Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1883 — Beautiful; but Destructive. [ARTICLE]

Beautiful; but Destructive.

Tbe Senate has passed a bill which will become a law, to change the road law. At Lafayette, Tuesday, the Wabash river had reached a point as high as ever before known. Great damage has been done, and more threatened. The Swedish Lady Quartette find Miss Eda Eliel failed to reach Eensselaer last Saturday, owing, we suppose, to the bad weather. It is to be hoped they will make another attempt to come here as tlieir’s is, unquestionably, a high class entertainment. At Indianapolis, Tuesday, the House of Representatives decided by a vote of 52 to 35 that the amendments were still pending. This vote simply puts the House right on the record, but cannot save the amendments. The former adverse action of the Senate was conclusive. / The valcano of filth down at LaFayette, known as the GougerMandler slander suit, still continues to poison the moral atmosphere with its Mephitic eruptions. Whatever effect it may have upon the parties engaged, such a trial cannot fail to work incalculable harm to the morals of the community in which it takes place.

The storm of the night of Feb. 2d, was the most remarkable and the most ruinous of its kind of any that ever visited Jasper county in the memory of any living man. A wet and heavy snow storm, on Friday afternoon, was, during the night, changed by a warm stratum of air in the upper regions, into a tremendous rain fall. At the surface of the earth the temperature remained below the freezing point. The result was the rain froze where it fell, covering tiees, houses, fences and earth with an enormous burden of ice. Telegraph wires, and twigs of trees no larger than they, were •surrounded by solid cylinders of ice an inch in diameter. That mrny trees should break beneath the unusual burden, is less strange than that any should stand at all. The damage done to fruit, forest and shade trees, is almost inestimable. Cherry and peach trees may be counted as almost totally ruined. Apple orchards stand it better, but still badly damaged. But it is among the forest trees where the greatest havoc haa been wrought. s Whole sections, almost, of fine young timber are thought to be utterly ruined. Some idea of the effects of the ice upon the timber may be gained from estimates of the damage picked up from different sources.

Mr. Clint Stackhouse thinks he has 150 cords of wood lying upon tie ground, which was broken from the trees by the ice. Mr. Lewis Sayler estimates the dam. age done to his growing timber at *SOO. Mr. Peter McElfresh, who says he lias seen seventy-three winters and never a storm like this, has 40 acres of young timber of his own, and the care of 80 acres belonging to Mr Potter in Lafay < tfce, in all of which, he estimates, that not more,than one tree in ten lias escaped destruction or great ..injury. : , In Rensselaer shade and fruit f have fared badly, and many oiue-.. alka arc blocked by the de-

bris of the broken trees . Of cot-ton-woods, willows, and trees of tli at nature, little more than telegraph poles are left. The loss of most of these, however, is a good riddance. % The only redeeming feature of the storm was the wonderful, and except to a poet or painter, the undescribable beauty presented by the gleaming, crystal covered trees, in the glittering sunlight in the days following the storm. Many farmers believe the wheat ‘crop to be ruined by the ice, but that is probaly a point which cannot be settled until after the snow melts. There is probaly no question but that is has suffered great injury, to say the least.