the carolina watchman vol viii third series salisbury n c october 18 1877 no 52 hew york's 0pp1htun1ty towmay we secure ax obelisk 11 ri mi than that now going to england m,,m ml m of whii 11 indeed a.her ' ' j x might be justly peocd „ „<■ cleopuu-d'a ncem s their .,,/ m and ichy one of them is making « great voyage i invite the attention of our readers 0_dav to aa * vent which is not merely of i-tel-esl in itself but uj the way to a possibility of the livesl importance for !?. vi11m nothing but a comparative ly riiglm effort ol public spirit here is needed t secure for onr own metropolis anomameul fully equal to that which is now n its way t london eagerly ex ,....<■<_ by tlie whole british people vve ft!c authorized to state lhat his highness uie khedive of f.gpyt lias signified his willingness t preseut to the city of new j york up '' p'oper application being | made to hi tbe noble obelisk seventy j f ii height which now stands military ; gudalone near the railway station of randet it alexandria its companion having been accepted by england and provision made for its transportation thither bya public-spirited scottish gen tleman and we are further able to say that th enterprising contractors who are now conveying th english obelisk to its destination are prepare 1 to agree to bring i the companion monolith from egypt to america and to erect it in any site which j may i.r selected for it at a juice not ex ceeding 1(10,000 the whole risk of the en terprisc being taken by them against a de posit nt the sum agreed upon iii the hands of some leading american banker i-ni nearly 2,000 years there have stood on the shores of the levant two obelisks of rose • olored syenite known as cleopa tra's needles egyptologists lell us how these great monoliths nearly seven ty feet high were taken from the granite quarries at syene by the skillful work men i antiquity and conveyed thence tn karnac and heliopolis in order to move them the stone was mai kid the whole length required and metal wedges were driveu into the line another plan wliich showed wonderful ingenuity was to inserl wedges of extremely dry wo and then to pour water upon them till they split and displaced the stone pliny says thnt tii were transported to the nile with the aid of flat-bottomed boats float jnjin canals specially prepared for the purpose sharpe says that they were placed in an erect position by cutting a groove in the pedestal in which the lower edge of the monolith might turn as if it mm a hinge the toi of the obelisk being elevated by means of a mound of earth tin i/e of which was continually increas ed till the stone stood securely erect from heliopolis where they stood before ilie entrance ofthe temple of the god turn or the setting sun they were transported io alexaudl iadui ing the reign of tiberius hut hear their popular name because ofa tradition that they were brought to alcx iin.ilia in the time of cleopatra a great deal ef controversy has raged among the learned in regard to their meaning but notwithstanding all that has been said nnd written aboul them as well as about olher similar monuments which still gt«od ill egypt or have been transferred to rome aries paris and loudon no abso lute certainty as to their import has yet been reached pliny supposed them to hi symbols of the sun's rays ; other writ ers have identified them with the jachin nt jerusalem apparently only because the obelisks were placed in pairs before the entrance of au egyptian temple they have been regarded as identical with the hindu i.iiim.un and a score of opinions more ' r h>s reasonable have been advanced by speculative inquirers but there still is quite as much difficulty iu arriving at tlieir true meaning and origin as there is in interpreting the story of the round towers of ireland or to compart small things with great the origiu of the new poit mill mr i.ouomi who is a better authority than mosl writers inasmuch as he has spent a long period on the banks of the nile in unwearied and intelligent research says as regards the original sits of obelisks it should be mentioned that there are none on the western bank ofthe river proper tlie obelisk appear ing t be a decoration ofthe cities of the living symbolized by the rising sun as tin pyramid is of those of the dead sym holized by the setting of that luminary laken in connection with the fact that at heliopolis the monoliths now known as cleopatra's needles stood af iije entrance el the temple of the setting sun this ex planation rather shows the difficulties surrounding tlie question of their mean ing and origin than throws any decisive light on the subject nevertheless a study ofthe hciii.glyphics with wliich the need les arc covered seems to confirm the view of mi i'.onomi these inscriptions gen erally a *. ribc the greatness magnificence and glory of t\n mon >]} in whose reign they were erected on the obelisk which mill soon be elected in j,on.}.i.l appears the name of thothraes iii tin date of whose reign according to sir gardner wilkinson is a about the middle of the fourteenth century before the i,ii_tian era or some iii years ago on the other hand and touching the theory that olielisks were raised for the living aloi.e t bhonld be remarked that dwarf obelisks wen employed in egypt from the earliest limes and were placed before the doors of sepulchres at least 4,00 years ago obe lisks are squared columns tapering slight ly from base to apex the proportions of the base being one-tenth of the height of tin shaft up to the foot ofthe pyratnidian or pyranmidal top which in later times was sometimes capped with gold iron or copper it was prohchly dining the twelfth dynasty of the egyptian kings that they ceased to be sepulchral adorn ments or symbols and were placed before the temples in 1801 at the termination of the cam paign of england against napoleon iu egypt general tlie earl of cavan was left in command of that portion of the british forces which was ordered to re main in the country in this portion was included the auxiliary corps bent from in dia under the command of general sir david baird the captive first and then the captor of seringapatam lord cavan's attention was drawn to the obelisk known as cleopatra's needle which lay upon the ground ut alexandria dose to its own pedestal and to the other which as shown iu our plate is yet standing and is be lieved by some persons lo be the true and distinctive needle he conceived theno tion of obtain ing a giant of the fallen mono lith for the purpose of conveying it to london to be elected there as both an illustration of ancient history most in teresting in itself and as a monument of lb i ish successes in egypt lie obtained a grant from tin turkish authorities and at once proceeded to cany his purpose into excecution in connection with maj bryee the chief engineer on the spot he i prepared a plan for the embarkation and ! conveyance ol the obelisk to england a manuscript now in the british museum dated march 8 1841 and apparently writ ten by general macdonald says that the troops then remaining in egypt were invited by their officers to subscribe a certain number of days pay to meet the expenses ol an undertaking in which their feelings were deeply interested an invitation which was eagerly accepted so that lord cavan instantly found tlie necessary funds for his purpose at his disposal officers non-coinniissioiicil officers ami soldiers vied with each other in offering their contributions to the furtherance of an object so gratifying to their national and to their professional pride ami work was withforth put in progress in the following manner one of the largest of the french frigates el careo captured at alexandria was pur chased ol the prize agent from the funds thus contributed to convey the fallen needle to england a stone pier or jetty was commenced alongside of whieli when completed the frigate was to lie brought to receive the needle which was to be introduced into the ship upon rollers through a stem port to be cut to the necessary size and when in troduced was lo be laid upon a bed of large blocks of timber forming a p!;it form upon the keel of the ship so as to keep this immense weight of solid sub stance exactly a midship and to prevent it straining tiie keel thus placed in the hold of the ship the needle was to be secured in its bed so as to preclude the possibility of its being moved therefrom by the motion of ihe ship at sea as the fallen needle lay dose to tiie sea the moving it upon boilers from where it lay to the ship became a very easy opera tion considerable progress was made with the jettv and all the officers ofthe royal navy then at alexandria entered heartily i into the project which would have been ! successful had it not been abandoned in , consequence of orders received from lord i keith and general fox who were then j in command of the fleet and the troops i serving in the mediterranean the work j ing parties were discontinued the bar gain with the prize agent for the ship was j rescinded and the funds yet undisbursed were returned to the subscribers the objections to the work seem to have been ihose which would be expected from two j commonplace martinets general fox i held that the employment of soldiers in such work was detrimental to their dis cipline and destructive to their equip ments lord keith thought it unbecom ing that tin boyal navy should be em ployed in such an undertaking in 1319 meheinet ali offered the obelisk ; to the prince regent and the british j government accepted the gift then rose j ' the question of the expense of its removal ■ and as tlie estimated cost was put at 50,000 the government which lavished ten times that sum n he prince's follies ' declined to act in the matter subse 1 quently in 1851 the subject was revived when even that watch-dog of the treas ury mr joseph hume strongly advocate : ed its removal to england in the house ; of commons but it was still deferred al ' though the estimated cost had been re duced to 13,000 it was ottered to the ; crystal palace company which being in financial straits shrank from the outlay ' i l,e upshot was that the admirably sent a commission to alexandria to examine the shaft uilii report upon its condition ' and the feasibility of transporting it to ■ england i j.852 it was examined by ' mr scott tucker and a fragment of it was » placed iu the british museum the subject i its removal was again brought under the l notice ofthe government in consequence f ofa notification from the khedive who r had let the ground on which it stood to a ' reek merchant who demanded that it i should be removed as an incumbrance it ' was taken away and consequently in t order to be rid of it the merchant buried , it in the ground finally in 1876 gener i sir james edward alexander the well known orientalist a kinsman of the alex i anders of sterling revived the question of tlie obelisk in england and mr john dixon a well-known engineer and con tractor offered to undertake the work tlie whole expense being assumed by professor erasmus wilson to whose munificence and public spirit england is indebted for its present real ownership of the far-famed cleopatra's needle seeing that there was but slight prospect that the nation would ever obtain the obelisk through any action on the part of the government mr wilson stirred in the matter and tlie result is that the falleu monolith has been removed from the trench in which the greek merchant bur ied it placed in a specially constructed iron vessel or floating case and is now actually at sea being towed to england by messrs william johnson &. co.'s liverpool steamer the olga in floating the obelisk a novel plan was ust-d wliich would doubtless have sur prised the ancient engineers who origin ally brought it to alexandria the stone is inclosed in au iron cylinder with ends shaped like wedges which was built around it as it lay on the shore sixty tons of iron were used in its construction it took about two months to inclose the monolith the inclosing cylinder is 92 feet long and has a diameter of 15 feet planks were arranged aud fastened around the box and after all was ready the whole was rolled down to tlie sea with the aid of ropes fastened on winches in vessels in tin water while other ropes on winches on the shore kept it from rolling too rap idly at first it was a struggle as to which should be set iu motion by this apparatus — the vessel or the obelisk the obelisk got entirely the better of the strain so that the boat instead of pulling the stone down to the shore was itself borne to wards tbe land it was only when steam tugs were substituted aud put under full headway that tlie enormous mass was i anally made to move when after two days of labor the obelisk readied tlie sea ' lhe cylinder filled with water because ofa leak and a powerful pump failed to emp ty the air spaces divers were employed who found that a stone had broken a large hole in the cylinder and was wedg ed in it so tightly that it could not be re moved under water the cylinder was i tinned over the injury repaired and soon ! this remarkable boat with its still more • wonderful contents was floating safely in ! tlie mediterranean from tlie position says engineering i of tlie jist september where the obelisk had remained during twenty cert uries to the dry-dock in the harbor is a distance ' of about eight miles by sea and a consid 1 erable proportion of this length lies out side the new breakwater where the rollers 1 of the mediterranean tumble in with no i inconsiderableaforce it will be interest j ing to all students of naval architecture j to learn how the cylindrical ship behaved i under these circumstances ou tlie day i of the passage the sea was high for tlie i , time of year and thick waves impelled j by the northly wind rolled on parallel to i the breakwater sending columns of spray j high into the air the two tugs in charge i ofthe needle rolled continuously sponsons ! under making it impossible to stand on j the bridge without dinging to the raj ; while the needle ship came along grandly alter them with some forty or fifty arabs ' and maltese sitting unconcernedly on the i plain cylindrical top with nothing to save ! them if the ship made a roll — which she ! never once did so far as could bcdeterni i ' i ined by the senses of those on board her i or the tugs although she behaved ex 1 actly as theory indicates and was pre dicted by the engineer it nevertheless struck every one with the sensation of a i surprise to see that two powerful tugs i tossing violently with their floats fanning i the air at every roll whilst the little cyl indrical ship just let the rollers pass un der her without answering to them in the slightest degree merely bringing her for ward and occasionally into the waves and charging the water right and left off her arched back she would have pitched i less than she did had she been in ea i going trim but she was rudderless aud was towed stern foremost though inten tionally trimmed down by the stern one foot and by accident somewhat more as she had a considerable quantity of water in her at the time it was no easy task to tow her under these circumstances round the breakwater and after sunset through the dangerous boghos pass in to alexandria harbor ; and the manage ment of messrs greenfield's tug by her commander was beyond praise the rudderless cylinder would appear first on one side and then on the other and again apparently prepared to charge savagely into the broadside of the tug so that the skipper generally had his wheels going opposite ways cither to coas along the needle or to get out of her way whon she charged captain clark was busier per haps than he had ever been before towing a craft but the arab pilot of course sat crosslegged on the padd'.e-box smoking cigarettes and looking dreamily ahead as if he had done nothing since his child hood than sit in tug and tow needles round to alexandria harbor now that three-quarters of a century after ii was first offered to her england finally sees cleopatra's needle on its way to her shores the new question has arisen what is she to do with it ? the matter was left in the hands of the london metropol r itan board of works and the chief com _ missioner has already submitted two or . three sites on any of which he thinks that a the monolith might be placed to advan a tage but the london public seem una r ble to decide upon the exact place in which ' to put it mr noel set up a wooden mod , el near st margaret's westminister in - the immediate neighborhood of westmiu 1 ister abbey but no sooner had he done i so than evil was predicted the founda c tion of a monument so situated would be jt immediately over the metropolitan dis t trict railway and so heavy a mass as cleopatra's needle might break through into the tunnel besides this either a new street must be closed or the flower beds would have to be removed while the statues of eminent men near the houses of parliament would be dwarfed into pig \ inies by this colossal monument from e egypt which no true britons could toi t erate sir charles barry's enormous t eight-day clock-tower which rises to a j height of 320 feet above the house of i commons would in its turn dwarf the t needle so why should it be placed there t sir charles barry sees this and loudly * protest against the site at westminister i he desires to place the monolith at a spot - remote unfriended melancholy slow i near the top of portland place others l suggest that it should stand in the court - yard ofthe british museum another sit j and a fine one which has been thought of ] is the upper end of the noble thames em . ban kment ; still another is lincoln's inn fields and another still is primrose hill i some people insist that the only proper i place for it is within the railings of st _ james's park where a mound would have , to be raised for it after the manner of that whereon the statute of achilles in hyde park is mounted for which some enthusi tic ladies gave a commission that it might commenorate forever the battle and the victor of waterloo as to st james's park some objections not of an artistic but ofa highly practical natnreare urged j the ground was originally swampy and . is thought to be still treacherous so that it is within the limits of possibility that should the needle be placed there lon don might awake some line morning to find it like the amsterdam stadt-iiuys sunken and gone similar doubts exist with regard to the site on which the wood ! en model stands in parliament square j not only does the metropolitan district railway run under it but beneath this spot of old the water flowed around thorny island and westniister abbey another site which has been spoken of is n greenwich hospital but the obelisk might | almost as well be placed on salisbury plain it will be seen that there is a great variety in the views of the english public as to where the egyptian relic of the times of thothmes iii should stand the subject having been taken up with the liveliest and keenest interest by the lou don people of all classes from the scholars and divines down to the smallest shop keepers who are quickwitted enough to see how much new grist will be brought to their mills by this new and unprece dented addition to the attractions of the great metropolis these obelisks posses a very great his toric value aside from that sentimental estimate which enlightened nations place upon all monuments of antiquity when the one now on its way to england was unearthed on the grounds of m dimitri the greek merchant already spoken of it wascovered with three feet of sand and was found to be just sixty-eight feet long the hieroglyphics wliich cover all of its four sides were prepared for deciphering by by washing the stone from the water-skin ofa water-carrier they were then studied by brugsch bey the eminent german egyptologist who visited this country at the time of the centennial he found that they referred to the lives t,f two kings thothmes iii and rameses ii the central inscriptions recounted the deeds of thothmes and tho others those of rameses the weight of the whole block was 200 tons so far as is known the hieroglyphics on the obelisk which remains standing at alexandria and which as we elsewhere show may one day be transferred to new york have not been deciphered but as thoy are of lhe same age and came origi nally from the same city and temple it is not unlikely that they refer to the same or at least to similar subjects the temple at ilelipolis where the monoliths first stood is of intense iuter est to biblical students as being supposed to be the one iu which moses the hebrew law-giver became learned in all the wis dom of the egyptians thothmes iii was one of the greatest of the egyptian kings and in his day the power of egypt was extended over abyssinia nubia arabia syria mesopotamia kurdistan and armenia notwithstanding the tra ditional hatred of the egyptians for the sea he had a powerful fleet on the med iterranean with which he conquored cyprus and mete and the islands of the archipelago the southern coast of greece and perhaps even tho south of italy all of northern africa where his monuments are found with certainly brought into subjection by him rameses ii , whose name is recorded on the english cleo patra's needle was the greatest builder | of all tin pharaohs many of the mag 1 nltieont temples at karnak and luxor ' are his work as are also the two subter ranean temples at ipsambul in nubia md the rameseum at thebes he also was a great warrior and it was upon the jtory of his campaigns and those of seti ind thothme8 that the greeks built ap their legends sesostris when the hieroglyphics upon the second obelisk shall lave been deciphered — though many of them must have been nearly effaced 1 y wind and weather — further light mat e cast upou the history of the remote past in egypt which is so profoundly mnnected with the whole rise aud pro gress of the religions the philosophies ind the arts of our own race and our own times — -..•-• from the lutheran visitor letter from rev g d bernheim from london england aug 12 1877 dear visitor — i left switzerland on my tiomeward journey the 7th of august and stopped once more in manheira and may iice to bid my relatives farewell had x pleasant surprise at a railroad station in the black forest mountains in meet ing another family of my relatives on their way to switzerland on a pleasure trip i sailed down the rhine to dussel dorf where i stayed a couple of days with the rest of my relatives from whom it was very difficult to part had a pleasant visit to baden-baden and enjoyed the baths there very much this is the most renowned and fashionable bathing place in all europe the water is hot and has minerals in it they have a band of mu sic playing morning or evening every day last night i went to hear the music and there saw the fashionable world as sembled iu the open air in the gardeq promenade ; and i assure you the glitter of this world dazzled my eyes and i therefore returned early to my hotel and retired for the night on my arrival in dusseldorf i found everything in a commotion as the em peror was expected there on the 5th of september in order to hold a grand re view all visits to switzerland schwarz burg and other places are cut short so that the citizens may be back at the ap preaching great event everywhere great preparations were being made for the emperor's reception : arches were erect ed troops were drilled laboriously each day an elaborate platform or stage for the review had been built ; all to welcome and receive tlieir gieat earthly sovereign but the heavenly king of glory oh how he is forgotten ! i was very much press ed to remain there until after the emper or's arrival and indeed would have enjoyed it greatly but my time was too dim ited from dusseldorf my route took me through holland i was astonished that i could understand so much of the lan guage which in fact greatly resembles the german at flushing we took the steamship for queensboro we had head winds all the time but not much motion of the ship which caused very little sea sickness and the trip was made iu eleven hours took the cars at queensboro and rode with great rapidity to london a dis tance of go miles in one and a-half hours visited st paul's cathedral and attended scavice there on the evening of my arri val and was much pleased with the mu sic and intonations of the prayers creed c ; also with the singing of the amen responses the choristers were all dressed in white aud walked in procession to their places with the minister in the lear the reading clergyman wore a shawl-like covering of red over his white surplice and the preacher a similar one of black the sermon was very long and by no means an able one but i must say i did not hear very dearly for the echo in this immense edifice destroys the distinctness of utterance i was delighted with the interior architecture of the church but the exterior is too much blackened by age and the smoke of the city to please the eye there is no display of dress and fashion among the worshippers all were apparelled in good clothing but nothing more ihe english being an exceedingly sensible people in ihis respect caring more for substantial and less for finery and outward s|ipw london is a smoky city ; so much soft bituminous coal is burnt here in the houses factories c unit the buildings are all discolored and 1 have to keep my window closed to keep out the soot and sulphurous air that makes one pough in voluntarily i should dislike to live here on that account ; but 0 what a c.,:mge between england and the continent ! here everything is quiet on sunday ; stores all closed and the lord's day not profaned for this i like england it is so much like my own countrv the next day i visited westminster abbey which is located near westmin ster bridge and almost adjoining the parliament edifice i arrived just at the time of evening service the music of which sounded inexpressibly sweet through the vaulted arches of the abbey softened by distance for i was iu another transept ofthe building the service here is intoned like that in st paul's cathe dral and is certainly an improvement upou the services in koji.o episcopal churches iu america an immense crowd was gathered in the abbey for sight-see ing and at the conclusion of the service a general rush was made to the various parts of the edifice some of the visitors were evidently from the coarser and low er walks of life mothers were there with their infants in their arms and the thoughtless and meaningless faces of some of the visitors showed but too plainly that they but little understood where they were or what they saw the abbey more thau comes up to all my expecta tions it is a noble building ; not quite so large as st paul's cathedral purely gothic aud ornamented with great taste and magnificence in one of the divisions may be seen suspended from ou high some of the mutilated battle-flags of past ages either as trophies of victories or as honorable vestiges of lhe faithful per formance of duty but what pained me exceedingly is the unpardonable sacrilege of which relic-hunters have made them selves guilty in mutilating the sacred monuments of the honored dead ; here a part of an arabesque monument is want ing tliere an entire hand of a marble ef figy is broken off on another but one or two lingers are remaining some of the fluted collar of queen elizabeth's dress taken away 0 i could most severely chastise such sacrilegious ■ theft the ashes of mary queen of scotts repose opposite those of elizabeth ; the chancel is between them and the ashes of each are in a separate apartment on each side of the chancel their effigies on their tombs are as though they were arrayed in the clothing they wore in those days i was surprised to find so few of the eng lish sovereigns entombed here the most ofthe monuments are erected in honor of england's illustrious dead outside of the ranks of royalty in the poets cor ner are names as familiar to us as house hold words — shakspeare milton gold smith gray dryden the two johnsons chaucer and a host of others with macaulay thackery and dickens as the newest additions to those of a past age all honorable professions seem to be rep resented here among the illustrious dead — men of science like sir isaac newton and the two herschells ; statesmen like pitt palm ers ton and others warriors by land and sea like nelson and mont gomery ; authors theologians novelists comedians like garrick and even his wife ; inventors such as watt explorers like sir john franklin and livingstone : mu sicians like handel and others the lamented major andre has a most touch ing monument and epitaph and even john and charles wesley the founders of methodism have bas-relief portraits in marble with inscriptions quoted from tlieir works and then upon them all falls the dim religious light of the ab bey as it passes through the stained windows a decriptive placard in each part or division of the abbey sometimes more than one so that one can very readily find the tomb and monument of each one buried or honored here with other cards all of which are hung op sonic giving quotations from authors and poets respecting westminster abbey and others warning against mutilations and requesting tho detection of such sacrileg ious persons the impressions made upon my mind were more of a pleasing nature than otherwise one communes not simply with the dead but with past events and honorable deeds of which those illustrious dead were the partakers and promoters and although the path of glory leads but to the grave neverthe less it is a happy thought that england thus honors the memory of her great men and incites her sons and daughters of every age to make england yet more re nowned by future deeds of valor would that republics could also learn the im portant lesson here given and cease to deserve the oft-repeated stigma that they are generally ungrateful what most surprised me was the coronation chair of ancient and mod ern royalty in use for a period of over tioo years even queen victoria was crowned in it it is a very rough and ordinary armchair made of wood and so indifferent aud unoruamented is it that i would not give it room in my house if it weredeprived of its historical associations underneath it is fixed the tone wliich is likewise very ordinary on which the kings of scotland were crowned a sim ilar chair was made when william and mary were crowned together and stands side by side with its more ancient com panion bnt such is the hallowed vener ation of the english for ancient things and usage that this old arm chair dirty discolored linpainted and even mutilated as it appears is sacredly pre served for all future coronation occasions atid i admire them for it yours truly i i bernheim eiht'tion of pptqpaxi more than one tlioiimw.l liven lout ecnador correspondent n 7 ration ] the last eruption qf the volcano of co topaxi the tenth according to my compu tation took place on tlie 12th of june last with every circumstance that could in crease its honor — utter darkness in broad day thunder and lightning fearful explo sions that made the earth tremble sub terranean noises and wild gusts of wind accompanied by a rain of ashes an eye witness told me that the volcano poured out a cataract of ten times the bulk of niagara which carried all before it in its headlong course and submerged the whole surrounding country the torrent divid ed itself in two opposite directions as if to give greater scope to its devastation and make confusion still more dire one branch took a southerly course toward the city of latacunga situated twelve miles from cotopaxi on its way the current converted the plain of callao into an im mense lake there is but little hope that the ruins of the palace of the ineas de scribed by humbolt and all other travel lers through the central valley of the equatorial andes have escaped the rav ages of flood near latacunga the furi ous torrent tore up from the very founda tion the cotton factory of hon jose villa gomez whose value was estimated at 83oo,00t ;. crops cattle and buildings v ere swept away ; the massive bridges of cat uche and pan salvo were destroyed as well as a part of the tine carriage road scarce equaled even in europe which connets quito with the towns iu the south of the republic ._ the tokkentj dk boiling water the torrent that headed toward the south of cotopaxi devastated the prosper ous and enchanting valley of chillo and in particular the estate ofthe senor agu irre noted for having been the residence of humbolt there too as in latacunga arose the building of a thriving factory which only the year before had been de stroyed by tire and had been repaired at great expense the torrent rooted it from the ground and bore it away in a thou sand fragments it is asserted that a mill of don eanuel palacios floated on the wa ter like a ship at sea until shattered by the current the loss in the valley of chillo alone is estimated at over two millions of dollars and in the other sections is equally great it is likewise calculated that the number of the dead exceeds 1,000 although ihe surround ings of quito have been laid waste the city itself suffered from only a rain of ashes and a complete darkness which be gan on the 26th of june at three in the afternoon at machache and other places the night lasted for thirty consecutive hours in the midst of this opaque gloom one could hear the bellowing of cattle and the cries of olher animals who deprived of their usual food by tbe shower of ashes sought in a species of frenzy for the means of satisfying their hunger other beasts frantic with terror careered hither and thither as if in dispair and the pite ous howling of the dogs pierced the ear with its ominous sound in quito the darkness was as that of night ; it was like that described by the younger limy in a letter to tacitus in which he relates the eruption of vesuvius and the destruction of pompeii it was lie says as if the lights in a room had been extinguished at quito the shower at lirst was of coarse heavy sand which subsequently turned into ashes so line and impalpable that they penetrated not only into apartments but into the most carefully closed recep tacles in the depth of the darkness men and women braving the rain of ash es sallied forth into the streets screening themselves with umbrellas and lighting tlieir way with lanterns and all the while these strange apparitions rent the air with their cries and prayers for mercy the umbrellas a8 well as the green eye-glasses used here on journeys were no superflu ous precaution although they afforded but scanty protection against the subtle powder which it was remembered had iu many cases produced blindness during the eruption of 1643 during the rain of ashes of thirty hours that attended it scpekst1tiocs frenzy of till people from the outset tin people had unani mously ascribed the disaster to a chastise ment of heaven brought down by the irrcligion of the government which had arbitrarily closed the churches and de prived tin people of those spiritual conso lations that were made doubly necessary by the sad condition of things in general the idea of a divine punishment plead like wildfire and as the tempest raged more wildly this conviction gathered in tensity until at last groups of men with out a leader without any concerted plan and without arms threw tin mselves upon the guard ofthe military hospital while others attacked the guard stationed at the powder magazine on the hill of javira there were but few troops in tlie garrison the greater part having bei n cut to lip press the insurrection in iiiibab'ira but the assailants lacking arms and direction were promptly overpowered with no fur ther loss than thai of two soldiers and two citizens in the dny following before 0 city had recovered from its consternate and while clouds of ashes still hovereu _ the air ami pervaded the streets five of the unhappy prisoners who had been ta ken during the tumult suffered the bar barous punishment of live hundred lashes some had died in consequence the facts need no comment a number of respect able citizen have been arrested and aie to be subjected to a court-martial in the present wretched condition of ecua dor rujqpd as it is by a series of disasters the recent eruption is ihe culmination of iis woes ten years of peace and pros pel ity , f which then is faint prpsped pow will not suffice to repair the eyjhj wiiich a few hours have win ia this unfortunate laud miss frances fisher of salisbury n .... the authoress of morton house aud oth er popular novels is on a visit to this citv mi.-s fisher is ihe daughter of col onel fisher of north carolina who was killed in the lirst battle of manassas bait qatette