RESCUED FROM LIVING TOMBS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 64, 10 April 1909, Page 4

RESCUED FROM LIVING TOMBS.

Ihe ca-r of the mail Bensaja, who was dug wit from under the ruins of lice siiia. alive and comparatively well, after having been buried for fourteen days without food, has been many times paralleled in regard to similar catastrophes in the [last (savs a Home paper). Indeed, in the case of the great Scio earthquake, au entire family of seveTi persons_was rescued after having been in a like plight for eighteen da\>. Again, when St. Pierre was dcstrovo.l, by the eruption of Mont Video in Mav, HHI2. a negro was found alive three days after the catastrophe 111 u dungeon beneath the foundations of the town prison. having been buried during tliat period under a mass of incandescent volcanic (lust, red-hot lava, and boiling mud. He was the sole survivor of thirty thousand people, and his escape is probably the most marvellous on record. hi April. 1H77. several living men were rescued from the Hooded Tynewydd mine, near Pontypridd, after toil day*' 'entombment. Tint this occurrence was quite thrown into the shade in the early part oi the year P.lOfi. when 110 fewer than thirteen miners were found alive ' in the Courrieres colliery, ill Franc", and this although three weeks had elapsed between the occurrence of the accident—the worst in the history of coal-mining—ami the appearance of the rescue parly in the distant underground workings where the sole survivors had taken refuge. There is 011 record, too. a woll-autheii-tieated ease, of a Swiss family having , been buried by an avalanche, and dug , nut alive after nearly three months. But then, their hut. of stone slabs, liehlj; log:dher. they hail food hi plenty, audi; lir and some light filtered down tol;l .liein from above. 3