Awful catastrophe in Mexico.
--We find in an extract from the
Ece de Europe, of the 15th of March, (a newspaper which follows the army, and is now published in Orizeba,) the following details of the awful catastrophe which took place in San Andres Chalchicomula:
On the 7th inst. the village of San Andres Chalchicomula was the scene of one of those terrible accidents which cannot be witnessed without a feeling of pity, mingled with terror.
Some 2,000 men, with about 300 women and children, belonging to or following the
Mexican army, and most of whom a attached to regiments raised in the
State of Oxaca, had taken up their quarters in the commissariat building, in which were stored great quantities of gunpowder and ammunition.
But these, instead of being kept in a room for that purpose, were left scattered in the yards, exposed to the heat of the sun and the fire of smokers.
At 8 o'clock in the evening, a spark fell in one of the boxes, set its contents on fire, and the fire being communicated to the other stores, a general explosion followed, and the whole pile was blasted within tremendous noise, the walls tumbling down with a fearful crash, and burying under their ruins all human beings gathered under that roof.
More than one thousand persons were killed, and the remainder wounded more or less dangerously.
As soon as this catastrophe was known in Orivaba and
Cordova, the surgeons of the
French and
English troops hastened to the scene of that cruel accident, to attend to the numerous victims, as they were taken from among the ruins.
It is said that this explosion was by binding fires which a number of ignorant women had made in the yards in order to cook the victuals of the soldiers
