e side of the road-bed.
Picking himself up, bruised but not seriously hurt, he saw that the
collision had already taken place, that the tender had ridden directly
over the engine, that the colliding wagons were demolished, and that the
front carriages of the train were already on fire. Running quickly to
the rear of the train, he succeeded in uncoupling six carriages and a
van, which were drawn away from the rest before the flames extended to
them by an engine which most fortunately was following the train. All
the other carriages were utterly destroyed, and every person in them
perished.

The Abergele was probably a solitary instance, in the record of railway
accidents, in which but one single survivor sustained any injury. There
was no maiming. It was death or entire escape. The collision was not a
particularly severe one, and the engine driver of the mail train
especially stated that at the moment it occurred the loose wagons were
still moving so slowly that he would not have sprung from his engine had
he not seen that they were loaded with oil. The very instant the
collision took place, however, the fluid seemed to ignite and to flash
along the train like lightning, so that it was impossible to approach a
carriage when once it caught fire. The fact was that the oil in vast
quantities was spilled upon the track and ignited by the fire of the
locomotive, and then the impetus of the mail train forced all of its
leading carriages into the dense mass of smoke and flame. All those who
were present concurred in positively stating that not a cry, nor a moan,
nor a sound of any description was heard from the burning carriages, nor
did any one in them apparently make an effort to escape.

Though the collision took place before one o'clock, in spite of the
efforts of a large gang of men who were kept throwing water on the line,
the perfect sea of flame which covered the line for a distance of some
forty or fifty yards could not be extinguished until nearly eight o'clock
in the evening, for the petroleum had flowed down into the ballasting of
the road, and the rails were red-hot. It was, therefore, small occasion
for surprise that when the fire was at last gotten under, the remains of
those who lost their lives were in some cases wholly undistinguishable,
and in others almost so. Among the thirty-three victims of the disaster,
the body of no single one retained any traces of individuality; the faces
of all were wholl