KINGSTON, Jamaica, Aug. 19..- This city was visited last evening by a hurricane that unroofed houses, tore up large trees, blew cars [mule-drawn street-cars] from the track, destroyed every wharf in the city but one, and left the shipping in the har­bor in a terrible condition. It was the most destructive storm that has been known here for many years, and several lives are reported lost. It began before 8 o’clock last evening, and. soon increased to such an extent that the street cars had to stop running. By 8 o’clock the air was full of flying boards and shingles, and it was dangerous to venture out. Half an hour later the storm was at its height. The roaring of the wind was terrible, and rain fell in torrents. In the half hour between 8:30 and 9 o’clock vessels were sunk and driven ashore, wharves were destroyed, roofs were blown off, trees rooted up, and the whole place was thrown into confusion. While the storm lasted, which was for nearly six hours, or un­til 2 o’clock this morning, the people were afraid to venture out of their houses, and it was only when daylight came this morning that the terrible work of the storm was fully known.

Among the shipping the loss of property is unprecedented. Hardly a vessel in the harbor escaped damage, and many are totally lost. The beach is strewn with wreckage, flour, rice, fish, and other articles of food.

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At 8 o’clock this morning the steam launch from Port Royal reached here, bringing her tale of woe. The town suffered much damage. At Friendship, St Andrew, a school for girls was blown down, and some of the pupils had very narrow escapes, but none were killed. At the town called Seven Miles 16 houses were blown down. In the country parts the tele­graph wires are down, the roads are blocked with huge trees, and all communication is shut off. No telegrams can be sent from this city, as all the wires are snapped, and. this morning’s train could not pass the Rio Cobre, the bridge having been twisted by the wind. It will be a week at least before full particu­lars of the storm’s terrible work can to obtained from all parts of the city and the out­lying districts.

Reports from points all over the island tell the same sad story - coffee plantations utterly destroyed and cocoa-nut groves yielding thousands of nuts fell like so many corn-stalks. At Morant Bay houses were torn from their foundations, and broken like matches by the wind. Canes everywhere are flattened on the ground. Advices concerning Port Royal, which we gather from several sources, are truly distressing, and only tend to increase the sad picture of desolation. The covered ways to the coal-houses, as well as the roofs, both wood and iron, have been blown away, leaving thousands of tons of coal exposed to the effects of the atmosphere. At St. Ann’s Bay nearly every building sustained some dam­age. The Post Office narrowly escaped falling cocoa-nut trees. Roads are blocked up on all sides by huge trees and rubbish. It is impossi­ble to get mails up yet. All telegraph lines are interrupted. In six hours there the barometer fell from 29.80” to 29.56”. Reports from St. James are that nearly all the houses have been laid to the ground and covered up with trees and earth. A correspondent at Constitution Hill writes that in his region the storm began about 12 noon on Wednesday, and raged until Thursday morning. He sends a list of some persons in the August Hill District whose houses are gone. Banana cultivation is ruined, and there are no mangoes, no yams, no pears to be seen. Cane-fields and coffee plantations suffered also, and it is feared that the people have little or no food. The tidings from Newcastle are of grave import. Out of 80 houses some 20 were leveled to the ground, and the wreckage was swept clean from the mountain side. We are informed that a soldier was killed instantly by a beam falling across his breast. The railroad bridge at Rio Cobre was rendered utterly impassable, being knocked clean off its supports.

All along the coast, from Kingston to Hol­land Bay, the destruction was awful and the loss beyond computation. The papers state that thieves everywhere, availing themselves of the defenseless state of the people, are steal­ing ad libitum. It has been estimated that the island has been put back in development about two years and it is feared that the poorer classes have an era of suffering before them. The planters are left with shattered and destroyed crops, and the fisher­men have had their houses blown away and their smacks sunk. At the markets in the towns persons come with empty hands, and traffic is limited to an interchange of sto­ries which are sobbingly told. There is liter­ally no business going on anywhere, except the work of restoring to some sort of shape the distorted and shattered dwellings and wrecked edifices. In many of the towns the Govern­ment offices and buildings suffered much, and the clerks are unable to transact business. In short, the wail which comes from Jamaica through the newspapers is one of genuine and profound distress.

A gentleman, writing from Port Antonio, makes the following statement:

I am writing to you from the midst of a scene of desolation which it is impossible to describe, and which no language can exaggerate. On the 18th inst. a hurricane burst over this district, and mowed down the fruits of the earth as if the angel of death had passed through the land with his scythe. Looking from my house inland, I can see a distance of 15 or 20 miles, and I can confidently assert that, in the whole of that space, there is not left a growing plant, not a banana, not a cane, not a corn-stalk or a yam-vine, and where the coffee trees are not uprooted or broken short off, the berries have been swept from the branches as completely as if picked by the hand. * * * About noon on Wednesday, the 18th inst., the wind which had been blowing strong during all the morning and the previous day began to assume an angry tone, and by 2 o’clock the gale had increased to full hurricane strength. * * * About 6 o’clock P.M. the people from the neighborhood whose houses had been blown over their land, began to flock to me for protec­tion, and by 9 o’clock I had 31 black people - men, women and children - drenched with rain and trembling with fright, huddled together in my dining-room. Between 9 and 10 o’clock, my front door, which I had taken the precaution to strengthen by nailing battens across it, blew clean out of its frame hinges, lock, bolts, and all giving way. This was for me the supreme moment of danger - it being perfectly certain that if the door could not be put back into its place the roof could not hold out many minutes, Fortunately for me, I had been prompt in giving refuge to the des­titute, and, rallying together the men of the party, the door was, by sheer muscular force, driven back into its place, where I managed to secure it with buttresses obtained from the de­struction of my own bed and the parlor sofa, At 12:20 A. M. I received the last of the refu­gees - an old man and woman, with a young lad - who were dragged through a win­dow more dead than alive from exposure and terror. The wind about this time changed to the south-west, but the hurricane had spent its fury and all damage to the house was past. But the full realization of what the country and the people had suffered was reserved for the morning, and I am not ashamed to confess that when I looked out upon the desolate aspect of the country, I burst into a flood of hysterical tears, As far as the eye could reach it was one “waste howling wilderness” - cultivated and. un­cultivated land alike were as smooth as if an army of axe and cutlass men had passed through them, cutting down tall trees and little shrubs with unsparing impartiality. An old woman who works in my kitchen, and who was formerly a slave on this property, put it in this forcible way: Looking down toward the Rio Grande, which the day before she could not have seen on account of the intervening timber, she exclaimed to herself “Hi! God Almighty weed clean, for true.”

* * *      The worst part of all is that the people will have no food for the next 12 months. I have just been waited upon by a deputation of four black men, all of them small proprietors of the better class, able to read and write, and they assured me that after the food which has been blown to the ground has been consumed - that is to say, in about two weeks’ time - the people will be entirely destitute for the next 12 or 13 months. They have asked me to prepare a. petition to the Governor on their behalf, and I have promised them to do so on their providing me with reliable information of the actual position of affairs in the district. One man, Richard Smith, who had over 18 acres in culti­vation in yams, bananas, and coffee, informed me that be had just returned from his field, and that it was “as smooth as the palm of his hand,” not a vestige of anything remaining.