AN AWFUL SCENE.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 91, 28 June 1879, Page 3

AN AWFUL SCENE.

We subjoin the following particulars of tho-burning of the Trelnont Hotel at ClareoKUit, N. 11.

The hotel was n wooden building and •old, so that tlie flames had plenty of material to feed on, and but a few moments were left for escape. Terror {stricken men, women and children rushed frantically through tlie blinding smoke, half asleep, and completely bewildered by the sudden alarm and tlie frightful scene which me! them as they emerged from their rooms.

There was no time to spare, however, and the instinct of self-preservation wan at work promptly to suggest a means of escape. There was only •me stairway, and that was narrow and full of smoke and flame alter live minutes, so that it whs useless as an avenues of egress. Windows were thrown up only to increase, the draft and stimulate the (lames, which were now furiously hissing through the structure. Men and women jumped to the yard below in a nude or partly dressed condition, others appeared at the upper windows, uttering the most piercing shrieks for aid in their terrible extremity. It was an awful spectacle, and one whieli will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The two lower floors were soon cleared of their occupants, but the upper stories slid contained human beings, whose chances of escape from a fiery death were decreasing rapidly.

The town hud become alarmed, ami from nil sections men aud women poured in to render wliat assisuiuco .tiiey could or tu gaze on thu terrible scene which was being enacted. Ladders weir promptly put up against tlie walls for the purpose of extricating the pour people who wore housed in by flume and smoke. One uiau, whose room was an upper .storey, crawled out through the window, seized a lightning-rod and coolly climbed ■to the ground with only blistered hands and bruised limbs. Ho was loudly «hcered as he slowly crept down, while men and women held tlicir breath lest the rod would give way and throw him heavily to the liu/.eii ground, when his <'eath would have been as cerUlin us if Inhad remained in the burning building. Mr. l'\ 11. Gibson, one of tiic proprietors of the house, with his wife ami child, escaped from a window of the second •storey, the plucky woman holding tin; child and clinging to tile blind while he obtained a board upon which mother and .child slid to thu ground in perfect safety, followed by Mr. Gibson, who promptly Jo-entered the building to lend what aid die could iu reselling tlie others. Owing to some repairs Mrs. Gibson, biuothcr of the same gentleman, had been jilacod .temporarily in a spare room, and She son rushed frantically in search of Jier, but was unable to reach her iu time, And she perished in the flames. Anna Johnson, a chamber girl, whose Boom was on the third floor, tried to es■cape from the ball through the stairs, but found a solid wall of lire obstructing her .passage. She ran back to her room, raised the window, and hung out as far .us possible without falling, and sereanied trauticully for assistance. She was soon enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke, which was occasionally lit up by flashes of Humes as the tire worked its way upward. Half a dozen hand., immediately seized a ladder and ran it up against tlie wall. A man tried to eliinb up to the ]H>or girl's aid, but he eiiiue hack blinded with smoke uud almost insensible. Another volunteer stepped into his place and toiled up the ladder, but he, too, Game down without the prize so much coveted. Another man stepped from the crowd, and amid the cheer, of the assemblage ran up step by stop until he wax lost in (he clouds of smoke which rolled out in dense mosses from the doomed building. He reached the poor, helpless girl, but eniild not pull her out us sue had fainted, and must have boeu caught by something on the inside, from which he was unable to deliver her. He came back without accomplishing his mission, and no one MM would venture. There she remained

until the wall fell in, and she became a charted mass amid the burning ruins.

About the snmo time Mrs. S. A. Chase, a pastry cook in the establishment; Lydia Merrill, a table girl, and Charles Morgan, a guest at the house, went down with the tumbling walls, mingling their shrieks with the horrible din and crash wbieh prevailed within and without.— American paper.