THE LATE BUSH FIRE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 157, 22 April 1859, Page 3

THE LATE BUSH FIRE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

A disaster similar in its character to that which befel this colony on.the memorable Black Thursday, but not so vast iv its magnitude, has occurred in the adjoining colony of South Australia, on the eighth anniversary of the day which has assumed such a gloomy prominence in our own annals! Tasmania has experienced ali''e calamity on the same day, and the full detuls, which have just reached us from both colonies, are fraught with incidents terrible in themselves, and establishing a strong claim upon our sympathies iv behalf of the sufferers In the extensive district devastated by the fires in South Australia, the irresistible march of the consuming element must have been appalling, not only by reason of the extended area over which it exerted its destroying force, but also on account of the velocity of its movements and the hopelessness of resistance. The most vivid imagination would fail to conceive a spectacle so full of grandeur, terror, ruin, desolation, ami dismay, as that which was actually presented to the amazed eyes of the inhabitants of Mac-, clesfield and other townships, on the morning of Sunday fortnight. The sudden apparition of the flames "above the crest of the hills, which it had been hoped would prove a barrier to their outrush; the impetuosity with which the fire^ flung itself, in broken: masses, upon the. valley" -below";..the overwhelming panic which must have resulted from the vehemence of its career and the sudden expansion of its power—cau only be faintly surmised from a perusal of th« published accounts. "We read of a sea of flame : some thirty, or." forty miles in breadth, flowing in upon a tract of country sprinkled with tha homesteads of prosperous settlers, many of whom had garnered in the fruits of a twelvemonth's labors. Hot winds had been blowing •Ifor several days, the ground gaped with drought and heat, and everything was so arid, that tho merest spark falling upon the withered grass would have sufficed to kindle a conflagration. Heavy clouds of smoke bad been drifting ominously southward for some time, and on this fatal Sunday appeared the dreaded fire, a hurricane roaring behind it, and consternation and ruin marking its path. In a few moments tin? farmhouse of the yeoman became a heap of charred timbers; his stackyard, orchard, stock and implements, a mass of smouldering embers, and himself and family penniless fugitives, without a roof to shelter them, or the means of procuring subsistence for the morrow. " The whole country, from Macclesfield to a point just above Crafer's," writes a gentleman who was an eye-witness of the calamity, "is one mass of cinders and ashes, not a single building, shrub, or tree, having escaped the ravages of the fire." We are further told that all the splitters in the woods about Mount Jagged are " cleared out," as well as most of the settlers in the Inman and Hindmarsh valleys; aud the Macclesfied correspondent of the South Australian Advertiser gives the names of upwards of forty settlers who are described as " houseless." Some of the details of individual calamity and suffering are extremely touching; and we fear that the aggregate amount of loss sustained will be very heavy. Subscription-lists for the relief of the sufferers have been opened in the metrotropolis, and in various parts of South Australia, while an appeal will also be made to the Government of that colony on behalf of those who have been rendered destitute by this' sudden and terrible calamity.— -Argus.