Calamities of the Year

The past year has been distinguished by providential calamities. In some instances, the elements seem to have been commissioned to perform the work of destruction to an awful extent, and unprecedented severity. Three of the greatest calamities that have occurred within a century, happened within a short period of one hundred hours. The terrible fire at Hamburg, which destroyed 2,000 houses, and nearly $20,000,000 of property, in the fairest portion of the city, was followed in less than two days by the earthquake at St. Domingo. In this earthquake the towns of Cape Haytian and Santiago, sixty miles apart, were entirely destroyed, and not less than 7,500 of the inhabitants perished. On the very next day while St. Domingo was yet rocking with shocks of the earthquake, and the ruins of Hamburg were not three days old, a train of cars filled with passengers on the railroad from Paris to Versailles, were thrown from the track, and set on fire by the engine. Before the passengers, who were locked in could be removed, seventy of them perished in the flames. More recently the city of Liverpool has suffered by fire to an extent only surpassed by the fire at Hamburg.-In this country, the cities of Portland, New York, Charleston and Columbia have suffered severely from the same cause. At one period of several weeks during the year, it was estimated that the loss of steamboats on the western waters, averaged one a day. In connexion [connection] with six of the boats, two hundred lives were lost. If to all this we add the loss of life at sea, which has been usually great the past year, we must regard it as a year of calamities.