Another Calamitous Week.
By Editor
Last week we reported a long series of disasters, and the record of the week just closed does not come behind in its list of calamities of various kinds. The flood conditions in the Middle West in general have shown little improvement. While the flood waters are receding in Topeka and Kansas City, points lower down on the raging rivers are in greater peril than last week. St. Louis and points above and below are now suffering from the flood conditions. The receding waters in the cities above reveal the fury of the overflooded rivers. The list of dead in Topeka now numbers seventy-eight, and it is expected that other bodies will be found as the waters recede. Nothing like a definite estimate of the number who have lost their lives in other places has yet been given. In many of the flooded cities there has been great destruction of buildings, hundreds of which have utterly collapsed, while others are practically ruined, tho still standing. Hundreds of persons have escaped death by the narrowest margin, after living for hours or even days in momentary expectation of death. Great financial loss has been occasioned all along these swollen rivers to crops and farm buildings. The rising Mississippi is now doing great damage all along its banks. The loss to the farming section will reach into the millions, and the loss in the inundated cities is impossible to estimate. There is considerable uneasiness over the possibility of disease breaking out in the flooded districts, owing to the great number of dead animals decaying in heaps or among the driftwood. A furious storm visited South Carolina on June 6, swelling the rivers so rapidly that at Pacolet and Clifton great damage was done, and at least eighty persons lost their lives. Great cotton mills were in operation at these places and the flooded rivers rushed down upon the mills, before the operatives had a chance to escape. The property loss is placed at $3,500,000, and there is great destitution among the survivors. Rain fell in torrents, the rivers overflowed their banks to heights never before known, railroad bridges were torn from stone and iron piers, and grist mills and cotton mills were crushed like houses of cardboard, and a great many homes were washed away. On June 1 a tornado dealt death and destruction to the city of Gainsville, Ga., and its environs. The reports indicate that about one hundred persons were killed, and one hundred and fifty injured. Scores of cottages were leveled to the ground, and two stories were torn off the factory of the Gainsville cotton mill. It was in this mill that about two-thirds of the deaths occurred. In all, about two hundred buildings were destroyed in the path of the storm. A great storm occurred at Valparaiso, Chile, on June 2, which caused a number of vessels to founder. One steamer, the Arequipa, was wrecked, and all but seventeen of her passengers and crew, numbering eighty, were lost. Eight persons were killed in a railway collision at Stillwell, Kansas, on June 4. Fierce forest fires are raging in Eastern Canada and New England, destroying much valuable property, and a drought of forty-eight days is said to have practically ruined the crops of that section, entailing an estimated loss of $70,000,000. A hurricane swept over the Philippines on June 5, doing great damage to shipping, and causing considerable loss of life. Word has come from the United States consul at Canton, China, that over a million Chinese are starving in the province of Kwang-si. The stricken districts are earnestly appealing for help. Two hundred persons are reported massacred by Turks at the village of Smerdash, Macedonia. On June 7, near Marseilles, France, more than one hundred persons are said to have lost their lives as the result of a collision between two passenger steamers. Many of those who were rescued were badly injured in the collision.