A TERRIBLE FATE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3221, 8 September 1879, Page 3

A TERRIBLE FATE.

The correspondent of a German Swiss paper tolls of a terrible accident that occurred on March 30, near the Russian town of Baku, on the Caspian Sea. A tnan of the name of Rowaleff lived with his family in a small building" which had been erected in the neighbourhood of an exhausted naphtha spring, for the fi(orag9 and reGning of naphtha. As is tho custom in Russia, Rowaleff was in the habit before going to bed of closing all the doors and windows of his house so as to exclude as muoh as possible the external air. This he did on the evening of March 29. At four o'clock on the morning of the 30tb, his wife having occasion for a light, Rowaleff rose and struck a match. The next moment the air was on fire. The gas from the old naphtha spring bad risen through the interstices of the floorinto the house, and, finding no meaus of egress, had filled it with inflammable fumes. In a few seconds all the eight children of Rowaleff were either stifled or burnt alivo in their beds, and the wretched father and mother managed to crawl to the door, their skin hanging in shreds from their scorched bodies, only to die miserably a few hours later. The en. tire stock of naphtha was of coarse destroyed and the building burnt to the ground.