An accident, dreadful enough to be an event, has occurred
at Toulon. On Sunday morning, early, the Lagonban naval magazine near that great arsenal blew up, forty tons of cordite, or black powder, having from some unknown cause exploded. Every soldier in the magazine was killed, and many citizens, the total of dead and wounded exceeding a hundred and fifty, houses were razed to the ground., stones weighing 30 lb. were hurled into the suburbs, and doors were battered in at St. Jean de Var, a place five miles away. This adds one more proof to the chemist's axiom that, while there are much stronger explosives, hardly anything has such a widespreading effect as gunpowder. It is, of course, suspected that incendiarism was at work, and stories are in circulation about long fuses and dynamite cartridges, but no evidence of this kind has as yet been established. It is more probable that the explosion was an accident ; but if it was wilful, the chances are that it was due to some criminal who had passed through the horrible "galleys," and who intended to wreak vengeance on Toulon, or to some soldier in the magazine itself who had been unjustly punished. How could an outsider get into the magazine at 2 a.m.?
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