Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1905 — THOUSANDS PERISHED. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THOUSANDS PERISHED.

Frightful Destruction Wrought by the Earthquakes in lndij. The recent earthquakes in India have been much more disastrous than at first supposed. Instead of a few hundred having been killed, the number of fatalities reaches 15,000, with the prospect that hundreds, perhaps thousands, more /nay have perished. The affected area is 700 square miles in extent, with a population running up in the millions and thickly dotted with towns and villages. In this area nearly every building was damaged and many were entirely destroyed and their occupants with them. The town of Dharmsala was practically annihilated and nearly 500 Gurkha soldiers perished in the ruins

of their barracks. Several Europeans also perished. At Mussoorie much damage was done to buildings and many persons were killed or injured. At Simla, which is the summer homo of Lord and Lady Curzon, the latter an American, the damage wrought by the earthquakes was confined chiefly to property. Lady Curzon had a nar-

row escape, a tali chimney crashing through the roof into the room directly above her bedroom. The populous city of Lahore and also the city of Delhi suffered severely. At Lahore at least seventy persons were killed, while many more were injured. Nearly a score of towns and villages were damaged, buildings being demolished and thousands killed and injured. Earthquakes fire of frrequent occurrence in India, a half a dozen serious ones occurring since the English occupation. In 1842 northern India was shaken by a terrible convulsion, and in 1897 Assam and Lower Bengal were similarly visited. The recent earthquakes are probably the most fatal In the history of India, though they fall far short of some of the great seismic disasters in other lands. Thus the earthquakes at Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755, are credited with having destroyed 00,000 persons, while the disturbances in Calabria, Italy, In 1873, wiped out 40,000 lives. It is estimated that as many as 13.000,000 human beings have been swept off the face of the earth by this awful visitation.

Frederick H. Wilson, financial clerk in charge of the United States Indian warehouse in New York, whose dismissal together with several clerks was ordered by Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock, has not yet received official notice of hie removal. A pitched battle was fought early the other morning between two robbers and John C. Brutt, a saloonkeeper at Second and Brannnn streets, San Francisco. Thomas Reilly, a laborer who was in the Brutt saloon at the time, wae killed by one of the flying bullets.

THE VICEREGAL LODGE AT SIMLA.