Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1872 — The Hurricane in Sicily. [ARTICLE]

The Hurricane in Sicily.

The London Times of November 8 has the following account of the hurricane in Sicilv, which destroyed the town of Palazzolo: There has been no instance of such a calamity within the memory of a living man. No earthquake ever caused so much destruction. There are houses ruinedrhouses fallen to the very ground, the walls cleft hanging outward as if to rest on the adjoining houses. There , are roofs wholly swept away; sunken vaults and balconies torn from their place; windows and shutters cither entirely carried oil; or hanging loose from the walls; lamp-posts forced from their sockets, and up rooted trees, and this is all one sees along the northeast side of the town. Not a single house remains on which the whole roof and windows do not require thorough repair. The streets arc a mass of fragments and rubbish. The incidents of the disaster are so strange as to be almost incredible. There was a store of twenty-five hcctoli-* tres of wheat, of which not a trace is anywhere to be seen. The books of excise and of the land registry offices have vanished, and only their torn leaves have been found here and there at great distances. In one house all the copper kitchen utensils were blown through the roof. In another the benches and heavy chests flew through the windows. The iron bars of one balcony are to be seen curled up one way, and those of another twisted up another way. There is a pillar of a palace which has been moved one foot without breaking, and stands up isolated, all in one pieced There is awall Of another palace which has fallen back more than three feet without a crack. Here is a beem of one house which has thrust itself into another house. There is half a hp.iislp.ad, the nt.hp.r~. bsif rtf which

lies no one knows where. All the tiles of one building are huddled together in one spot on the'roof, crushed and broken up. as small as if they had been pounded. The rafters of another building are all bare. The tiles have flown, no one can see where. In a stable, on the bare ground, men are laying the bodies, one by one, as they are being dug out. Most of them are in their night dresses, having been crushed as they’were quietly sleeping. Their features and forms are’so disfigured that one cannot look at them without shuddering. Their nostrils, ears and mouths are stopped up with earth, and the white dust has everywhere pierced through the skin. Here is the of a man holding close to his heart a child, probably bis own child, and the skulls of both arc shattered. There arc two young men in each other's arms, probably brothers, and the chests and backs of both are crushed. Near them is another youth covered with bloqd, who was clerk in a Government affiee •< He-had fehr eyeglass-stiff Fififlk'Tn his right eye, and was probably reading or writing when he was struck. There arc some past recognition. Others that seem unhurt, and look as if they were sleeping. \ , Without exaggeration one third of the town is dismantled, and more than 1,000 families are literally Without a home. About 1,000 more have only one little corner of what was once to shelter them. The dead number thirty, two, and the seriously hurt about half a score besides. - - '■ --Sms -—' ■ s » —The Stephen Pearl Andrews who has been arrested with Mrs. Woodhull and Miss Claflin, in New York, was once a resident of Houston, Texas. He came here in 1839, we believe; but hafi not been a resident long until one day he was conducted to the wharf by a number of citizens, put aboard of a boat, and requested to make himself scarce in Texas, at once; which he did .—Houston Union , t» » Ml. —Mr. Edward Tompkins, of Oakland, Cal., has founded a new chair in-the University of California, which, in honor of Prof. Agassiz, fs named the -Agassiz Professorship of Oriental Languages and Literatare." *—-7 m ■ —Dr. Cote, of the Southern Baptist Convention, lias been offered , a magnificent site between the old and new parts of the city of Rome, Italy, for a Baptist church.