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Everyone seemed to see new life ahead.

Men spoke cheerily to each other of adopting means of clearing and cleansing the city, but that work was taken out of their hands.

That might the cyclonic storm that had raged across the continent burst upon us. All the long-dormant forces of the air seemed to have met in conflict.

For three days its fury was appalling. The violent rain and constant thunder and lightning added to the tumult.

No one stirred out during those three days of tempest and destruction.

Nature in her own mighty way had set to work to purge the country of the plague.

It was while this storm was at its fiercest that the Post Office tower and the Town Hall tower were shattered and hurled in ruins to the ground. No one, so far as I know, witnessed the catastrophe.

The morning of the fourth day broke calm, clear, and beautiful.

At midnight the tempest had lulled; and when daylight came, the sun rose in a sky lightly flecked with roseate morning clouds.

Accompanied by a friend, I started out to see the ruined city, and those who were left alive in it.

The streets still ran with floodwater, but the higher levels had pretty well drained off; and once they were gained, our progress was easy.

Martin Place was choked with the ruins of the tower, and the many other buildings that had succumbed; while not a single verandah was left standing in any street. We went to the Harbor.

The tide was receding, carrying with it the turbid waters that rushed into it from all points; carrying it, too, wreckage and human bodies.

A strong current was setting seaward through the Heads, and bore out to the Pacific all the decaying remnants of the past visitation.

The deserted ships in the Harbor had been torn from their moorings and either sunk or blown ashore.

Wreck and desolation were visible everywhere, but the air was pure, cool, and grateful; and our hearts rose in spite of the difficulties that lay before us, for the looming horror of the plague had been lifted.

5

Of what followed, your histories tell you.

How the overwhelming disaster knit the states together in a closer federation than legislators ever had forged.

How from that hour sprung forth a new, purged, and purified Australian race.

All this is record of the Australian nation; mine are but some reminiscences of a time of horror unparalleled, which no man anticipated would have visited the Southern Continent.

THE GREAT CATASTROPHE

George Davey

The following is another disaster story set in the future and which shows some of the growing pessimism about the over reliance on new technology, and especially on electricity. I can find out nothing about George Davey, although he was also a passable artist as he illustrated his own story when it appeared in The English Illustrated Magazine in 1910. — M.A.

I

The Experience of a Survivor

BEING ONE of the few human beings that escaped alive from the disaster of London, I have been asked to describe my experience. It is now almost four months ago since the tragedy occurred, and in America have appeared hundreds of disjointed accounts, fragmentary stories, biographs, and records, which have given the American public, at least, a general idea of the event; but, as I was an actual eyewitness to almost everything that took place, I am able to give several details which will, I think, be of some interest to our electrical officials.

In the first place, I am glad to learn that we and other nations are taking the lesson. In the city of New York already the council has disconnected several electrical conduits, and I hear that the German tribunal has ordered all district telegrams to be sent by the old-fashioned method of wires. I expect this will be inconvenient to German residents, but it is better so until further investigation into the cause of the London disaster can be made.

It is an undeniable fact that we have had many warnings at various times of the liability of electricity to get out of human control, and actually