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Auckland Star, Volume IX, Issue 2711, 28 December 1878, Page 2

The catastrophe on the Orne river, France, by which forty-eight persons were suddenly engulphed and drowned is one of those occurrences which forcibly recal the mind to the uncertainty of human existence. The reader who glances over our special telegram can picture in his mind's eye all the tragic features of the scene. Hundreds of pleasure-seekers disporting themselves 'on the ice, with all that light-hearted gaiety which ispeculiar to the Gaelic temperament, forgetful of the frail cisist which intervenes between their feet and the waters below ; suddenly sounds of cracking, the treacherous ice sinks beneath their feet, and amidst a wail of despair, scores of men and women arc swallowed up. The scene is not new. It has been witnessed on the Thames, the Serpentine, and many other places, but to us who live iv a climate where a frozen river is unknown, the chief but graphic words of the telegram recal the scenes of far off lands in bygone days, when we too dared the brittle ice, and perchance in the recklessness of youth approached near enough to that word " Danger," to hear the warning sounds, and to give "Danger" a wide berth. , The Orne river, the most of our readers' are doubtless aware, rises in the Department of that name in France, about fifteen miles N.E. of Alencon, and flowing a length ot about ninety miles, falls into the English Channel.