THE FLOODS IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 64, 18 July 1874, Page 10

THE FLOODS IN AMERICA.

The most terrible disaster in the annals of Massachusetts, (says the ' Alta' of May 27,) occurred in Hampshire "County, on Saturday. The Williamsburg reservoir, covering a tract of over one hundred acres, gave -way early in the forenoon, precipitating the vast mass of water it contained three miles down a steep and narrow valley into the thriving manufacturing village of Williamsburg, and thence further down the valley, through the vUlages of Hadenville, Leeds, and Florence, into the Northampton Meadows, where the stream emptie* into the Connecticut river. The huge torrent, dashing into Williamsburg with resistless power, swept away in a moment the manufacturing establishments and numbers of dwellings, causing enormous destruction of property, and terrible loss of human life. The lower villages suffered, only less awfully. The reservoir which burst was a wall of masonry five feet at the thickest, backed and faced with fifty feet of earth. It was twenty-five feet in depth, and four hundred and fifty feet loDg. Behind it was a lake of one hundred and four acres, holding three million tons of water. On Friday night last it rained hard. At half-past seven on Saturday morning, Cheney, one of the dam watchers, was in front of his dam when he saw in the east branch a spurt of water near the base. la a moment he turned to his barn lumped on his mare, and ran her for dear life down the road to Williamsburg. He looked back once, and saw that out of an enomous breach In the earth and masonry, a torrent of water had burst into the air. There was no dam, there was nothing to be seen but the front of a huge, rolling wave, which was carrying on its very crest the great Btone blocks of the wall, and dnshing them down the steep incline of of the valley. The speed of this torrent increased every moment, but Cheney wai gone, riding recklessly over the stoney and muddy roads

to give the warning where fifty homes were in the direct path of the flood. He went over the terrible two and a-half miles at so rapid a pace that in ten minutes he was cryiag and yelling like a madman among the cottages of Williamsburg, " The dam ! the dam is burst ; get up to the high ground, the water is coming." It had cone. Ten minutes was fully enough for that mountain of water going down a decline of one foot in six to reach the first victims. There they stood, pretty white cottages in rows and rectangles on the flats. The gorge had been narrow above, and a thirty foot moving wall of water and lime-stone rock undistinguishable was upon them, over them, and spread oat upon the plain, roaring like the crash of near thunder, and tumbling down the frightful valley at twenty mileß an hour. Those who were safe before the news came escaped ; for the rest they took the chances of the flood. Some clung to their houses, but houses were mere toys of paper, swept like feathers here and there, piled one upon the other, upsot, spun round, lifted bodily and broke in twain against the trees, lifted into the air and ground to splinters between flood, beaten and buffetfced and tossed adrift with all that was human in them, shaken into the railway speed of the deluge of timbers, and quartz rocks, and water. Some fled and were overwhelmed be/ore the eyes of their friends ; some went mad, and rode the deluge down the valley shrieking. Here and there one oould be seen sitting upon the roof of his shaking house, and clinging to it as the billows struck it. Of these last, one or two escaped by the sudden staying of the waves. It was all over in a short half-hour, and the waste had gone down the valley not unheralded entirely. An hour from the alarm at Williamsburg, the waters had done their work, and in half an hour more had lost their power. 120 buildings are destroyed, hundreds of acres covered with stone and mud. No one has attempted to estimate the loss in money. As for human life, to-night 90 bodies in all have been found, and squads of men here and there through the valley are looking for the missing. Sc . rcely a trace has been left of the removed habitations, so completely had the torrent ploughed up the ground in all directions.