This was a case of derailment aggravated by fire. It is safe to say that with the improved appliances since brought into use, it would be most unlikely to now occur under precisely the same circumstances on any well-equipped or carefully operated road. Derailments, of course, by broken axles or wheels are always possible, but the catastrophe at Angola was primarily due to the utter inability of those on the train to stop it, or even greatly to check its speed within any reasonable distance. Before it finally stood still the locomotive was half a mile from the frog and 1,500 feet from the bridge. Thus, when the rear cars were off the track, the speed and distance they were dragged gave them a lateral and violently swinging motion, which led to the final result. Though under similar circumstances now this might not happen, there is no reason why, circumstances being varied a little, the country should not again during any winter day be shocked by another Angola sacrifice. Certainly, so far as the danger from fire is concerned, it is an alarming fact that it is hardly less in 1879 than it was in 1867. This accumulative horror is, too, one of the distinctive features of American railroad accidents. In other countries holocausts like those at Versailles in 1842 and at Abergele in 1868 have from time to time taken place. They are, however, occasioned in other ways, and, as their occurrence is not regularly challenged by the most risky possible of interior heating apparatus, are comparatively infrequent. The passenger coaches used on this side of the Atlantic, with their light wood-work heavily covered with paint and varnish, are at best but tinder-boxes. The presence in them of stoves, hardly fastened to the floor and filled with burning wood and coal, involves a degree of risk which no one would believe ever could willingly be incurred, but for the fact that it is. No invention yet appears to have wholly met the requirements of the case. That they will be met, and the fearful possibility which now hangs over the head of every traveller by rail, that he may suddenly find himself doomed without possibility of escape to be roasted alive, will be at least greatly reduced hardly admits of question.