f stone and starts like a demon on its path of
destruction.

Into its maw it sucks a town. A town with all its hundreds of men and
women and children, with its marts of business, its homes, its factories
and houses of worship. Then, insatiate still, with a blast like the
chaos of worlds dissolved, it rushes out to new desolation, until Nature
herself, awe stricken at the sight of such ineffable woe, blinds her
eyes to the uncanny scene of death, and drops the pall of night upon the
earth.

Destruction Descended as a Bolt of Jove.

A fair town in a western valley of Pennsylvania, happy in the arts of
peace and prospering by its busy manufactures, suddenly swept out of
existence by a gigantic flood and thousands of lives extinguished as by
one fell stroke--such has been the fate of Johnstown.

Never before in this country has there happened a disaster of such
appalling proportions. It is necessary to refer to those which have
occurred in the valleys of the great European rivers, where there is a
densely crowded population, to find a parallel.

The Horrors Unestimated.

At first the horror was not all known. It could only be imperfectly
surmised. Until a late hour on the following night there was no
communication with the hapless city. All that was positively known of
its fate was seen from afar. It was said that out of all the
habitations, which had sheltered about twelve thousand people before
this awful doom had befallen, only two were visible above the water. All
the rest, if this be true, had been swallowed up or else shattered into
pieces and hurled downward into the flood-vexed valley below.

What has become of those twelve thousand inhabitants? Who can tell until
after the waters have wholly subsided?

Of course it is possible that many of them escaped. Much hope is to be
built upon the natural exaggeration of first reports from the sorely
distressed surrounding region and the lack of actual knowledge, in the
absence of direct communication. But what suspense must there be between
now and the moment when direct communication shall be opened!

Heedless of Fate.

The valley of the Conemaugh in which Johnstown stood lies between the
steep walls of lofty hills. The gathering of the rain into torrents in
that region is quick and precipitate. The river on one side roared out
its warning, but the people would not take heed of the danger impending
over them on the other side--the great South Fork dam, two