134 GREAT SNOW DRIFTS IN BROADWAY. 



details of death, destruction, and ruin, that had been 

 wrought by the deadly cold of this pitiless gale. Its 

 fiercest efforts were in and around New York, where 

 the Times states that over 200 persons perished. The 

 letter of this paper's Philadelphia correspondent re- 

 counts many additional particulars, and mentions among 

 others things that 



" as the workmen dig out snow pits, corpses are found of 

 persons frozen to death standing in the streets, where the 

 snow overcame them. 5000 men and 1000 horses and carts 

 have worked throughout the entire night, clearing a passage 

 through Broadway, where snow lay 6 to 10 feet deep. Among 

 the troubles of New York is the inability to reach the ceme- 

 teries for funerals; and 500 corpses have accumulated un- 

 buried throughout the city. Nearly 200 shipwrecks are 

 already reported." * 



So remarkable and extensive was the destruction 

 wrought by this great storm, that the newspapers 

 almost without exception devoted leading articles to 

 the event, which is fortunately almost without a parallel 

 in the history of modern times and the Times com- 

 menting upon it says in a leading article that, 



" The blizzard which sweeps the North Westerly plains 

 of North America, has during the memory of the present 

 generation, been a respecter of boundaries, but on the night 

 of March nth the wild west flung itself for two days upon 

 the eastern seaboard of the United States. The extent of 

 the disaster is little realized in Europe. There is an in- 

 definite, and still expanding total of deaths by freezing, ship- 

 wreck, and railway accident. One estimate places the 

 (monetary) losses at 4,000,000, of which nearly 1,500,000 

 are assigned to New York. In its very streets, a few yards 



* Times of March 18, 1888 Extract Letter of Philadelphia Cor- 

 respondent. 



