PANIC AT ODESSA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12909, 4 July 1905, Page 5

PANIC AT ODESSA.

FLIGHT OF- BRITISH RESI- • DENTS. ■ St. Petersburg, July 2. The panic at Odessa' shows no sign of abating. The British Consul has chartered a vessel to take British subjects away. The fires in the city continued without cessation until Friday evening. Guns of the coast defence batteries are now stationed in ; streets that dominate . the approaches from the harbour to the town. ODESSA.. Odessa is the fourth city of Russia, on the Black Sea, midway between the estuaries of the' Dniester and Dnieper, by rail 967 miles south-south-west of Moscow, and 381 miles south of Kieff.- It is built facing the season low ' cliffs, seamed with deep ravines, and hollowed! out by galleries in the soft rock, in which numbers of the poorest inhabitants herd together. Above ground l its r streets are long and broad, and cross each other at right' angles. Odessa to only founded in 1794, near a Turkish fort that fell into Russian hands in : 1789; but it quickly became the port for the corngrowing districts of South Russia. Its progress was ' greatly aided by ' its being a free port' from 1817 to., 1857, and again by the railway, to Kieff (1866). The population increased from'3lso in 1796 to 25,000 in 1814, 100,000 iii 1850, 184,800 in 1873, and 297,635 (many Jews, Greeks, etc.) in 1891. The harbour is made up of "a roadstead, and three,basins, protected'by moles against the dangerous winds that'sweep the Black Sea. It is impeded by ice during only a fortnight in the'year. •: The'exports include wheat, sugar, wool, and flour; the imports, raw cotton, oils,' groceries, iron. and steel, coal, food-stuffs, fruits, tea, ' tobacco, machinery. The chief industries are flour-milling, sugar and oil refining, the manufacture of tobacco," machinery, leather, soap, chemicals,, biscuits, etc. Odessa has a university (1865) with 600 students, a public library (1829) of over 40,000 volumes, the* cathedral (1802-49) of the Archbishop of Kherson, a very fine opera house (1887), palatial grain warehouses, : corn-elevators, : 'and - the "palais royal," with its gardens and -park. Water is brought by aqueduct (27 miles long) from the Dniester. Numerous coast batteries have been' built there.