HOERIBLE CALAMITY AT SANTIAGO. 2000 LIVES LOST.

North Otago Times, Volume 1, Issue 6, 31 March 1864, Page 6

HORRIBLE CALAMITY AT SANTIAGO. 2000 LIVES LOST.

The "Alta California" of the 23rd of January, brought by the Amazone, quotes from the "Valparaiso Mercury," received on the 22nd, an account of a catastrophe through which the lives of nearly 2000 women and children were sacrificed. It seems that during a religious festival held in commemoration of the Immaculate Conception in one of the churches, some of the crescent fire at the foot of a gigantic figure of the Virgin Mary, over the High Altar, overflowed, and catching the muslin draperies and pasteboard devices extending to the roof, a torrent of flame soon j oiled forth, awful to contemplate. " Never," says the Mercury, " had such pyrotechny been 'Seen befors — 20,000 lights, mostly camphine, in long festoons of colored globes, blazed the church into a Hall of Fire. Its suddenness was terrific. The dense mass of women and children, nearly 3000 in all, comprising the beauty and fashion of the city, were frightened out of their senses — numbers fainting, and all entangled by their long swelling dresses — rushed, as those who knew that death was at their hoels, to the one door, which soon became choked up. Fire was everywhere. Streaming along the wooden ceiling, it flung the paraffine lamps, hung in rows there, among the struggling women. In a moment the gorgeous church was a sea of flame. Michael Angelo's fearful picture of Hell was there, but far exceeded. " Help was all but impossible. A Hercules might have strained his strength in vain to pull one from the serried mass of frenzied wretches who, piled one above another as they climbed over to reach the air, wildly fastened the gripe of death upon any one escaping, in order that they might be dragged out with them. Those who longed to save them were doomed to bear the most harrowing sight that ever seared human eye-balls ; to see mothers, sisters, tender and timid women, dying that dreadful death that appals the stoutest heart of man — within one yard of salvation — within one yard of men who would have given their lives over and over again for them. It was maddening — the screaming and wringing of hands for help as the remorseless flames came on ; and then, save when some already dead with fright were burned

in ghastly indifference — their horrible agony — some in prayer, some tearing their hair and battering their faces. Women seized in the embrace of the flames were seen to undergo a transformation as though by an optical illusion— first dazzlingly bright, then horribly lean and shrunk up — then black statues rigidly fixed in a writhing attitude. " The fire, imprisoned by the immense thickness of the walls, had devoured everything combustible by ten o'clock. Then, defying the sickening stench, the people came to look after their lost ones. Oh, what a sight the fair, placid moon looked down upon ! Close-packed crowds of calcined, distorted forms, wearing the distorted expression of the last pang, whose smile was once a heaven — the ghastly phalanx of black statues twisted in every variety of agony, stretching out their arms as if imploring mercy — and then of the heap that had choked up the door, multitudes with the lower purts perfectly untouched, and some all a shapeless mass, with but one arm or foot unscathed The silence after those piercing screams were hushed in death was horrible. It was the silence of the grave, unbroken but by the bitter wail or fainting cry. Two thousand souls had passed through that ordeal of fire to the judgment seat of God." Much blame is attached to the priests for the disaster. " The public conscience," says the same paper, " holds them guilty of the death of all these victims, because, by collecting together all the material most likely to make a fire — a countless number of lights, pasteboard scenery, and muslin hangings, admitting a vast crowd, and covering the one door open with a screen, they took every pains to bring about this tragedy. When Ihe fire broke out and the people were escaping by the sacristy, they blocked up this door to devote themselves the more undisturbedly to saving their giincracks. And no sooner had they completed this work than they forsook the scene, and in that awful night — when fainting women and desperate men strewed the streets, and writhing forms that a few hours befoie were graceful, beautiful maidens, moaned and died in chemists' shops — not a priest was to be seen to whisper a word of Christ's comfort to the dying ear, or hold the precious crucifix before the glazing eye. " No, not so — for the priest of nature was there — Woman —a ministering angel in the dark hour tended and soothed as usual — one young lady — God bless her ! tore up all her underclothing to make bandages, and bound up the wounds as only woman can. All this awful night the only thing that reminded of the clergy was the incessant tolling of bells, about the only thing they could do to increase the horrors of the scene."