Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1883 — WESTERN. [ARTICLE]

WESTERN.

Cincinnati dispatches of Feb. 15/ recut off from railway communication, being surrounded by water and all the railway tracks submerged. Business was practically suspended all over the city. Soup-houses had been established at various points. The Catholic churches were thrown open to accommodate the homeless. The work of relief was going on vigorously and many touching scenes were witnessed. Outside aid was pouring to freely. It was ascertained that fourteen boys were drowned by the bursting of the McLean avenue sewer. Louisville telegrams of the 15th represented the situation as extremely distressing. The river was rising at the rate of an inch an hour, and all along the city front for several miles houses were being undermined and were tumbling into the angrjr torrent Subscriptions were being freely made for the benefit of the thousands of homeless onea At Jeffersonville, opposite Louisville, the distress was even relatively greater, the whole city being submerged to the depth of from two to twenty feet Many houses were swept away, and hundreds of people had taken refuge to the upper stories of public buildings and business blocks, food being sent to them to small boata Filth from hundreds of privies, was floating on the waters, and the scenes of Buffering were described by an eye-witness as appalling. At Lawrence b urg, Ind, north of Louisville, the people were suffering greatly, and carloads of food were sent from other parts of the State, the Legislature of Indiana having also appropriated (40,000 for relief. Madison and other points* along the river between Louisville and Cincinnati also suffered more or less from the extraordinary inundation. At Fern Bank, below Cincinnati, a floating house was stopped, and in one of the rooms was found a baby sleeping peacefully in its crib. The child was delivered into the care of the Catholic Orphan Society. Two lads of Minneapolis, 11 years of age, quarreled over some petty matter, when one killed the other with a pocket knife. Special Customs agents of Chicago went to St Louis and forced a prominent business house in that city to pay $7,000 for duties and penalties on goods brought from Paris. Several private parties also settled accounts on smuggled jewelry and clothing. Dispatches from the overflowed districts along the Ohio river on thej 16th inst state that “the flood at Cincinnatilreached its highest Btage at 4 o’clock yesterday morning, when it stood sixty-six feet and four inchea Contributions of $16,001 were received from various cities, ana the lifesaving crew of Cleveland arrived with its apparatus. The May ors of J eff erionville and New Albany sent dispatches (to all the chief cities, asking for aid for tl e sufferers. Fire-damp or sewer gas caused i n explosion in a house at Cincinnati, sha;tering the structure, killing three persons, knd wounding many others. The rivers are rising at Pittsburgh and Louisville, and the Wabash, Muskingum and Licking are adding their quota to the inundation. Jeffersonville and New Albany, Ind., ar§ entirely surrounded, and Marietta and Zanesville are also flooded. ” Isaac Knapp, who was sent to the Ohio penitentiary from Fremont for life, secured a pardon by false representations as to his health. He was speedily rearrested and instituted habeas corpus proceedings. The State Supreme Court decided that it could not inquire into the validity of the pardon, and Knapp was discharged.