lling mill produced annually 30,000 net tons of merchant bar steel
of every size and for every purpose. The wire mill had a capacity alone
of 30,000 tons of fence wire.

There are numerous bituminous coal mines near Johnstown, operated by the
Cambria Iron Company, the Euclid Coal Company and private persons. There
were three woolen mills, employing over three hundred hands and
producing an annual product valued at $300,000.

Awful Work of the Flames.

Fifty acres of town swept clean. One thousand two hundred buildings
destroyed. Eight thousand to ten thousand lives lost.

That is the record of the Johnstown calamity as it looked to me just
before dark last night. Acres of the town were turned into cemeteries,
and miles of the river bank were involuntary storage rooms for household
goods.

From the half ruined parapet at the end of the stone railroad bridge, in
Johnstown proper, one sees sights so gruesome that none but the
soulless Hungarian and Italian laborers can command his emotions.

_At my right is a fiery pit that is now believed to have been the
funeral pyre of almost a thousand persons._

Streets Obliterated.

The fiercest rush of the current was straight across the lower, level
part of Johnstown, where it entirely obliterated Cinder, Washington,
Market, Main and Walnut streets. These streets were from a half to
three-quarters of a mile in length, and were closely crowded along their
entire course with dwellings and other buildings, and there is now no
more trace of streets or houses than there is at low tide on the beach
at Far Rockaway.

In the once well populated boroughs of Conemaugh and Woodvale there are
to-night literally but two buildings left, one the shell of the Woodvale
Woolen Mill and the other a sturdy brick dwelling.

The buildings which were swept from twenty out of the thirty acres of
devastated Johnstown were crowded against the lower end of the big stone
bridge in a mass 200 yards wide, 500 yards broad and from 60 to 100 feet
deep. They were crushed and split out of shape and packed together like
playing cards.

When you realize that in nearly every one of these buildings there were
at least one human being, while in some there were as many as
seventy-five, it is easy to comprehend how awful it was when this mass
began to burn fiercely last night. It was known that a large number of
persons were imprisoned in the debris, for they could be plainly seen
by those on shore, but it w