explosions, boiler burstings, murders, suicides, and other social calamities, we have had considerably more than tlie average. Our papers have oflate been mere chronicles of horrors and woes. Among other on dits, it is reported that a marriage is p.tojeetcd between the Prince of Wales and a Danish princess—an alliance which the Paris journals represent as likely 11 sow discord ! between the Courts of London and Berlin. CIVIL WAR IN AMEKICA. The events of the postal month in the Disunited States exhibit a most perplexing complexity. In the earlier portion of it, the advantage appeared to be increasingly on the side ot the Confederates ; but the intelligence whioh has j arrived by the latest mails show that the tide of j good fortune is turning in favor of the national 1 party. The latter are rapidly retrieving their disasters, recovering their spirit, and organising several important expeditions. No fresh battle on a formidable scale has been fought between the main armies of the belligerents encamped in the neighbourhood of Washington. The military and naval armaments of the North are assuming colossal dimensions, and are animated by abetter spirit. The Federal army on the Potomac is said to number 15),000 men, while the Confederate, host is estimated to equal, if it do* s not c? - ceed it, in strength. North Carolina is slipping from the grasp of the Secessionists by the capture of the forts at Cape Hatteras. A tremendous sensation has been created by General Fremont's proclamation of the emancipation of slaves in Missouri, which, if endorsed by the Government, will altogether change the aspects of the struggle. A letter of sympathy and counsel from the Emperor of Russia to the Federal Gow ernment —an invitation to Garibaldi to assume the command of the Federal army—and the reported, but unauthenticated, death of President Davis—are among the leading incidents of the month. None of tho numerous reports and rumours of the death of Jefferson Davis give sufficiently conclusive proof of the fact to set all doubts at rest. The Federal Government had no information on the subject, and the report was not credited in Washington. Jefferson Davis had been seriously1 ill, and flags at half-mast had been seen at the Confederate quarters, but positive proof of his death had certainly not been received.