NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2052, 29 May 1890, Page 1

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Mr Townsend, a London barrister now in tho United States is said to represent an English syndicate with a capital of £50,GC0,000, formed for tho purpose of buying and operating all the flint glass hoHSOH in America as one concern. A hailstorm at Baltimore on April 27 demolished several buildings and wrought a loss of nearly 50,000d01. A tire broke out in the Birmingham Bone Comb Factory, Shelton, on the morning of April 24. In a few momenta the limes spread to tho Lousatonic Brass Company’s buildings, the Radcliffe woollen mill, a printing establishment, a grocery store, and two dwelling-houses. : Mrs Marie Silo, aged eighty-five, was so terribly burnt that she died in a few hours. Eight buildings, with their contents, were destroyed, involving a total loss of over ton thousand pounds GREAT FLOODS.

The condition of St James and Ascension Parishes on April 25 was deplorable. In St James, the neighbourhood ot the Great. Nita Crevasse, everything was flooded for miles. Hundreds of planters have lost their crops, and thousands of labourers will soon be thrown out of employment, At Grande Pointe, where there were sixty to eighty families, people escaped in skiffs. There are liable to be in St James, St John's and Ascension Parishas 50,000 persons destitute within a month. Between New Orleans and the jetties at the mouth of the Mississippi, seven crevases are reported. A crevasse had also occurred in the levee at Bayou Sara, and the city was under water to a depth varying from two to seven feet New Orleans was partially inundated by Gulf waters driven by the gale into Lake Pontchsrtrain, which lies in the rear of the city. All the sparsely settled sections of the North-eastern portion were submerged, as well as the roads leading to Spanish Fort and West ±find. In the Second and Third districts, back of Claiboirn street, houses were floating away. Gentilly ridge overflowed, and the beautiful Metairie cemetery was a lake. The mound sheltering the remains of Jeff Davis rose like an island in the waste of waters.

A despatch from Baton Rouge, the capital of the district so named, dated April 25, says only the highest places in that parish were above the water. The overflow of the Mississippi river is higher than at any time in the past twentyeight years. On April 30, the backwater was reported rising so rapidly that nearly all the largo plantations would be inundated, and many acres of fine cane land covered. Deer were coming out of the swamps in droves, and were being slaughtered mercilessly. |_The St James ‘'pariah” in the Southeast of Louisiana, has an area of about three hundred and fifty square miles. It is intersected by the Mississippi, and is bounded on the North by Lake Faurepas. Bayou Sara takes its name from A small tributary of the Mississippi. The effect of the floodwater at New Orleans will be more readily understood when it is mentioned that the city area includes a number of islets m Lake Catherine, between the Pontcharlrain and Borgne Lakes, and that a great extent of the city land was formerly a marsh. Indeed the level ot the lakes is many feet below the highwater level of the river, and enormous lengths of protective embankments or levees, something like two hundred and fifty miles, had to be constructed. Gentilly lies northward of New Orleans, on the Lake Pontchartian railway. Baton Rouge city is about one hundred and thirty miles above New Orleans, and overlooks its district from a river bluff on which it wag fortunately perched,}