ake many a day to make up the
reckoning of the material loss.

If any pen could describe the scenes of terror, anguish and destruction
which have taken place in Conemaugh Valley it could write an epic
greater than the "Iliad." The accounts that come tell of hairbreadth
escapes, heartrending tragedies and deeds of heroism almost without
number.

A Climax of Horror.

As if to add a lurid touch of horror to the picture that might surpass
all the rest a conflagration came to mock those who were in fear of
drowning with a death yet more terrible. Where the ruins of Johnstown,
composed mainly of timber, had been piled up forty feet high against a
railroad bridge below the town a fire was started and raged with eager
fury. It is said that scores of persons were burned alive, their
piercing cries appealing for aid to hundreds of spectators who stood on
the banks of the river, but could do nothing.

Western Pennsylvania is in mourning. Business in the cities is virtually
suspended and all minds are bent upon this great horror, all hearts
convulsed with the common sorrow.

Heartrending Scenes and Heroic Struggles for Life.

Another eye-witness describes the calamity as follows: A flood of death
swept down the Alleghany Mountains yesterday afternoon and last night.
Almost the entire city of Johnstown is swimming about in the rushing,
angry tide. Dead bodies are floating about in every direction, and
almost every piece of movable timber is carrying from the doomed city a
corpse of humanity, drifting with the raging waters. The disaster
overtook Johnstown about six o'clock last evening.

As the train bearing the writer sped eastward, the reports at each stop
grew more appalling. At Derry a group of railway officials were gathered
who had come from Bolivar, the end of the passable portion of the road
westward. They had seen but a small portion of the awful flood, but
enough to allow them to imagine the rest. Down through the Packsaddle
came the rushing waters. The wooded heights of the Alleghanies looked
down in wonder at the scene of the most terrible destruction that ever
struck the romantic valley of the Conemaugh.

The water was rising when the men left at six o'clock at the rate of
five feet an hour. Clinging to improvised rafts, constructed in the
death battle from floating boards and timbers, were agonized men, women
and children, their heartrending shrieks for help striking horror to the
breasts of the onlookers