THE BRADFIELD INUNDATION. THE project of supplying large towns with water by means of ponds with artificial embankments, is in many cases attended with extreme danger to life and property. For this, there is a good reason. The construction of embankments to hem in a large body of water in a mountain valley, is an engineering work of great difficulty. The foundation may rest on ground not very secure, and no breadth or strength of materials can exempt the mass from being pressed on by water seeking its level. Besides, there is a constant risk of water-vermin perforating the embankment, and producing crevices, which lead to cracks, such cracks leading to sudden rents, whereby there ensues instant destruction. Wise are the cities which in preference, and where it is at all practicable, bring supplies of water from any great natural reservoir, as, for example, Glasgow supplying itself from Loch Katrine. To do so, the initiatory expense may be greater, but what signifies any reasonable though large expense in comparison to security, and insuring the permanence of a copious supply for generations to come. As any reasoning of ours, however, will have little avail with populations who would not mind any amount of insecurity to neighbours, in comparison to saving a penny or two per pound in the way of annual assessment, we take the liberty of giving some account of what occurred ten years ago by the bursting of the great artificial reservoir at Bradfield in Yorkshire.

The object was to supply water to Sheffield by damming up the small river Loxley and adjoining rivulets among the hills. The reservoir so formed was situated about eight miles from Sheffield. This reservoir, begun in 1859, was intended to hold the drainage of four thousand three hundred acres, and to contain six hundred and ninety-one million gallons of water. It was nearly completed, but had not yet been used. The embankment, at the base, was four hundred yards long, five hundred feet wide, one hundred feet high, twelve feet wide at the summit, and about four hundred thousand cubic feet of material had been expended on it.

PRICE 1d.

Friday, March 11, 1864, was destined to see the destruction of this costly and gigantic work. Heavy rains had swollen the streams, filling the reservoir almost to the brim. Still, all appeared safe. At length, in the course of that day, which was very stormy, a small crack was observed in the embankment. Mr Fountain, one of the contractors, pronounced the crack to have arisen from the water penetrating the inner puddle-wall of the reservoir, and so forcing the top forward. There was no danger-not a bit! He, however, at once despatched his son on horseback to Sheffield to Mr Gunson, the resident engineer, to inform him of the crack; and off through the darkness the young Yorkshireman dashed to the town. Mr Fountain and his men then set to work to open the valves of the outer pipes, to carry off the surplus water, which roared like discharges of cannon as it broke loose, and made the very ground tremble. After the pipes were thus relieved, no change was noticed in the crack, but one of the men fancied, through the darkness, that he observed that the water seemed lower on the inner side of the embankment than the ominous crack on the outer side. Between nine P.M. and ten P.M., however, the spectators, reassured, left the men with the lanterns quietly and busily at work.

At about ten P.M. Mr Gunson and Mr Craven, the contractor, darted through Damflask, on their way to the reservoir, in a gig drawn by a fast horse. On their way they met frightened people, alarmed by the first mounted messenger, driving cattle up the hillsides, or carrying sick or infirm people in carts to a place of safety. They found the crack wide enough now to admit a man's hand, but they saw no danger, and even walked over the spot to examine the waste-weir. The water did not run over. Mr Fountain at once said: 'If we don't relieve the dam of water, there'll be a blow-up in half an hour.' They then prepared to blow up the weir by gunpowder; but the powder would not catch. Gunson and Swinden went back with lanterns to measure and see if the crack was above or below the water in the reservoir. As Gunson stooped with his lantern towards the end of the

crack, and then looked up, he saw, to his horror, a sheet of foaming white water rolling over the top of the embankment, and down into the crack. Still anxious to examine the valve-house, to see how much water was escaping, he crept cautiously down the slope of the embankment. But Swinden, cooler, and more alarmed, called out to his friend not to stay a moment in the valve-house. It was indeed time to flee, for at that moment, as Mr Gunson cast an ominous look upward, he saw an opening thirty feet wide in the embankment, and down came the water in a vast avalanche.

'It's all up. The embankment is going!' he cried to his friends; and the two ran across the embankment at full speed for their lives. Just then, the powder at the waste-weir blew up with a loud explosion. In a great deluge, the water followed the two men so fast, that Gunson began to forget himself; but his cooler friend dragged him out of its terrible path. In an instant, the chasm in the great earth-rampart gaped wider. The centre of the embankment crumbled away, and the vast flood of one hundred and fourteen million tons of water, now free to work out its hideous will, rolled on, an overwhelming avalanche, that no power could have staid, and swept down the valley, bearing away, with a roar like thunder, houses and mills as if they were haystacks-cattle, trees, and human beings as if they were flies. It was then exactly two minutes after midnight. A second terrific rush swept away the remainder of the embankment. The gap was one hundred and ten yards wide at the top, and opened seventy feet deep. In forty-seven minutes the reservoir was empty. The velocity of the flood was eighteen miles an hour, and, to use the forcible words of an eye-witness: Not even a Derby-day horse could have carried the warning in time to have saved the poor people down the valley. For about three quarters of a mile the flood did no special harm, as there were few houses near the river; but it tore up trees, washed away banks, tore down huge rocks, carried away Annet Bridge, and destroyed roads. One block of stone, thirty-six feet long, weighing nearly sixty tons, was carried some dis

tance.

The first house swept away was Annet House, a small farmstead. Mr Empsall, the farmer, was sitting up waiting for a lodger; his wife, three boys, and another lodger, were in bed. A little before twelve, a pale-faced labourer rushed in shouting: It's coming! it's coming!' Empsall instantly called up his household, and got them out, carrying their clothes on their heads. He also drove out a cow and two calves. Five minutes after, the flood came, and swept clean away the house, outbuildings, and garden, not leaving even a trace of them. Mr Gunson came up a moment before, and cried: "The house is going! the house is going!' At Lower Bradfield, the destruction was overwhelming. Two stone bridges were destroyed; the school-house, a blacksmith's and wheelwright's shops were swept off, and two threestoried corn-mills, built with heavy stone basements, seemed suddenly to melt away. The very rock was torn up from under the foundations. Mr Joseph Ibbotson, an eye-witness, hearing the cry: "The flood is coming!' leaped out of bed, looked out of window, heard the roar, and could just discern the rushing water. He ran out of the house to within twenty yards of the flood. The very

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earth seemed rent asunder, as the water rushed on at race-horse speed. 'It seemed,' he says, as if some angry monster were lashing the hillsides, crunching up buildings, and filling the air with a wrathful hiss; trees snapped with the sound of pistol-shots, houses staggered for a moment, then melted into the boiling torrent. In five minutes, the bridges, the three-storied mill, the school-house, and the master's house, vanished, and the flood, in its full majesty, rose a mighty wall of water, on a level with the roofs of three-storied houses. The large millstones and massive ashlar pillars of the Bradfield mill were not found for many days.' These curious facts were verified, and are vouched for, by Mr Samuel Harrison, who has written an excellent history of the flood.

It is quite certain, however, that many of the Bradfield people had previous inklings of danger. One of them, who went to see the crack (Mr William Ibbotson), returned home, and said to a neighbour, with true Yorkshire shrewdness: 'I can't learn that this cracking of a new embankment is a common thing. Danger or no danger, I don't go to bed. I shall keep my clothes on ready for off."

Suddenly, a little before twelve, through the roar of the wind, Ibbotson heard apparently some drunken labourers shouting. But he listened again, then went out, and heard cries of 'It's coming! it's coming! Look out!' He instantly alarmed the neighbours, and helped them to escape.

The first victim soon met its doom. It was the child (only one day old) of Mr Joseph Dawson, the village tailor of Lower Bradfield. Dawson was awaked by his wife, who had heard some shouting. The man got up, ran to the window, and hearing the ghastly cry of: 'It's coming! it's coming! darted into a back-room, and sent his brother with his eldest child to a friend's house on the hill. Thinking himself unable to carry his sick wife and new-born child, he asked a man he met at the door to help him. The man replied: "You must run for your life, and save yourself. I have enough to do to save my own life.' The poor tailor then returned, and carried down his wife and child, wrapped in blankets. About twenty yards from the door, the flood met them, and knocked them down. Again, at his wife's direction, Dawson turned to the house, and just at the door the flood again struck them, and washed away the child. There was no time to think of the loss; the poor tailor pushed his wife up-stairs, just as the flood poured into the back and front of the house. The water rose six feet inside the rooms. Presently, Dawson's brother came with a ladder, and the man and his wife were carried across from an upper room to the hillside.

Mr Nicholls, the village schoolmaster of Bradfield, had a narrow escape. He had been to see the crack, and returned home reassured. Nevertheless, his wife was apprehensive, and would not go to bed. Five minutes before the flood came, the pair went out to the school-bridge, and thought there was no more water than usual. He then proposed to go to bed; but Mrs Nicholls threw on some coal, and refused to go to bed till the fire went out. They then walked to the window, and saw the water rising fast by the garden hedge. Just at that moment some one thundered at the door, and called out: Escape for your lives! the flood's coming!' Mr and Mrs Nicholls instantly

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rushed across the road and up some steps into a hill-field. All at once, Nicholls, remembering he had left his overcoat in the house, in spite of his wife's screaming, ran back for it. It was a rash venture; Mr Nicholls could see the flood advancing yards high. The rash schoolmaster, however, snatched his coat, and rushed back up the steps, the spray of the foremost flood blowing in his face. A moment more, and he would have drifted dead upon the torrent.

The scene at Bradfield was extraordinary. It was like the end of the world, as the country people quaintly said. The whole population (those safe and those in danger) ran out in their plain night-clothes, and fled, shrieking and screaming, to the hills and upper fields. In the miller's house alone thirty people collected. In one cottage the family took refuge in the upper rooms, their escape being cut off. An infirm man, lodging in a lower room, stood for some time with the water nearly up to his mouth, but eventually succeeded in escaping up-stairs. A man named Hartley, who lived near the river, doggedly refused to leave his house. 'If it takes all I have,' he said to his imploring wife, it might as well take me too.' His wife then fled; but the flood did not, after all, quite reach the house. A farmer named Hawk was warned in time, and fled. Five minutes after, the flood swept his farm-house completely away, and one of the cows was carried five miles down the river to Hillsbro'.

Extraordinary escapes were very numerous, and the courage and promptitude shewn was, in many cases, remarkable. At Marsden's farm, called Rochester House, half a mile from Damflask, the water rushed suddenly into the house with the noise of thunder, and the lower rooms were instantly filled. Marsden, with quick resolve, broke a leg off the dressing-table, and knocked a hole through the roof. He then got out, drew up his wife and child, and carried them on to the hillside, which was nearly on a level with the roof. There were numerous other escapes of an extraordinary kind, which we have not space to notice. The cases of destruction to life and property were most afflicting.

At Malin Bridge the flood spent its utmost fury. Within the distance of one hundred yards, more than twenty houses were destroyed, and one hundred and two lives taken. Among stones, trees, and shattered machinery, rolled barrels, mattresses, dead cattle, and broken wagons. The roar of the flood resembled a thousand steamengines letting off steam. At the same moment houses were falling, trees snapping, the wind was howling, and women and children were shrieking. At the left-hand side of the river a row of twelve cottages and two shops was washed away, and several families drowned. An infant was carried off by the water from her mother's arms, and the mother left dead among the ruins. One poor woman was standing at the door talking to the watchman, when the flood came down the valley. The watchman ran up the hill, and saved his life. The woman ran and closed her door, but was instantly drowned, and the house demolished. A man in this ill-fated row had a narrow escape. He, his wife, two children, and his wife's father, were washed down the flood. The wife and children were soon lost sight of, but the man

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held on to a bulk of timber, and floated on to a heap of trees and debris that were piled up against a house. Calling out for help as he passed a window, he was pulled in, half-clad as he was, and almost exhausted; but his family all perished. In a detached house near this row twelve persons of one family were drowned. At the Stag publichouse, at Malin Bridge, eleven persons were lost. The brother of the landlady had only just returned from Sheffield when he saw the flood approach; he ran to save his sister, the landlady of the Stag, when the water knocked him down on his back, and with difficulty he saved himself.

At the Limerick Wheel, a crinoline wire manufactory, damage was done to the extent of more than ten thousand pounds. There was only one man at work; he had gone home, but was suddenly sent back to soften steel for the next day's work. He met his death by the explosion of five furnaces full of molten steel, which burst in consequence of the flood generating steam. He was found several weeks afterwards buried under a heap of rubbish, scalded and frightfully disfigured. In a house at Hill Bridge, Robert Graham, his wife, and six children, were knocked into the water by a falling wall. Graham, by incessant exertion, managed to crowd the whole family upon a floating bed, and they were all eventually rescued.

At the Mason's Arms public-house, at the same place, four persons were drowned; a little niece, eight years old, alone escaped. She slept by herself in a top story above the water-line. All but the little corner of the house where the child's bed stood was swept away. When the neighbours woke her in the morning, she said she heard a noise in the night, and thought it was the gas blowing up. She heard her uncle and aunt go down, and cry for help, and then she fell asleep. At Bowe's Row, Hill Bridge, a man named Crooke, alarmed at the roar of the water, and the screams of his neighbours, jumped out of his bedroom window, in spite of his wife's entreaties, and died the next day from the bruises he received and the muddy water he had swallowed.

At Hillsbro' the destruction was almost as great. The water rose nearly eighteen feet, many houses were destroyed, the great stone bridge greatly damaged, and trees and stones were piled up across the road and against the front of the National School. It is said, on good authority, that a brick house, walls, roof, and floor entire, was carried down as far as the bridge, and held together some hours.

At Brick Row there were several extraordinary escapes. The owner, his wife, five children, a lodger, and an apprentice, were all drowned, and a man named Dyson alone escaped. He was sleeping in a top bedroom, and, hearing the roaring flood strike the building, he smashed a lath-andplaster partition, got on to the joists, then broke through the slates, and got on to the roof, where he remained, cold and nearly naked, for two hours, till assistance arrived. In a house in front of Dyson's lived a man named Hides with his brother and sister-in-law. Hides had lit a candle, to see what was the matter down-stairs, when the flood cut the gable end of the house in two, and he nearly fell into the chasm. With a finger broken, and in the dark, he returned up-stairs to his family, who were screaming for help. The house was shaking dreadfully, and seemed about to fall.

Hides,

wrenching off a bedpost, drove a way into the next house, and seeing the walls still rocking, he broke through four houses, followed by each family he met. In another house in the same row, two children were carried out of the window, and their bed with them; both children perished. Several other families perished in this row. In a hovel near this row, an old sailor was found float ́ing about in a large box in which he had taken shelter.

The water penetrated into the married soldiers' quarters of the barracks, a little below Owlerton. The sentry had a narrow escape. Twenty yards of stone wall near the river was washed away. Paymaster-sergeant Foulds awoke by the flood breaking his windows. He looked out, and saw the foaming torrent carrying along the bodies of men and women, and something which was either a haystack or an entire house. Not having the remotest idea of an inundation, he exclaimed to his wife: I believe the world's breaking up!' The water outside the window was already twelve feet high. His wife was knocked down by the water, and the child's cot was swimming about the room. Worst of all, the door, pressed tight by the flood, would not open. After wrestling with it for some time, Foulds cried in a rage: 'I'm not going to be drowned like a rat in a hole, at all events; and with a heavy fire-shovel he beat off the lock, and the door came open, the flood at the same time knocking him backwards. The sergeant then rescued his wife and infant, and carried them upstairs out of reach of the water. He then went back to save the two elder children, but could not force the door. Some soldiers, however, soon after arrived, and let out the water; but the children were both drowned.

A little further down the river, at the works of Messrs Marchington and Mekin, two men working at the forge were surprised by the torrent. One man, named Simpson, mounted on a large boiler, and was carried off with it and its brick pillars, and drowned. His mate, a boy, clung to a beam, and was rescued. The boiler, thirty feet in length, was carried down nearly a mile.

At Neepsend Gasworks, the loss was tremendous. Retorts, boilers, and engines were torn up from the

foundation. More than one thousand tons of coke

and ten thousand feet of timber were carried away. On the banks of the river stood the cottage of a labourer named Gannon. He and his wife and six children got on to the roof and screamed for help. Gradually the flood rose till it carried off the roof, and all clinging there for help instantly perished. In a cellar of an adjacent house were the three children of a poor man and his wife, who had gone to Wakefield to attend a funeral. The cellar filled, and the children were drowned in their sleep.

At the Eagle Works, Neepside, a poor woman awakened by the screaming of the pigs, got out of bed, and looking out, saw the flood. She instantly awoke her husband, and said: 'O John! the world's at an end!' 'Nay, my lass, it cannot be,' was the husband's reply. This couple were saved, just as they were thinking of taking to the roof.

An incident or two that occurred in the more immediate neighbourhood of Sheffield, must not be passed over. In Cotton Mill Row, near Alma Street, a poor old woman rushed out into the flood, and a young man in a story above,

At

seeing her in danger, let down a sheet; she caught it, and was pulled up; but just as she was within his reach, a rush of water carried her away, and she disappeared with a scream. Bower Spring, a young man named Varney was riding through the water, when a piece of floating timber struck his horse. It threw him over its head, and he fell into the water and was drowned. When his body was found, both hands were clenched and raised before his face, as if he had died fighting.

The bodies, when laid out for identification, were strangely contrasted. Some had died as if in sleep; others seemed to have struggled to the last; their teeth were clenched, and they were torn and disfigured.

The inquiry at the inquest led to no special result. It was, however, proved that there were defective points in the construction of the embankment, and that there had not been sufficient means of rapidly letting off the water. A fair sum of money (fifty thousand pounds) was rapidly raised for the relief of the sufferers, and, to their great credit, the Sheffield workmen unanimously contributed a day's wages. The value of the mills, dwelling-houses, and other kinds of property destroyed was estimated at nearly two millions; and the number of persons who perished by the inundation was two hundred and fifty. Such, without reckoning minor inconveniences, was the result of trying to supply a town with water from an artificial reservoir. Those who, from parsimonious considerations, attempt projects of this kind, where there happen to be natural lakes at their disposal, incur no little responsibility, and may have much to answer for.

THE DANGEROUS CLASSES 'OUT WEST! UNLESS a large proportion of American local papers were carefully read, a very faint idea could be formed of the lawlessness of the border, and of more than the border. Nor, indeed, would the reading of any quantity of papers completely enable the dweller in an old country to arrive at a fair judgment of the state of things in new settleexcite a whole county in England, are passed over ments; for many incidents, each of which would as being too common to need remark; and sometimes are omitted through fear. Let me briefly relate what I happen to know of the state of things. To intending emigrants, the information may be useful.

The house in which I dwelt in New Mexico stands at the corner of what is intended to be a plaza, or square, and on the very ground it occupies, Cherokee Bill committed one of the most wanton of all his murders. This desperado-all the ruffians are styled 'desperadoes' in the Westalthough known by an Indian sobriquet, was a white man; and about half-a-dozen years back, he was crossing the plaza with my informant, when they met a total stranger, probably a teamster, who was going quietly about his business. To the surprise of his companion, Cherokee Bill said: 'I feel like shooting somebody to-day, and I should like to see this fellow kick ;' and he shot him dead

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dilloes. In the natural course of events, Cherokee met his fate, as all such wretches do, after perpetrating an enormous amount of mischief.

The crimes, detection, or pursuit of thieves and cattle-stealers, will always occupy a very prominent place in border records. On the frontier, indeed, it would be a trite remark to say that the killing a man was held a trivial offence compared to the stealing of a horse, and the latter is punished with far the greater certainty and severity. Two young men, who up to that time had borne very good characters, stole a couple of horses from a certain ranche or farm, and information being given which put the owners on the right scent, they were pursued. The pursuing party consisted of five men, all well known to myself, one being proprietor of a large tract of land, another a farmer, while the others were men in the employ of the first. They overtook the thieves about eighteen miles from the town where I lived, and as we had an 'alcalde,' or justice, they told the men they should take them into our place for trial. They all passed the night together very amicably, and started for the town in the morning. But the captors rode in by themselves, and explained, in the most nonchalant manner, that the men had tried to escape, and that they had been obliged to shoot them. They evidently did not intend to trouble themselves any further in the matter; but we sent a wagon up to the wild mountain-road they had been travelling, and there, where the torrent which ran for many miles by the side of the road, made a sweep, so as to give a broader expanse of ground than usual, the bodies were found. It was the most unlikely place for an attempt to escape; above and below the spot, the ravine, or cañon, which held the road and the stream was very narrow, and a desperate rider might hope to escape by dashing into the brush on the slope; but it seemed as if these prisoners, when trying to get away, had actually ridden their horses into the crescent formed by the bend of the river, just where there was no cover and no egress. Their captors declared, too, that as the prisoners would not stop, they fired after them. No surgical examination took place; a brief inquiry was held before the justice, who no more dared to convict, or send the men for trial, than he dared try to muzzle a tiger; and the decision was, that the prisoners met their death while trying to escape from justifiable arrest by an association in these parts.

This association is something absolutely unique. Texas is, as probably every one knows, the greatest cattle-raising state in the Union, and it is probably the most lawless place which was ever ruled, or pretended to be ruled, by a settled government. Very great injury is caused to the stockmen by what is termed the Comanche cattle-trade; those Indians running off' great numbers of cattle, and selling them to their white accomplices in New Mexico, who drive them into Colorado and Kansas, where they sell them at an enormous profit. But for the white portion of the confederacy, it is selfevident that the trade could not exist; the Indians might steal some for themselves, but the whites

Although it was self-defence which originated this organisation, yet it can easily be seen how likely it is to be abused, and, accordingly, we find the complaints of it bitter and loud. The papers declaim most energetically against the monstrous anomaly of a body of armed men in private pay, under no recognised authority, riding in all directions, seizing and confiscating under no control but their own will. At a small town called Loma Parda, four or five of these men rode into the plaza one evening, and demanded the surrender of a bunch' of cattle which had recently arrived. The inhabitants, however, declared that these were the property of honest and respectable dealers, who had receipts for them, and so refused to give them up; the horsemen departed, threatening to return with reinforcements. They were as good as their word, for the next day at least forty of them entered the little hamlet, and proceeded to seize the cattle. Several of the principal inhabitants came to protest against this; but the cavalry shot two of them dead upon the spotthe postmaster, who was an American, named Seaman, being one of those killed-the rest of the villagers, being in no degree strong enough to cope with such a force, keeping within their houses until the cattle were taken away and the men had gone. The sequel is this: some of the gang, who went about at complete liberty everywhere else, were afterwards taken in the Loma Parda district, and confined in the jail at Las Vegas, which is a much stronger building than most of the frontier jails, its weakest point being, that the jailer has only twenty dollars per month, paid in depreciated county warrants. Of course they all escaped, and now go about as openly as any men can do, taking care, no doubt, to avoid Las Vegas.

Escapes, under all kinds of circumstances, from American jails are very common. On the border, the jails are the poorest mockery of the name, and any boy could cut his way out of them; while in