The Don River flood.

Bridges swept away and other damage—Vehicular traffic stopped—Water covers the railway tracks—Horses rescued from drowning.

A despatch from Toronto says:—The heavy rainstorm has made the scene along the Don from Winchester street to the Bay, on desolation. On either side of the river were piled up masses of ice—great square cakes, dirty white in colour and about a foot thick. Between the ice masses the river hurried to pour its turbid swollen waters into the Bay. In places the grey cakes of ice formed complete bridges, against the upper end of which the river fretted and bubbled in yellow froth.

The swelling river, which had been frozen over, broke its ice bonds. The ice cakes jammed and the river rose. Every tributary creek, every rill, every raindrop combined to make it rise higher and higher, and the water crept up and up, until it swept across the C.P.R. tracks. The Davies brewery stables were flooded, and the horses, foundering about in four feet of water, were removed with the great difficulty.

Away went the bridge.

By midnight the flood was at its height. The temporary crossing just south of the Eastern avenue bridge was carried away bodily and piled up, in a confused mass of ice cakes, railings, planking and timbers. The ice jammed around and above the lines, of piles that have been driven in to support the new bridge, which has only been commenced. Vehicular traffic ceased with the midnight car of the Toronto Railway Company.

Early in the morning the waters commenced to subside and by nine o'clock they had gone done seven feet, and me were at work breaking the different jams and trying to rescue fragments of the damaged bridges.

The G.T.R. bridge was not affected and trains crossed as usual, but the C.P.R. was sent around by way of Toronto Junction, instead of going across the river above Winchester street, where the water is aid to have gone over the tracks.

The freshet is regarded by many as somewhat of a record-breaker, but it would have been far more serious had not the east wind shifted to the northwest, driving away the rain and freezing up the pools and rivulets that were feeding the swollen stream.

Railways: C.P.Ry., G.T.Ry.

Stations: Don

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