West Jersey Pioneer

A LIVELY PICTURE.

The New York Times draws the following lively and suffocating picture of the torrid heat and its effects, in that city, on Thursday last:

Along the river side among the docks the heat played all sorts of pranks. Barrels of fruit rotted, and had to be pitched overboard. The lobsters in the fish cars died in unusual numbers, though the turtles that are kept in neighboring places flapped about in quite a lively way. In the bonded warehouses the smell from the sugar barrels was at times sickening. A thick, ropy scum oozed from them and settled in pools upon the floor, attracting hundreds of flies that tasted, sank into the fetid mass, and died incontinently. The peculiarly-shaped bales of dates from the far East also gave forth a weak sort of alcoholic smell. Everything saccharine, in short, was fermenting, and the workmen that are employed about the docks seemed to suffer greatly from the smells, combined with the heat. The iron doors of the bonded warehouses were so hot that housewives could have cooked pan-cakes on them. The barrels lying on the dock had to be covered with tarpaulins to prevent the hoops from being loosened by the prodigious expansion of the iron. On board the vessels the pitch became detached from the oakum in the seams and oozed out upon the decks. Down below, in the holds, where the trimmers were stowing goods, the atmosphere was something horrible, and to stand above and look down, brought about a vertigo from the foul fumes that ascended. Where the shovellers stowed away grain was the worst. They were stripped naked to the waist, and the perspiration streaming from every pore had formed, with the fine dust from the grain, a cake which was on some men an eighth of an inch thick. This itched terribly, and every few minutes some brawny toiler would drop his shovel and give his back a frenzied rubbing. From four to six the whole of New York that could be idle were idle, and all, men, women, cats, dogs, horses and trees, waited in languished expectation of relief from the big storm-clouds that came on swiftly from the northwest. They burst upon the streets like a hurricane in the vexed Bermudas, at last, and sent the dust flying in lurid clouds that looked like battle smoke. It seized signs and scattered them through the streets, among the hurrying feet of the passengers. Lots of people got wet, but nobody seemed to care, for the rain was so welcome that nobody was angry, even though it did take liberties with a gentleman's clothing or spoiled a lady's pet bonnet.