256 RIVER LIFE. 



" The whole district of cultivated land was shrouded in the 

 agonizing memorials of some dreadful deforming havoc. The 

 songs of gladness that formerly resounded through it were no 

 longer heard, for the voice of misery had hushed them. Noth- 

 ing broke upon the ear but the accents of distress ; the eye saw 

 nothing but ruin, and desolation, and death. New Castle, yester- 

 day a nourishing town, full of trade and spirit, and containing 

 nearly one thousand inhabitants, was now a heap of smoking 

 ruins ; and Douglasstown, nearly one third of its size, was reduced 

 to the same miserable condition. Of the two hundred and sixty 

 houses and store-houses that composed the former, but twelve re- 

 mained ; and of the seventy that comprised the latter, but six 

 were left. The confusion on board of one hundred and fifty large 

 vessels, then lying in the Mirimachi, and exposed to imminent 

 danger, was terrible — some burned to the water's edge, others 

 burning, and the remainder occasionally on fire. 



" Dispersed groups of half-famished, half-naked, and houseless 

 creatures, all more or less injured in their persons, many lament' 

 ing the loss of some property, or children, or relations and friends, 

 were wandering through the country. Of the human bodies, some 

 were seen with their bowels protruding, others with the flesh all 

 consumed, and the blackened skeletons smoking ; some with head- 

 less trunks and severed extremities ; some bodies burned to cin- 

 ders, others reduced to ashes ; many bloated and swollen by suf- 

 focation, and several lying in the last distorted position of con- 

 vulsing torture ; brief and violent was their passage from life to 

 death, and rude and melancholy was their sepulcher — ' unknelled, 

 uncoffined, and unknown.' The immediate loss of life was up- 

 ward of five hundred beings ! Thousands of wild beasts, too, 

 had perished in the woods, and from their putrescent carcasses 

 issued streams of effluvium and stench that formed contagious 

 domes over the dismantled settlements. Domestic animals of all 

 kinds lay dead and dying in different parts of the country. Myr- 



