Bursting Of A Bog

Mr. W. L. ïrench, writing to the Loudon Times to appeal to the oharitable for aid tor oertain uafortunate families, fjives this account of the bursting of un irish bog. He says : " I have just returned f rom iuspeoting one of the most piinful scènes of the sort it has bceu ïny fitte to wituess since 1 saw the remains of the village of Visp, in the Ehono Valley, Switzorlaud, after its destruction by nood soma years ago. " The scène to which I refer is the result of the bursting of a bog, situated about three miles eastof the town of Dunmore, in the northern part of Galway County. Heretofore this bog was connected with the Dunuioie Eiver, at Dunrnore, by a sniiill stream called the Corrabel Eiver, flowing through a continuation of pasture and tillage lauds iu its course. The level of the upper surface of the bog was formerly 260 feet above the level of the sea, and that of the water at Duninore 190 feet, showing a fall of 70 t'eet. Up to a fortnight ago thia bog presented the usual appearance of most of our undraiued bog, i. e. its skirts, adjoining the arable land, consistingof high turf banks, its center being exceodingly wet and spongy. " On the lst of October the farmer occupying a farm on the Corrabel stream, nearest the bog, was digging his potatoes, when he suddenly observed a brown mass slowly approaching him. He left his spade in the ground and went for the ueighbors. On his return the mass (which was the moving bog) had half covered his potato field, and completely hidden fioiu sight his field of corn, with the exception of a few stocks, situated on a knoll ; they still remain an i&laud in the middle of a scène of desolation. This was but tho commencement ; siuco then the bog has continued to advance in a rolling mass, continuing its course right down the valley to Duninore, burying in its way three farm houses and covering at least 180 acres of pasture and arable land to a depth in some places of six feet. The unfortunate occupyers of the threo farms have been turned, by this visitation of Providence, farmless and homeless, with their families on the world. " At Dunmore a small bridge"has been removed, near the junctiou of the Corrabel stream with the Dunmore Eiver, to afford relief to tho lands up the valley, and a bog-laden torrent is being discharg ed into the latter river. The worst may be said to be over, but the discharging powers of that river will be materially affected by this inrlux of solid matter The source of this disaster presented a wonderful appearance. The subsidence at the discharging point cannot be less thau about 35 foet. The extent of the bog affected is most clearly defiued by a series of black ' crevasses,' where the upper crust of the bog has, by the subsidence below, been torn asunder. The whole assumes the form of a cráter half a mile in diameter. "With considerable difficulty we piloted our way to the center, where we found the brown liquid bog boiling out like a stream of lava and feeding the moving mass in the valley below. At the point where the bog buist, the turf banks were forced right over and round on either side, and assumed soniewhat the apptiarance of 'moraines.' " This and similar disasters to which this country is Hable must be attributed to the absence of a complete and good System of arterial drainage. A similar cataetrophe occurred a couple of yéars ago, occasioned by the baok-water of the Eiver Suck, near Castleroa."