Huelva, the 11th.
From the telegrams I have sent you, you will already have learned of the dreadful catastrophe that has occurred at the neighbouring Rio Tinto mines. Today I can give you some particulars, scanty though they are, for the truth of the matter has not yet been ascertained. It must have been about six or seven o’clock in the morning. A group of workmen was seated around a fire, waiting for the hour to begin their labours, when a terrible explosion — which claimed several victims among them — gave them to understand that a basket of dynamite had caught fire, causing much loss of life. In the first moments all was confusion: each man, amid the mangled limbs, searched for his father, husband, or son. The dead, up to the hour at which I write these lines, number sixteen, and the injured in the hospital twenty, several of them very grave, besides the many who are being treated in their homes by the establishment’s two physicians and by the three who hastened here from Zalamea in the first moments.
Both the manager of the mines and all who have arrived spare not a moment in their efforts to relieve, in some part, the terribleness of this calamity. The judge of first instance presented himself at the scene at once and opened a preliminary inquiry to ascertain the cause that may have given rise to this catastrophe. As soon as I have further details, I shall report them.
On the 7th the train from here to Rio Tinto was derailed, between the Manzano station and a tunnel, three wagons being smashed to pieces, with no further mishap than a slight wound and a bruise to the two brakemen.
The cold is intense — so much so that the inhabitants of this country say they have not known so cold a winter for a long time.
At the initiative of our energetic Governor, a large collection of views is to be sent to the Philadelphia Exposition, which the celebrated Italian photographer Señor Spreafico is taking of Palos, La Rábida, and the other places visited by Columbus for the discovery of the Americas.—G.E.
[Source: La Correspondencia de España, No. 6.583, Primera Edición de la Mañana — Madrid, martes 14 de diciembre de 1875]