Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1892 — FIVE SCORE PERISHED. [ARTICLE]

FIVE SCORE PERISHED.

OVER A HUNDRED NEGROES ARE DROWNED. Lppalllng Loss of Life Caused by Sudden. Floods In Mississippi—Large Numbers of Homeleu Colored People Without; Food—Minnesota Towns Menaced. Government Aid Invoked. A Columbus, Miss., dispatch says:. - Later advices from the low lands just j wuth of here indicate that over one mndred negroes have been drowned in .his county-. It will be weeks before inything like a correct estifnate of the 1 oss of cuttie can be obtained. The xxiles of horses, mules and cows are ionstantly floating down the Tombigbec. For miles on both sides of this river 1 here remain nothing but poverty and iesolation. Dr. J, D. Hutcherson, one j >f the largest planters in this State, has 1 ust returned from one of his plautal;kns in the northern portion if the isouii'y and reports great destitution ’rom overflow of the Butahatchie. He ost seventy-five head of caittle and one if his laborers. A. K. Keith, livng a few miles south, saved sis mules and cattle by putting hem in the parlor and dining-room where the waler was only two feet deep. His family and fifty negroes were in tne same story of the residence. The waters have receded about seven feet nid continue to fall slowly. Most of lie county bridges have been swept away und it will be weeks before oriinary traffic will be regularly resumed. The Mobile and Ohio Railway has three work trains with 200 men on the road between here and Artesia and will probibly have trains running soon. (J. B. Rider, Superintendent of the Georgia Pacific Railroad, is here with repair .rains and is pushing work with great rapidity, but it will te weeks before trains tan be run on that road between here and West Point. Mr. Rider has made arrangfements with the M. & O. to use its track from here to that city by way of Artesia. A cold rain has fallen almost constantly since Sunday night. No mail has been received there for a week. Only one body has been recovered.

At Helena, Ark., the river has now reached a stage which endangers the new levees in the southern part of the country and excites the apprehension of the planters. , At Jackson, Miss., so great is the devastation that citizens have appealed to Congressman Allen for assistance from the General Government. Hundreds of negroes ure homeless und without anything to eat. Along the river bottom all ‘he work they have done.toward putting in a crop has been swept away, together with fehces and much stock. The greatest loss of life and injury to prop-.' erty is along the line of the Tombigbee. River. It is not lai go enough in the dry season to float a small steamboat, buti now it is ten miles wide. Its valley is extremely fertile and is thickly popu-, lated. AU of the plantations along its border for four or five miles are submergM fiom five to t'wehty feat. It wife ten feet higher than the great- flood ot 1847, prev ous to which time nothing like it had ever been seen. In many instances so rapidly did the river rise that small cabins were swept from the face of the earth and whole families with them. The river was bank full before the recent heavy rains, which served to make it a veritable inland sea. The Ked Ki ver Floods. The late and heavy rains of this spring have also been having disastrous effects in some parts of North Dakota. The Red River at St. Vincent, Minn., isover the banks, and has begun flooding that town and Emerson. It is forty feet above low water mark, and still rising. As the ice drive has not yet gone out, a greater height is feared. A rise of one foot more will cover the t<Avn of Emerson. The indications are that the disastrous flood of 1880 will be repeated, and as the towns are more settled the loss would be greater. Families in the lower parts of both Emerson and St. Vincent have already begun to move' out.