A FRONTIER TOWN DESTROYED.

A FRONTIER TOWN DESTROYED.

“西部之星帝国的方式”是一个truism that has been drilled into American minds from the earliest days of the Republic. It must be admitted that while “Empire” has done a great amount of pushing, and has added a most wonderful development to our frontier, the penalty of progress has been a severe one, attended with great cost and suffering. The latest illustration of this fact occurred in the destruction of Deadwood, Dakota, by fire, last week. Deadwood is a city of but five or six years’ growth, in the heart of the Black Hills gold region. Its growth has been rapid, as is usually the case with these mushroom mining towns, and great wealth has accumulated within its insecure borders. As has happened with other mining towns of similar character, a fire broke out in one ot the cheap, unsubstantial wooden structures, and, aided by a high wind, rapidly spread from one frame building to another, until the greater portion of the town was laid in ruins. The story is graphically told by the telegraphic reports. Most of the houses were of wood and that of the flimsiest description. The fire broke out in a bakery. In ten minutes as many buildings were in flames and in an hour as many streets. The town shook with explosions. Gunpowder, petroleum and alcohol alternated in hurling buildings into the air or in mantling them with swift embraces of liquid fire. Almost at the first the Hook and Ladder apparatus and Hose Carriage of the place were burned, and only a few feet of hose were left with which to fight the flames. Presently it was discovered that water was scarce, and this horror was added to the many that already had to be faced. The blaze was first seen at half-past two o’clock in the morning, so that before daylight the worst of the mischief was done. Some structures that had been called fireproof went down like tinder-boxes at an early period—the calamity in this, as in other ways, repeating the experience of San Francisco. By the latest advices some two hundred buildings were consumed and a loss incurred—which we trust may prove to be overstated—of from two to three millions of dollars.

But the loss in houses and dollars does not measure the extent of this calamity. Nearly all the food in the place was burned; and although some of the inhabitants made their way to Fort Meade, Colonel Sturgis can give provisions and shelter to but a limited number. It takes two weeks to supply Deadwood by wagon from the nearest available points, which are Bismarck and Cheyenne. There is danger, therefore, of distress for want of food, and the telegraph already speaks of half rations. As it also says that hundreds of people escaped with only their night-clothes, there was suffering from cold as well as hunger. No doubt every nerve will be strained by the military authorities and others to provide for the exigencies of the case, and we shall earnestly hope that adequate efforts may be made in season to forestall any further serious disaster. When this is done we shall also hope that the lesson of the fire will not be lost; that the Engines and Hooks and Ladders of Deadwood will in future be kept in safe places; that arrangements will be perfected to ensure an adequate water supply, and that .buildings hereafter will be erected there ot a less inflammable substance than that used before. Until these things are done Deadwood, which lies in a gulch much exposed at times to the sweep of prevalent winds, will be no more exempt than San f rancisco used to be from a recurrence of similar destructive casualties.