othing torn from the unfortunates as they were
whirled along in the terrible rush of the torrent. Dead bodies were
lying by scores along the banks of the creeks. One woman I helped drag
from the mud had tightly clutched in her hand a paper. We tore it out of
her hand and found it to be a badly water-soaked photograph. It was
probably a picture of the drowned woman."

Over the Bridge.

Frank McDonald, a railroad conductor, says: "I certainly think I saw
1,000 bodies go over the bridge. The first house that came down struck
the bridge and at once took fire, and as fast as they came down they
were consumed. I believe I am safe in saying I saw 1,000 bodies burn. It
reminded me of a lot of flies on fly-paper struggling to get away, with
no hope and no chance to save them. I have no idea that had the bridge
been blown up the loss of life would have been any less. They would
have floated a little further with the same certain death. Then, again,
it was impossible for any one to have reached the bridge in order to
blow it up, for the waters came so fast that no one could have done it.
I saw fifteen to eighteen bodies go over the bridge. At the same time I
offered a man twenty dollars to row me across the river, but could get
no one to go, and I finally had to build a boat and get across that
way."

Nothing seems to have withstood the merciless sweep of the mighty
on-rush of pent-up Conemaugh. As for the houses of the town a thousand
of them lie piled up in a smouldering mass to the right of Conemaugh
bridge.

At the present moment, away down in its terrible depths, this mass of
torn and twisted timbers and dead humanity is slowly burning, and the
light curling smoke that rises as high almost as the mountain, and the
sickening smell that comes from the centre of this fearful funeral pile
tell that the unseen fire is feeding on other fuel than the rafters and
roofs that once sheltered the population of Johnstown.

A Ghastly Scene.

The mind is filled with horror at the supreme desolation that pervades
the whole scene. It is small wonder that the pen cannot in the hands of
the most skillful even pretend to convey one-hundredth part of what is
seen and heard every hour in the day in this fearful place. At the
present moment firemen and others are out on that ghastly aggregation of
woodwork and human kind jammed against the unyielding mass of arched
masonry.

Round them curls the white smoke from the smouldering interio