Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser

From the Savannah Republican of January 13.

It is not yet that we can speak with any thing like certainty, or hardly probability as to the amount of losses, or number of sufferers, by the dreadful conflagration of Monday night and Tuesday morning last. Enough, however, is known to convince us that we should have said 5, instead of 2 millions, in our extra sheet of Tuesday evening. Endeavors are making to ascertain the amount of loss, and the names of the sufferers; but exactness will be utterly impossible. Hundreds are reduced in a moment, as it were, from opulence to poverty, and many of our most respectable families are thrown on the charity of the world. It is hardly in language of soberness, that we can speak of this dreadful catastrophe. We yet behold crowds of aged and infirm, of women and children, wandering houseless in the streets; and so rapid was the progress of the flames, that those in the vicinity where it originated lost their all—even to their necessary clothing. Others, who had time to remove their goods, had it conveyed to buildings which were considered fire proof, and from their situation perfectly secure—but which also shared the general fate.

The entire commercial part of the town is destroyed. There is but one solitary dry goods store remaining. The finest buildings are in ruins. There are eighty single and seven trust (or double) lots, left naked; and from the best information which the city surveyor was enabled to give last evening, it is calculated that there were 321 wooden buildings, many of which were double tenements; 31 brick ditto, exclusive of those owned by the Presbyterian Church, Messrs. Gibbons, Shad, Morrison and Hunter, which contain 30 tenements. Altogether making not less than 450 tenements.

The fire swept from Baptist Square, on the west, (taking in from Broughton street to the Bay) down to Abercorn-street, on the east—with the exception of a few buildings on the Bay between Montgomery and Jefferson streets and Washington Hall, with one wooden building, between Jefferson and Barnard streets; and a few buildings on Broughton street, between Abercorn and Drayton streets, and a few other houses on Broughton-street, between Jefferson and Montgomery streets. The State Bank and Episcopal Church, in Johnson's square, were also saved.

The wind, which was fresh from N. W. and increased violently with the flames, rendered the assistance of the engines of little avail.