The Western Railroad Accident. "One female was severely scalded on the hand, and otherThe Westfield (Mass.) Spectator, published in the vicinity of the sufferers must die from the injury received by the wise severely injured. We believe that from six to eight of the disaster, says: "The accident took place about one o'clock in the afternoon, 7 miles west of this place, in a deep stone cut, so circuitous as to render it impossible for the engineer to see ahead but a few rods. The road had just been completed through the summit, and the regulations of the cars were not perfectly established. The train from the east arrived here at the usual hour, fifteen minutes past 12 o'clock, where it was expected the train from the west would meet it, and after waiting fifteen or twenty minutes passed on, causing the sad result which we have to communicate. "Both trains were under the greatest speed when the concussion took place-jointly proceeding at the rate of sixty miles per hour-the western train, from the advantage of the grade under much the greatest speed, escaping with the least injury. The engines of both trains and the tenders, with the passenger cars immediately attached to them, were thrown into a total mass of ruins. Of the passenger car attached to the engine of the train proceeding west, not a vestige was left upon the wheels but the heavy timbered frame work, the whole body being shattered into atoms leaving nothing except the tin roof and the window frames of the sides, which were separated and thrown several feet ahead of the running part of the carriage. All the passenger cars were considerably injured, the rear ones most fortunately escaping total destruction. concussion. 66 Upon whom falls the blame we are unable to saywhether upon the directors or the conductors of the train. The conductor, Mr. Moore, avers that he obeyed the instructions of the directors: if so the public should not hold him amenable. The train of which he had charge waited here, which was the place for the trains to meet, twenty minutes, and then proceed on. The conductor of the train proceeding east arrived at Chester Village Depot, and waited ten minutes, when it left. Both conductors acted in accordance with their instructions; the result is such as we have presented." A private letter from Westfield, dated on Friday says: "Of the forty persons said to be injured, three are dead-a Mr. Brewer, Mr. Warren, the conductor, and a child of Mrs. Bloodgood. There is another child of Mrs. B. that will probably die, and a third one very dangerously hurt." Great Storm at Utica. by the most severe and extraordinary hail storm I ever witThis city and its vicinity were yesterday (Friday) visited nessed, or that has occurred here at any time within the recollection of the primitive settlers of the city. Indications of a severe shower began to exhibit themselves from the east between 2 and 3 P. M., and in the space of half an "It would seem from the inextricable juxtaposition into liant sunshine to the darkness of the blackest thunder cloud. hour the entire horizon changed its complexion, from brilwhich the cars were thrown, that not a passenger could have After a preliminary flash of lightning or two, "the windows escaped with his life. But, most miraculously, not a life of heaven opened," and then descended such a fall of hail was lost, though some 15 or 20 were dragged from the ruins in a most horribly mutilated condition-the number receiv. as was indeed serious to look upon. Not a stone fell that ing more or less injury amounting, we should judge to about exceeded the size. The almost perfect uniformity of their was not as large as an ordinary hickory nut, and but few 40-the whole number of passengers probably rising 100. size was the greatest wonder about the storm; yet the tre"But the most distressing and heart-rending scene was ex-mendousness of the fall was almost frightful. There was hibited at the depot of this place, where the wounded were but little wind at the time, fortunately, or not an unprotect mostly brought for attendance. As the baggage car contained pane of glass would have been left in the castern wining the bodies of the wounded came rolling silently along, propelled by no other power than that of a few men, a deathlike stillness pervaded the crowd of spectators which had assembled to witness the scene. To witness the bleeding, groaning and agonizing sufferers, was indeed a melancholy spectacle-one which we hope to be spared witnessing again. We give below the names of those who were seriously, considerably, and slightly injured, so far as we were enabled to procure them. "Mr. Edwin Brewer of this town, a most worthy citizen, so seriously that his life is despaired of his lower limbs most seriously fractured and his stomach and lungs so much injured as to cause a severe hemorrhage of blood. He was conversing with Mr. Root, the postmaster of this place, who was accompanying him to Pittsfield, and probably escaped the same fate by jumping from the cars-receiving only a slight injury. "Rev. Thomas M. Clark, of Boston, considerably injured -Mr. Clark was chaplain to the State Senate last winter. "Rev. Charles Lee, of Lowell, not seriously-a gentleman of considerable notoriety as an abolitionist in this State. "A Rev. Mr. Horton, from Rhode Island, considerably. Mr. Rufus S. Payne, of West Springfield, Ireland Parish, badly injured. "Rev. Mr. Porter, of Boston, not seriously. "Col. H. Chapin, of Springfield, not seriously. "A Mr. Boyd, of Portland, Me. seriously. "Mrs. William Bloodgood, of Albany, with a family of six children, quite seriously injured. She is a near relative of Major Whistler, the chief engineer of the road. "John Remington, of Becket, Mass. seriously. "Shem Loomis, of Southwick, considerably. "A Mr. Watson, of Blanford, seriously. dows of a single house in the city. In perhaps five minutes the fall abated, the wind chopped round to the north, and the hail lay on the ground to the depth of two or three inches. Presently, however, the storm resumed its fury, and the north pelted us quite as fiercely as the cast had, and for thrice the length of time-leaving on the ground three or four inches of hail. In the course of some twenty minutes, however, the hail gave way to rain, which continued falling an hour or more, melting and sweeping away the remains of the icy visitation. A vast quantity, however, still remains on the ground, with a prospect of more rain.-—N. Y. Sun. Chicago. The wheat trade which concentrates at Chicago is steadily increasing in importance. The American, of that city, speaking of the number of wagons laden with wheat which are arriving there from the interior, says: Teams a short time since came from a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, which we thought of itself was doing very well. Soon after, we found to our great amazement that they were coming in from a distance of two hundred miles, and they now come in from sections of country two hundred and fifty miles off, and bearing south, south-east, and south-west. This absolutely makes us the market at this very time of about one-half the State of Illinois, a large portion of Indiana, and a very considerable part of Wisconsin. Rhode Island Coal. We rejoice to learn that the coal obtained from the mine near the north end of this island improves in quality as the excavation proceeds, and that the quantity raised is sufficient "Mr. Warren, conductor of the train proceeding east, died to supply a moderate demand. Another company, we are about 8 o'clock this morning. "J. Gordon Blake, a lad of Boston, seriously. pleased to hear, is about to commence the mining operations somewhere in the neighborhood of the mine now open. We "There were three or four lads and four or five ladies se- earnestly hope that all concerned in the business may meet verely injured, and two or three firemen or engineers, with good success.-Rhode Islander. A SUMMARY STATEMENT Of the quantity and value of goods, wares, and merchandise, the growth, produce, and manufacture of foreign countries, exported from the United States, commencing on the 1st day of October, 1839, and ending on the 30th day of Sept., 1840, $120,000 11,235 $177,384 MANUFACTURES. next. Register's Office, June 8, 1841. T. L. SMITH, Register. Another Anthracite Furnace. The Crane Iron Company have commenced the erection Chronology and Statistics of Tobacco. BY JOEL MUNSELL. The whole world, within the space of about three centuries, have become chewers, smokers and snuffers. The Chinese chews and smokes his opium, the East-Indian his betel, and the European and American their tobacco. Against these practices it is useless to declaim. It was in vain that the Parliament of England discouraged the flagrant delit of smoking; in vain did James I. assure his subjects that the custom was "loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." The strong arm of the law opposed it; the priest and the physician, the moralist and the philanthropist arrayed themselves against it; all to no purpose. Opposition only served to make proselytes, and the custom has spread far and wide under persecution, till over the whole surface of the globe its fumes arise constantly to the atmosphere, and it is at this moment, perhaps, the most general luxury in existence. In the city of New York alone, the consumption of cigars is computed at ten thousand dollars a day-a sum greater than that which its inhabitants pay for their daily bread; and in the whole country the annual consumption of tobacco is estimated at one hundred million pounds, being seven pounds to every man, woman and child, at an annual cost to the consumer, of twenty millions of dollars! It may be curious to mark by what gradations the use of tobacco has reached this grand crisis. The subject attracted the attention of Prof. Beckmann of Gottingen, about the middle of the last century, who took great pains to ascertain the dates of its introduction into the different countries of Europe, and from whose work some of the following items are gathered. He conjectures that even before the discovery of the fourth quarter of the globe, a sort of tobacco was smoked in Asia; and this opinion was also entertained by the celebrated traveller, M. Pallas, who says that, "Among the Chinese, and among the Mogol tribes who had the most intercourse with them, the custom of smoking is so general, so frequent, and become so indispensable a luxury; the tobacco purse affixed to their belt so necessary an article of dress; the form of the pipes, from which the Dutch seem to have taken the model of their's as original; and, lastly, the preparation of the yellow leaves, which are merely rubbed to pieces and then put into the pipe, so peculiar, that we cannot possibly derive all this by the way of Europe from America, especially as India, where the habit of smoking tobacco is not so general, intervenes between Persia and China." It may be too late now to investigate the subject, even if it should be considered worth the trouble. But there is one more important confirmation of Prof. Beckmann's conjecture to be adduced from Ulloa's Voyage to America, who says: "It is not probable that the Europeans learned the use of tobacco from America; for as it is very ancient in the eastern countries, it is natural to suppose that the knowledge of it came to Europe from those regions by means of the intercourse carried on with them by the commercial states on the Mediterranean Sea. Nowhere, not even in those parts of America where the tobacco grows wild, is the use of it, and that only for smoking, either general, or very frequent." We have nothing, however, authentic, earlier than the following: In 1496, Romanus Paine, a Spanish monk, whom Columbus, on his second departure from America had left in that country, published the first account of tobacco, with which he became acquainted in St. Domingo. He gave it the name of cohoba, cohabba, gioia. In 1519, tobacco is said to have been discovered by the Spaniards near Tobasco, though it is assigned to the next year.* In 1535, the negroes had already habituated themselves to the use of it, and cultivated it on the plantations of their "Cette plante, (tabac,) acre et caustique, trouvee in 1520, pres de Tobasco dans le golfe du Mexique."-Precis sur l'Amerique, p. 116. masters. Europeans likewise already smoked it. We also find from a passage in Cartier's Voyage, that it was used in Canada.* In 1559, tobacco was introduced into Europe from St. Domingo, by a Spanish gentleman named Hernandez de Toledo, who brought a small quantity into Spain and Portugal. In the same year Jean Nicot, envoy from the court of France to Portugal, first transmitted thence to Paris, to Queen Catharine de Medicis, seeds of the tobacco plant; and from this circumstance it acquired the name of Nicotiana. When tobacco began to be used in France, it was called herbe du grand prieure, from the grand pricure of the house of Lorraine, who was then very fond of it. It was also called herbe de St. Croix, after Cardinal Prosper St. Croix, who, on his return from Portugal, where he had been nuncio from the Pope, introduced the custom of using tobacco. It was received at once in France and the Papal States with great enthusiasm, in the form of powder, or snuff; it was sometime after this period, that smoking became popular. In 1565, Conrad Gesner became acquainted with tobacco, At that time several botanists cultivated it in their gardens. The same year Sir John Hawkins carried tobacco from Florida to England, where "all men wondered what it meant." In 1570, they smoked in Holland out of conical tubes composed of palm leaves, plaited together. In 1575, first appeared a figure of the plant in Andre Thevot's Cosmographie. In 1585, the English first saw pipes made of clay among the natives of Virginia, which had just been discovered by Sir Richard Grenville. It appears likewise that the English soon after fabricated the first clay tobacco pipes in Europe. In 1590, Schah Abbas of Persia, prohibited the use of tobacco in his empire; but the practice had become so deeprooted among his subjects, that many of them fled to the mountains, and abandoned everything else to enjoy the luxury of smoking. In the beginning of the seventeenth century they began to cultivate tobacco in the East Indies. In 1604, James I. of England endeavored by means of heavy imposts, to abolish the use of tobacco, which he held to be a noxious weed. In 1610, the smoking of tobacco was known at Constantinople. To render the custom ridiculous, a Turk, who had been found smoking, was conducted about the streets, with a pipe transfixed through his nose. For a long time after, the Turks purchased tobacco from the English, and that the refuse. It was late before they began to cultivate the plant themselves. In 1615, tobacco began to be sown about Amersfort, in Holland, which afterwards became famous for its cultivation. In 1616, the colonists began to cultivate tobacco in Virginia. It is not known whether the plant was indigenous, or whether it came from a more southern country. It is supposed the seeds were from Tobago. But it seems to have been in use among the Virginia Indians at the time they were visited by the English, and was called by them petun, or petum. Clavigero says, "tobacco is a name taken from the Haitine language." Humboldt also derives it from the same language, and says that the term was used to desig nate the pipe, or instrument made use of by the natives in smoking the herb, which the Spaniards transferred to the herb itself, and after them, the other nations of the old world. In 1619, James I. wrote his Counterblast to Tobacco, and ordered that no planter in Virginia should cultivate "There groweth a certain kind of herbe, whereof in summer they make great provision for all the yeere, and only the men use of it; and first they cause it to be dried in the sunne, then weare it about their neckes, wrapped in a little beastes skinne made like a little bagge, with a hollow peece of stone or wood like a pipe; then when they please they make poudre of it, and then put in one of the ends of the said cornet or pipe, and laying a coal of fire upon it, at the other end sucke so long, that they fill their bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the tonnell of a chimney." |