Show FLOODS I I SPAIN Some Two Thousand People are Drowned GREAT SCARCITY OF FOOD EXISTS Matters in Mexico Hnntlnir for the Circulators Circulat-ors Humors of a Revolutionary Feeling A Cablegram From Admiral Brown I MADRID Sept 15Tbe floods which caused so much damage and which are already known to have resulted in the loss of thousands of lives have been general in the south of Spain The damage done is terrible in its extent In the province of Toledo the rush of water from the Consue gra river was so sudden and unexpected that hundreds of people were drowned iu their beds Four hundred bodies have already been recovered and at least one hundred corpses can be seen floating in the swollen river A national relief fund has been opeuod and all the newspapers announce 1 an-nounce they are ready to receive donations The grape and grain crops are destroyed throughout the flooded sections of the countri The overflowing of the Consuegra threatens threat-ens to cause further damage Two thirds of the houses practically destroyed are still standing but their foundations are sapped and they threaten to fall any moment Families saved from drowning are in the i greatest distress from want of food An estimate classed as a moderate one and which is within rather than over the actual ove 1 numoer places tne total death list at 53000 Large numbers corpses still rest where they were found Unless soon interred an epidemic of fever is feared So far as possible pos-sible the bodies of the drowned are being gathered from streams mud banks and ruinsand being buried in trenches Many of the bodies found are entirely nude showing show-ing they must have been washed from their beds Unhappily the worst is not yet known and some months of terrible privations and extreme suffering are before the utterly impoverished survivors The crops are gone cattle swept away houses ruined and all that would enable them to earn their bread has vanished beneath the torrents of water which have rolled over towns and villages fields and farms The extreme ex-treme distress the positively ravenous feeling of starvation prevailing in many sections of the flooddevastated country has another and if possible blacker side Bands of desperate men determined to obtain bread at any cost for their hungertortured families have been driven to making raids and pillaging buildings where they expected ex-pected to find food Troons have been in structed to take the most severe measures to protect property Two thousand kilos of army bread have arrived in the flooded districts When the government delegate in charge of the first consignment of bread arrived he was beset by the famishing fam-ishing inhabitants male and female the majority half naked or clad in rags most of them on their knees with hands uplifted praying for succor When all the bread was gone there still remained many mouths unfilled many sufferers who had not been able to obtain even the smallest portion of this temporary relief At Almeria the capital of the province of that name the number of dead is still unknown but is admitted over five hundred houses have been destroyed and that a large number of people have perished per-ished The villages of Puerto Lapiche and Villa Franca in the province ofCiu dad Real have been severely ravaged by the floods The Queen has subscribed 20000 to the relief fund and the Bank of Spain has added 5000 At Almeria the flood has stopped operations at the electric light and gas works and the city is in total darkness The river Andaray has overflowed its banks converting the valley into P vast lake It is estimated that over five thou I sand bead of horses and cattle are drowned The police have succeeded in suppressing pillage Food is rapidly arriving for the sufierers Fresh corpses are being discovered dis-covered all the time The bodies of sixty persons have been sound in a public hall where they had been overtaked by the flood in the midst of a wedding feast The terrible storm which set in near Valencia Tuesday morning destroyed the rice crop The rivers Turin and Jucar are rising rapidly and threaten further disaster disas-ter The government has set apart 100 000 for relief measures and has asked the Bank of Spain to grant credits to the governors gov-ernors of the suffering provinces |