LATE NEWS FROM CALIFORNIA

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 340, 2 September 1868, Page 2

LATE NEWS FROM CALIFORNIA

(From the Sydney Morning Herald.). The last American accident, by which term all horrible massacres and wholesale destruction of life and property are designated, occurred on the 14th of April, near Port Jervis, on the Erie Railroad. By this accident forty lives were lost, of which a dozen or _ ' more were consumed by fire, while enclosed in the cars. The wickedness of Nebuchednezzar in casting Shadrach and his two friends into the fiery furnace, was no greater than that of the parties to this murderous work. The directors knew the dangerous and unworthy character of the road ; they knew that it could be traversed only at the greatest possible risk ; they knew that vast numbers of rails' were broken, laminated and wholly unfit for use ; yet, in the full possession of this knowledge, they continued to run their trains until the event, which they had every reason to expect', actually occurred, and this reckless, sinful, wicked destruction is termed an accident. Had such a thing taken place in England, or on the European continent, the directors would soon have found themselves the inmates of a prison, with a strong chance for the gallows. The worship of the golden calf exists to-day with quite as much subservient zeal and disgustiag idolatry as in the time of Moses ; but we have no Moses to punish the sacrilegious crew.

The accounts of mortality from yellow fever are absolutely appalling. In Callao, two thousand people had died of it in six weeks, out of a population of twenty thousand. The mortality from this cause, in the Argentine Republic, had reached 25,000. It is asserted, as positive, than the Emperor of Brazil, Don Pedro 11., has determined to abdicate his throne, and has called a conference of the principal personages in the country to arrange the terms of his abdication.