THE DÉBRIS ABOVE THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD BRIDGE.
One of the first to reach Johnstown from a distance was a New York World correspondent, who on Sunday wrote as follows:—
“I walked late yesterday afternoon from New Florence to a place opposite Johnstown, a distance of four miles. I describe what I actually saw. All along the way bodies were seen lying on the river banks. In one place a woman was half buried in the mud, only a limb showing. In another was a mother with her babe clasped to her breast. Further along lay a husband and wife, their arms wound around each other’s necks. Probably fifty bodies were seen on that one side of the river, and it must be remembered that here the current was the swiftest, and consequently fewer of the dead were landed among the bushes. On the opposite side bodies could also be seen, but they were all covered with mud. As I neared Johnstown the wreckage became grand in its massive proportions. In order to show the force of the current I will say that three miles below Johnstown I saw a grand piano lying on the bank, and not a board or key was broken. It must have been lifted on the crest of the wave and laid gently on the bank. In another place were two large iron boilers. They had evidently been treated by the torrent much as the piano had been.
“The scenes, as I neared Johnstown, were the most heart-rending that man was ever called to look upon. Probably three thousand people were scattered in groups along the Pennsylvania Railroad track and every one of them had a relative lying dead either in the wreckage above, in the river below, or in the still burning furnace. Not a house that was left standing was in plumb. Hundreds of them were turned on their sides, and in some cases three or four stood one on top of the other. Two miles from Johnstown, on the opposite side of the river from where I walked, stood one-half of the water-works of the Cambria Iron Company, a structure that had been built of massive stone. It was filled with planks from houses, and a large abutment of wreckage was piled up fully fifty feet in front of it. A little above, on the same side, could be seen what was left of the Cambria Iron Works, which was one of the finest plants in the world. Some of the walls are still standing, it is true, but not a vestige of the valuable machinery remains in sight. The two upper portions of the works were swept away almost entirely, and under the pieces of fallen iron and wood could be seen the bodies of more than forty workmen.
“At this point there is a bend in the river and the fiery furnace blazing for a quarter of a mile square above the stone bridge came into view.
“‘My God!’ screamed a woman who was hastening up the track, ‘can it be that any are in there?’
“‘Yes; over a thousand,’ replied a man who had just come from the neighborhood, and it is now learned that he estimated the number at one thousand too low.
“The scenes of misery and suffering and agony and despair can hardly be chronicled. One man, a clerk named Woodruff, was reeling along intoxicated. Suddenly, with a frantic shout, he threw himself over the bank into the flood and would have been carried to his death had he not been caught by some persons below.
“‘Let me die,’ he exclaimed, when they rescued him. ‘My wife and children are gone; I have no use for my life.’ An hour later I saw Woodruff lying on the ground entirely overcome by liquor. Persons who knew him said that he had never tasted liquor before.
“Probably fifty barrels of whisky were washed ashore just below Johnstown, and those men who had lost everything in this world sought solace in the fiery liquid. So it was that as early as six o’clock last night the shrieks and cries of women were intermingled with drunkards’ howls and curses. What was worse than anything, however, was the fact that incoming trains from Pittsburgh brought hundreds of toughs, who joined with the Slavs and Bohemians in rifling the bodies, stealing furniture, insulting women, and endeavoring to assume control of any rescuing parties that tried to seek the bodies under the bushes and in the limbs of trees. There was no one in authority, no one to take command of even a citizens’ posse could it have been organized. A lawless mob seemed to control this narrow neck of land that was the only approach to the city of Johnstown. I saw persons take watches from dead men’s jackets and brutally tear finger-rings from the hands of women. The ruffians also climbed into the overturned houses and ransacked the rooms, taking whatever they thought valuable. No one dared check them in this work, and, consequently, the scene was not as riotous as it would have been if the toughs had not had sway. In fact, they became beastly drunk after a time and were seen lying around in a stupor. Unless the military is on hand early to-morrow there may be serious trouble, for each train pours loads of people of every description into the vicinity, and Slavs are flocking like birds of prey from the surrounding country.
“Here I will give the latest conservative estimate of the dead—it is between seven and eight thousand drowned and two thousand burned. The committee at Johnstown in their last bulletin placed the number of lives lost at eight thousand. In doing so they are figuring the inhabitants of their own city and the towns immediately adjoining. But it must be remembered that the tidal wave swept ten miles through a populous district before it even reached the locality over which this committee has supervision. It devastated a tract the size and shape of Manhattan Island. Here are a few facts that will show the geographical outlines of the terrible disaster: The Hotel Hurlburt of Johnstown, a massive three-story building of one hundred rooms, has vanished. There were in it seventy-five guests at the time of the flood. Two only are now known to be alive. The Merchants’ Hotel is leveled. How many were inside it is not known, but as yet no one has been seen who came from there or heard of an inmate escaping. At the Conemaugh round-house forty-one locomotives were swept down the stream, and before they reached the stone bridge all the iron and steel work had been torn from their boilers. It is almost impossible in this great catastrophe to go more into details.
“I stood on the stone bridge at six o’clock and looked into the seething mass of ruin below me. At one place the blackened body of a babe was seen; in another, fourteen skulls could be counted. Further along the bones became thicker and thicker, until at last at one place it seemed as if a concourse of people who had been at a ball or entertainment had been carried in a bunch and incinerated. At this time the smoke was still rising to the height of fifty feet, and it is expected that when it dies down the charred bodies will be seen dotting the entire mass.
“A cable had been run last night from the end of the stone bridge to the nearest point across—a distance of three hundred feet. Over this cable was run a trolley, and a swing was fastened under it. A man went over, and he was the first one who visited Johnstown since the awful disaster. I followed him to-day.
“I walked along the hillside and saw hundreds of persons lying on the wet grass, wrapped in blankets or quilts. It was growing cold and a misty rain had set in. Shelter was not to be had, and houses on the hillsides that had not been swept away were literally packed from top to bottom. The bare necessities of life were soon at a premium, and loaves of bread sold at fifty cents. Fortunately, however, the relief train from Pittsburgh arrived at seven o’clock. Otherwise the horrors of starvation would have been added. All provisions, however, had to be carried over a rough, rocky road a distance of four miles (as I knew, who had been compelled to walk it), and in many cases they were seized by the toughs, and the people who were in need of food did not get it.
“Rich and poor were served alike by this terrible disaster. I saw a girl standing in her bare feet on the river’s bank, clad in a loose petticoat and with a shawl over her head. At first I thought she was an Italian woman, but her face showed that I was mistaken. She was the belle of the town—the daughter of a wealthy Johnstown banker—and this single petticoat and shawl were not only all that was left her, but all that was saved from the magnificent residence of her father. She had escaped to the hills not an instant too soon.
“The solicitor of Johnstown, Mr. George Martin, said to me to-day:—
“‘All my money went away in the flood. My house is gone. So are all my clothes, but, thank God, my family are safe.’”
CHAPTER XVIII.
The first train that passed New Florence, bound east, was crowded with people from Pittsburgh and places along the line, who were going to the scene of the disaster with but little hope of finding their loved ones alive. It was a heart-rending sight. Not a dry eye was in the train. Mothers moaned for their children. Husbands paced the aisles and wrung their hands in mute agony. Fathers pressed their faces against the windows and endeavored to see something, they knew not what, that would tell them in a measure of the dreadful fate that their loved ones had met with. All along the raging Conemaugh the train stopped, and bodies were taken on the express car, being carried by the villagers who were out along the banks. Oh, the horror and infinite pity of it all! What a journey has been that of the last half hour! Swollen corpses lay here and there in piles of cross-ties, or on the river banks along the tangled greenery.
It was about nine o’clock when the first passenger train since Friday came to the New Florence depot with its load of eager passengers. They were no idle travelers, but each had a mission. Here and there men were staring out the windows with red eyes. Among them were tough-looking Hungarians and Italians who had lost friends near Nineveh, while many were weeping, on all sides. Two of the passengers on the train were man and wife from Johnstown. He was dignified and more or less self-possessed. She was anxious, and tried hard to control her feelings. From every newcomer and possible source of information she sought news.
“Ours is a big, new brick house,” said she with a brave effort, but with her brown eyes moist and red lips trembling. “It is a three-story house, and I don’t think there is any trouble, do you?” said she to me, and without waiting for my answer, she continued with a sob, “There are my four children in the house and their nurse, and I guess father and mother will go over to the house, don’t you?”
In a few moments all those in the car knew the story of the pair, and many a pitying glance was cast at them. Their house was one of the first to go.
The huge wave struck Bolivar just after dark, and in five minutes the Conemaugh rose from six to forty feet, and the waters spread out over the whole country. Soon houses began floating down, and clinging to the débris were men, women, and children shrieking for aid. A large number of citizens gathered at the county bridge, and they were reinforced by a number from Garfield, a town on the opposite side of the river. They brought ropes, and these were thrown over into the boiling waters as persons drifted by, in efforts to save them. For half an hour all efforts were fruitless, until at last, when the rescuers were about giving up all hope, a little boy astride a shingle roof managed to catch hold of one of the ropes. He caught it under his left arm and was thrown violently against an abutment, but managed to keep hold and was pulled onto the bridge amid the cheers of the onlookers. The lad was at once taken to Garfield and cared for. The boy is about sixteen years old and his name is Hessler. His story of the calamity is as follows:—
“With my father I was spending the day at my grandfather’s house in Cambria City. In the house at the time were Theodore, Edward, and John Kintz, John Kintz, Jr., Miss Mary Kintz, Mrs. Mary Kintz, wife of John Kintz, Jr.; Miss Treacy Kintz, Mrs. Rica Smith, John Hirsch and four children, my father, and myself. Shortly after five o’clock there was a noise of roaring waters and screams of people. We looked out the door and saw persons running. My father told us to never mind, as the waters would not rise further. But soon we saw houses swept by, and then we ran up to the floor above. The house was three stories, and we were at last forced to the top one. In my fright I jumped on the bed. It was an old-fashioned one, with heavy posts. The water kept rising, and my bed was soon afloat. Gradually it was lifted up. The air in the room grew close, and the house was moving. Still the bed kept rising and pressed the ceiling. At last the posts pushed the plaster. It yielded, and a section of the roof gave way. Then I suddenly found myself on the roof and was being carried down stream. After a little this roof commenced to part, and I was afraid I was going to be drowned, but just then another house with a shingle roof floated by, and I managed to crawl on it and floated down until nearly dead with cold, when I was saved. After I was freed from the house I did not see my father. My grandfather was on a tree, but he must have been drowned, as the waters were rising fast. John Kintz, Jr., was also on a tree. Miss Mary Kintz and Mrs. Mary Kintz I saw drown. Miss Smith was also drowned. John Hirsch was in a tree, but the four children were drowned. The scenes were terrible. Live bodies and corpses were floating down with me and away from me. I would see a person shriek and then disappear. All along the line were people who were trying to save us, but they could do nothing, and only a few were caught.”
An eye-witness at Bolivar Block station tells a story of heroism which occurred at the lower bridge which crosses the Conemaugh at that point. A young man, with two women, were seen coming down the river on part of a floor. At the upper bridge a rope was thrown down to them. This they all failed to catch. Between the two bridges he was noticed to point toward the elder woman, who, it is supposed, was his mother. He was then seen to instruct the women how to catch the rope which was being lowered from the other bridge. Down came the raft with a rush. The brave man stood with his arms around the two women. As they swept under the bridge he reached up and seized the rope. He was jerked violently away from the two women, who failed to get a hold on the rope. Seeing that they would not be rescued, he dropped the rope and fell back on the raft, which floated on down the river. The current washed their frail craft in toward the bank. The young man was enabled to seize hold of a branch of a tree. He aided the two women to get up into the tree. He held on with his hands and rested his feet on a pile of driftwood. A piece of floating débris struck the drift, sweeping it away. The man hung with his body immersed in the water. A pile of drift soon collected, and he was enabled to get another insecure footing. Up the river there was a sudden crash, and a section of the bridge was swept away and floated down the stream, striking the tree and washing it away. All three were thrown into the water and were drowned before the eyes of the horrified spectators, just opposite the town of Bolivar.
At Bolivar a man, woman, and child were seen floating down in a lot of drift. The mass soon began to part, and, by desperate efforts, the husband and father succeeded in getting his wife and little one on a floating tree. Just then the tree was washed under the bridge, and a rope was thrown out. It fell upon the man’s shoulders. He saw at a glance that he could not save his dear ones, so he threw the means of safety on one side and clasped in his arms those who were with him. A moment later and the tree struck a floating house. It turned over, and in an instant the three persons were in the seething waters, being carried to their death.
An instance of a mother’s love at Bolivar is told. A woman and two children were floating down the torrent. The mother caught a rope, and tried to hold it to her and her babe. It was impossible, and with a look of anguish she relinquished the rope and sank with her little ones.
A family, consisting of father and mother and nine children, were washed away in a creek at Lockport. The mother managed to reach the shore, but the husband and children were carried out into the Conemaugh to drown. The woman was crazed over the terrible event.
A little girl passed under the Bolivar bridge just before dark. She was kneeling on part of a floor, and had her hands clasped as if in prayer. Every effort was made to save her, but they all proved futile. A railroader who was standing by remarked that the piteous appearance of the little waif brought tears to his eyes. All night long the crowd stood about the ruins of the bridge which had been swept away at Bolivar. The water rushed past with a roar, carrying with it parts of houses, furniture, and trees. No more living persons are being carried past. Watchers, with lanterns, remained along the banks until daybreak, when the first view of the awful devastation of the flood was witnessed. Along the bank lay the remnants of what had once been dwelling-houses and stores; here and there was an uprooted tree. Piles of drift lay about, in some of which bodies of the victims of the flood will be found.
Harry Fisher, a young telegraph operator, who was at Bolivar when the first rush of waters began, says: “We knew nothing of the disaster until we noticed the river slowly rising, and then more rapidly. News reached us from Johnstown that the dam at South Fork had burst. Within three hours the water in the river rose at least twenty feet. Shortly before six o’clock ruins of houses, beds, household utensils, barrels, and kegs came floating past the bridges. At eight o’clock the water was within six feet of the roadbed of the bridge. The wreckage floated past, without stopping, for at least two hours. Then it began to lessen, and night coming suddenly upon us, we could see no more. The wreckage was floating by for a long time before the first living persons passed. Fifteen people that I saw were carried down by the river. One of these, a boy, was saved, and three of them were drowned just directly below the town. Hundreds of animals lost their lives. The bodies of horses, dogs, and chickens floated past in numbers that could not be counted.”
Just before reaching Sang Hollow, the end of the mail line on the Pennsylvania Railroad, is “S. O.” signal tower, and the men in it told piteous stories of what they saw.
A beautiful girl came down on the roof of a building, which was swung in near the tower. She screamed to the operators to save her, and one big, brawny, brave fellow walked as far into the river as he could, and shouted to her to guide herself into shore with a bit of plank. She was a plucky girl, full of nerve and energy, and stood upon her frail support in evident obedience to the command of the operator. She made two or three bold strokes, and actually stopped the course of the raft for an instant. Then it swerved, and went out from under her. She tried to swim ashore, but in a few seconds she was lost in the swirling water. Something hit her, for she lay on her back, with face pallid and expressionless.
Men and women, in dozens, in pairs, and singly; children, boys, big and little, and wee babies, were there among the awful confusion of water, drowning, gasping, struggling, and fighting desperately for life. Two men, on a tiny raft, shot into the swiftest part of the current. They crouched stolidly, looking at the shores, while between them, dressed in white, and kneeling with her face turned heavenward, was a girl six or seven years old. She seemed stricken with paralysis until she came opposite the tower, and then she turned her face to the operator. She was so close they could see big tears on her cheeks, and her pallor was as death. The helpless men on shore shouted to her to keep up her courage, and she resumed her devout attitude, and disappeared under the trees of a projecting point a short distance below. “We couldn’t see her come out again,” said the operator, “and that was all of it.”
CHAPTER XIX.
RUINS OF THE CAMBRIA IRON WORKS.
An interesting story of endeavor was related on Monday by a correspondent of the New York Sun, who made his way to the scene of disaster. This is what he wrote:—
Although three days have passed since the disaster, the difficulty of reaching the desolated region is still so great that, under ordinary circumstances, no one would dream of attempting the trip. The Pennsylvania Railroad cannot get within several miles of Johnstown, and it is almost impossible to get on their trains even at that. They run one, two, or three trains a day on the time of the old through trains, and the few cars on each train are crowded with passengers in a few minutes after the gates open. Then the sale of tickets is stopped, the gates are closed, and all admission to the train denied. No extra cars will be put on, no second section sent out, and no special train run on any account, for love or money. The scenes at the station when the gates are shut are sorrowful. Men who have come hundreds of miles to search for friends or relatives among the dead stand hopelessly before the edict of the blue-coated officials from eight in the morning until one in the afternoon. There is no later train on the Pennsylvania road out of Pittsburgh, and the agony of suspense is thus prolonged. Besides that, the one o’clock train is so late in getting to Sang Hollow that the work of beginning a search is practically delayed until the next morning.
The Sun’s special correspondents were of a party of fifteen or twenty business men and others who had come from the East by way of Buffalo, and who reached Pittsburgh in abundant time to have taken the Pennsylvania Railroad train at eight o’clock, had the company wished to carry them. With hundreds of others they were turned away, and appeals even to the highest official of the road were useless, whether in the interest of newspaper enterprise or private business, or in the sadder but most frequent case where men prayed like beggars for an opportunity to measure the extent of their bereavement, or find if, by some happy chance, one might not be alive out of a family. The sight-seeing and curious crowd was on hand early, and had no trouble in getting on the train. Those who had come from distant cities, and whose mission was of business or sorrow, were generally later, and were left. No effort was made to increase the accommodations of the train for those who most needed them. The Sun’s men had traveled a thousand miles around to reach Pittsburgh. Their journey had covered three sides of the State of Pennsylvania, from Philadelphia at the extreme southeast, through New Jersey and New York to Buffalo by way of Albany and the New York Central, and thence by the Lake Shore to Ashtabula, O., passing through Erie at the extreme northwest corner of the State; thence down by the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie road to Youngstown, O., and so into Pittsburgh by the back door, as it were. Circumstances and the edict of the Pennsylvania Railroad were destined to carry them still further around, more than a hundred miles, nearly south of Pittsburgh, almost across the line into Maryland, and thence fifty miles up before they reached their destination.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ordinarily does not attempt to compete for business from Pittsburgh into Johnstown. Its only route between those two cities leads over small branch lines among the mountains south of Johnstown, and is over double the length of the Pennsylvania main line route. The first train to reach Johnstown, however, was one over the Baltimore and Ohio lines, and, although they made no attempt to establish a regular line, they did on Sunday get two relief trains out of Pittsburgh and into Johnstown. Superintendent Patten, of the Baltimore and Ohio, established headquarters in a box car two miles south of Johnstown, and telegraphed to Acting Superintendent McIlvaine, at Pittsburgh, to take for free transportation all goods offered for the relief of the sufferers. No passenger trains were run, however, except the regular trains on the main line for Cumberland, Md., and the branches from the main line to Johnstown were used entirely by wildcat trains running on special orders, with no object but to get relief up as quickly as possible. Nothing had left Pittsburgh for Johnstown, however, to-day up to nine o’clock. Arrangements were made for a relief train to go out early in the afternoon, to pick up cars of contributed goods at the stations along the line and get them into Johnstown some time during the night. “No specials” was also the rule on the Baltimore and Ohio, but Acting Superintendent McIlvaine recognized in the Sun, with its enormous possibilities in the way of spreading throughout the country the actual situation of affairs in the devastated district, a means of awaking the public to the extent of the disaster that would be of more efficient relief to the suffering people than even train-loads of food and clothing. The Sun’s case was therefore made exceptional, and when the situation was explained to him he consented, for a sum that appalled the representatives of some other papers who heard it, but which was, for the distance to be covered, very fair, to set the Sun’s men down in Johnstown at the earliest moment that steam and steel and iron could do it.
In fifteen minutes one of the Baltimore and Ohio light passenger engines, with Engineer W. E. Scott in charge and Fireman Charles Hood for assistant, was hitched to a single coach out in the yard. Conductor W. B. Clancy was found somewhere about and put in command of the expedition. Brakeman Dan Lynn was captured just as he was leaving an incoming train, and although he had been without sleep for a day, he readily consented to complete the crew of the Sun’s train. There was no disposition to be hoggish in the matter, and at a time like this the great thing was to get the best possible information as to affairs at Johnstown spread over the country in the least possible time. The facilities of the train were therefore placed at the disposal of other newspaper men who were willing to share in the expense. None of them, however, availed themselves of this chance to save practically a whole day in reaching the scene, except the artist representing Harper’s Weekly, who had accompanied the Sun men this far in their race against time from the East. As far as the New York papers were concerned, there were no men except those from the Sun to take the train. If any other New York newspaper men had yet reached Pittsburgh at all, they were not to be found around the Baltimore and Ohio station, where the Sun extended its invitation to the other representatives of the press. There were a number of Western newspaper men on hand, but journalism in that section is not accustomed to big figures except in circulation affidavits, and they were staggered at the idea of paying even a share of the expense that the Sun was bearing practically alone.
At 9.15 A. M., therefore, when the special train pulled out of the Baltimore and Ohio station, it had for passengers only the Sun men and Harper’s artist. As it started Acting Superintendent McIlvaine was asked:—
“How quickly can we make it?”
“Well, it’s one hundred and forty-six miles,” he replied, “and it’s all kinds of road. There’s an accommodation train that you will have to look out for until you pass it, and that will delay you. It’s hard to make any promise about time.”
“Can we make it in five hours?” he was asked.
“I think you can surely do that,” he replied.
How much better than the acting superintendent’s word was the performance of Engineer Scott and his crew this story shows. The special, after leaving Pittsburgh, ran wild until it got to McKeesport, sixteen miles distant. At this point the regular train, which left Pittsburgh at 8.40, was overtaken. The regular train was on a siding, and the special passed through the city with but a minute’s stop. Then the special had a clear track before it, and the engineer drove his machine to the utmost limit of speed consistent with safety. It is nineteen miles from McKeesport to West Newton, and the special made this distance in twenty minutes, the average time of over a mile a minute being much exceeded for certain periods. The curves of the road are frightful, and at times the single car which composed the train was almost swung clear off the track. The Sun men recalled vividly the ride of Horace Greeley with Hank Monk, and they began to reflect that there was such a thing as riding so fast that they might not be able to reach Johnstown at all. From Layton’s to Dawson the seven and one-half miles were made in seven minutes, while the fourteen miles from Layton’s to Connellsville were covered in fourteen minutes precisely. On the tender of the engine the cover of the water-tank flew open and the water splashed out. Coal flew from the tender in great lumps, and dashed against the end of the car. Inside the car the newspaper men’s grips and belongings went flying around on the floor and over seats like mad. The Allegheny River, whose curves the rails followed, seemed to be right even with the car windows, so that one could look straight down into the water, so closely to it was the track built. In Connellsville there was a crowd to see the special. On the depot was the placard:—
“Car will leave at 3 P. M. to-day with food and clothing for Johnstown.”
In Connellsville the train stopped five minutes and underwent a thorough inspection. Then it shoved on again. At Confluence, twenty-seven miles from Connellsville, a bridge of a Baltimore and Ohio branch line across the river was washed away, but this didn’t interfere with the progress of the special. For sixty miles on the road is up hill at a grade of sixty-five feet to the mile, and the curves, if anything, are worse, but there was no appreciable diminution in the speed of the train. Just before reaching Rockwood the first real traces of the flood were apparent. The waters of the Castlemore showed signs of having been recently right up to the railroad tracks, and driftwood and débris of all descriptions lay at the side of the rails. Nearly all bridges on the country roads over the river were washed away and their remnants scattered along the banks.
Rockwood was reached at 12.05 P. M. Rockwood is eighty-seven miles from McKeesport, and this distance, which is up an extremely steep grade, was therefore made in two hours, which includes fifteen minutes’ stop. The distance covered from Pittsburgh was one hundred and two miles in two hours. Rockwood is the junction of the main line of the Baltimore and Ohio road at its Cambria branch, which runs to Johnstown. The regular local train from there to Johnstown was held to allow the Sun’s special to pass first.
The Sun’s special left Rockwood at 12.20 in charge of Engineer Oliver, who assumed charge at that point. He said that the branch to Johnstown was a mountain road, with steep grades, very high embankments, and damaged in spots, and that he would have to use great precaution in running. He gave the throttle a yank and the train started with a jump that almost sent the newspaper men on their heads. Things began to dance around the car furiously as the train dashed along at a great pace, and the reporters began to wonder what Engineer Oliver meant by his talk about precautions. All along the route up the valley at the stations were crowds of people, who stared in silence as the train swept by. On the station platforms were piled barrels of flour, boxes of canned goods, and bales of clothing. The roads leading in from the country to the stations were full of farmers’ wagons laden with produce of all kinds for the sufferers.
The road from Rockwood to Johnstown lies in a deep gully, at the bottom of which flows little Stony Creek, now swollen to a torrent. Wooden troughs under the track carry off the water which trickles down from the hills, otherwise the track would be useless. As it is there are frequent washouts, which have been partly filled in, and for ten miles south of Johnstown all trains have to be run very slowly. The branches of trees above the bank which have been blown over graze the cars on the railroad tracks. The Sun’s special arrived in Johnstown at two o’clock.
CHAPTER XX.
The experience of the newspaper correspondents in the Conemaugh valley was the experience of a lifetime. Few war correspondents, even, have been witnesses of such appalling scenes of horror and desolation. Day after day they were busy recording the annals of death and despair, conscious, meanwhile, that no expressions of accumulated pathos at their command could do justice to the theme. They had only to stand in the street wherever a knot of men had gathered, to hear countless stories of thrilling escapes. Hundreds of people had such narrow escapes that they hardly dared to believe that they were saved for hours after they reached solid ground. William Wise, a young man who lived at Woodvale, was walking along the road when the rush of water came down the valley. He started to rush up the side of the hills, but stopped to help a young woman; Ida Zidstein, to escape; lost too much time, and was forced to drag the young woman upon a high pile of metal near the road. They had clung there several hours, and thought that they could both escape, as the metal pile was not exposed to the full force of the torrent. A telegraph pole came dashing down the flood, its top standing above the water, from which dangled some wires. The pole was caught in an eddy opposite the pile. It shot in toward the two who were clinging there. As the pole swung around, the wires came through the air like a whip-lash, and catching in the hair of the young woman, dragged her down to instant death. The young man remained on the heap of metal for hours before the water subsided so as to allow him to escape.
One man named Homer, with his child, age six, was on one of the houses which were first carried away. He climbed to the roof and held fast there for four hours, floating all the way to Bolivar, fifteen miles below.
A young hero sat upon the roof of his father’s house, holding his mother and little sister. Once the house swung in toward a brick structure which still rested on its foundation. As one house struck the other, the boy sprang into one of the windows. As he turned to rescue his mother and sister, the house swung out again, and the boy, seeing that there was no possibility of getting them off, leaped back to their side. A second time the house was stopped—this time by a tree. The boy helped his mother and sister to a place of safety in the tree, but before he could leave the roof, the house was swept on and he was drowned.
One man took his whole family to the roof of his floating house. He and one child escaped to another building, but his wife and five children were whirled around for hours, and finally carried down to the bridge where so many people perished in the flames. They were all rescued.
District Attorney Rose, his wife, two brothers and two sisters were swept across the lower portion of the town. They had been thrown into the water, and were swimming, the men assisting the women. Finally, they got into a back current, and were cast ashore at the foot of the hills back of Knoxville.
One merchant of Johnstown, after floating about upon a piece of wreckage for hours, was carried down to the stone bridge. After a miraculous escape from being burned to death, he was rescued and carried ashore. He was so dazed and terrified by his experience, however, that he walked off the bridge and broke his neck.
One man who was powerless to save his wife, after he had leaped from a burning building to a house floating by, was driven insane by her shrieks for help.
An old gentleman of Verona rescued a modern Moses from the bulrushes. Verona is on the east bank of the Allegheny river, twelve miles above Pittsburg. Mr. McCutcheon, while standing on the river bank watching the drift floating by, was compelled by instinct to take a skiff and row out to one dense mass of timber. As he reached it, he was startled to find in the centre, out of the reach of the water, a cradle covered with the clothing. As he lifted the coverings aside a pretty five-months-old boy baby smiled on him. The little innocent, unconscious of the scenes it had passed through, crowed with delight as the old man lifted it tenderly, cradle and all, into his skiff and brought it ashore.
Among the miraculous escapes is that of George J. Lea and family. When the rush of water came there were eight people on the roof of Lea’s house. The house swung around and floated for nearly half an hour before it struck the wreck above the stone bridge. A three-year-old girl, with sunny, golden hair and dimpled cheeks, prayed all the while that God would save them, and it seemed that God really answered the prayer and directed the house against the drift, enabling every one of the eight to get off.
H. M. Bennett and S. W. Keltz, engineer and conductor of engine No. 1165 and the extra freight, which happened to be lying at South Fork when the dam broke, tell a graphic story of their wonderful flight and escape on the locomotive before the advancing flood. Bennett and Keltz were in the signal tower awaiting orders. The fireman and flagman were on the engine, and two brakemen were asleep in the caboose. Suddenly the men in the tower heard a roaring sound in the valley above them. They looked in that direction and were almost transfixed with horror to see, two miles above them, a huge black wall of water, at least 150 feet in height, rushing down the valley. The fear-stricken men made a rush for the locomotive, at the same time giving the alarm to the sleeping brakemen in the caboose, but with no avail. It was impossible to aid them further, however, so Bennett and Keltz cut the engine loose from the train, and the engineer, with one wild wrench, threw the lever wide open, and they were away on a mad race for life. It seemed that they would not receive momentum enough to keep ahead of the flood, and they cast one despairing glance back. Then they could see the awful deluge approaching in its might. On it came, rolling and roaring, tossing and tearing houses, sheds and trees in its awful speed as if they were toys. As they looked, they saw the two brakemen rush out of the caboose, but they had not time to gather the slightest idea of the cause of their doom before they, the car and signal tower were tossed high in the air, to disappear forever. Then the engine leaped forward like a thing of life, and speeded down the valley. But fast as it went, the flood gained upon it. In a few moments the shrieking locomotive whizzed around a curve, and they were in sight of a bridge. Horror upon horrors! ahead of them was a freight train, with the rear end almost on the bridge, and to get across was simply impossible. Engineer Bennett then reversed the lever, and succeeded in checking the engine as they glided across the bridge. Then the men jumped and ran for their lives up the hillside. The bridge and the tender of the engine they had been on were swept away like a bundle of matches.
A young man who was a passenger on the Derry express furnishes an interesting account of his experiences. “When we reached Derry,” he said, “our train was boarded by a relief committee, and no sooner was it ascertained that we were going on to Sang Hollow than the contributions of provisions and supplies of every kind were piled on board, filling an entire car. On reaching Sang Hollow the scene that presented itself to us was heart-rending. The road was lined with homeless people, some with a trunk or solitary chair, the only thing saved from their household goods, and all wearing an aspect of the most hopeless misery. Men were at work transferring from a freight car a pile of corpses at least sixty in number, and here and there a ghastly something under a covering showed where the body of some victim of the flood lay awaiting identification or burial in a nameless grave. Busy workers were engaged in clearing away the piles of driftwood and scattered articles of household use which cumbered the tracks and the roads. These piles told their own mournful story. There were beds, bureaus, mattresses, chairs, tables, pictures, dead horses and mules, overcoats, remnants of dresses sticking on the branches of trees, and a thousand other odd pieces of flotsam and jetsam from ruined homes. I saw a man get off the train and pick up an insurance policy for $30,000. Another took away as relics a baby’s chair and a confirmation card in a battered frame. On the banks of the Little Conemaugh creek people were delving in the driftwood, which was piled to a depth of six or seven feet, unearthing and carrying away whatever could be turned to account. Under those piles, it is thought, numbers of bodies are buried, not to be recovered except by the labor of many days. A woman and a little girl were brought from Johnstown by some means which I could not ascertain. The woman was in confinement, and was carried on a lounge, her sole remaining piece of property. She was taken to Latrobe for hospital treatment. I cannot understand how it is that people are unable to make their way from Sang Hollow to Johnstown. The distance is short, and it should certainly be a comparatively easy task to get over it on foot or horseback. However, there seems to be some insuperable obstacle. All those who made the trip on the train with me in order to obtain tidings of their friends in Johnstown, were forced to return as I did.
“The railroad is in a terrible condition. The day express and the limited, which left Pittsburg on Friday morning, are lying between Johnstown and Conemaugh on the east, having been cut off by the flood. Linemen were sent down from our train at every station to repair the telegraph wires which are damaged. Tremendous efforts are being exerted to repair the injury sustained by the railroad, and it is only a question of a couple of days until through communication is reëstablished. Our homeward trip was marked by a succession of sad spectacles. At Blairsville intersection two little girls lay dead, and in a house taken from the river was the body of a woman. Some idea of the force of the flood may be had from the statement that freight cars, both loaded and empty, had been lifted bodily from the track, and carried a distance of several blocks, and deposited in a graveyard in the outskirts of the town, where they were lying in a mass mixed up with tombstones and monuments.”
RUINS OF THE CAMBRIA IRON CO’S STORE.
CHAPTER XXI.
Where the carcass is, there will the vultures be gathered together. It is humiliating to human nature to record it, but it is nevertheless true, that amid all the suffering and sacrifice, and heroism and generosity that was displayed in this awful time, there arose some of the basest passions of unbridled vice. The lust of gain led many skulking wretches to rob and despoil, and even to mutilate the bodies of the dead. Pockets were searched. Jewels were stolen. Finger-rings and ear-rings were torn away, the knife often being used upon the poor, dead clay to facilitate the spoliation. Against this savagery the better elements of the populace sternly revolted. For the time there was no organized government. But outraged and indignant humanity soon formulates its own code of laws. Pistol and rope and bludgeon, in the hand of honesty, did effective work. The reports of summary lynchings that at first were spread abroad were doubtless exaggerated, but they had a stern foundation of truth; and they had abundant provocation.
Writing on that tragic Sunday, one correspondent says: “The way of the transgressor in the desolated valley of the Conemaugh is hard indeed. Each hour reveals some new and horrible story of suffering and outrage, and every succeeding hour brings news of swift and merited punishment meted out to the fiends who have dared to desecrate the stiff and mangled bodies in the city of the dead, and torture the already half-crazed victims of the cruelest of modern catastrophes. Last night a party of thirteen Hungarians were noticed stealthily picking their way along the banks of the Conemaugh toward Sang Hollow. Suspicious of their purpose, several farmers armed themselves and started in pursuit. Soon their most horrible fears were realized. The Hungarians were out for plunder. They came upon the dead and mangled body of a woman, lying upon the shore, upon whose person there were a number of trinkets of jewelry and two diamond rings. In their eagerness to secure the plunder, the Hungarians got into a squabble, during which one of the number severed the finger upon which were the rings, and started on a run with his fearful prize. The revolting nature of the deed so wrought upon the pursuing farmers, who by this time were close at hand, that they gave immediate chase. Some of the Hungarians showed fight, but, being outnumbered, were compelled to flee for their lives. Nine of the brutes escaped, but four were literally driven into the surging river and to their death. The thief who took the rings was among the number of the involuntary suicides.”
At 8.30 o’clock this morning an old railroader, who had walked from Sang Hollow, stepped up to a number of men who were on the platform station at Curranville, and said:—
“Gentlemen, had I a shot-gun with me half an hour ago, I would now be a murderer, yet with no fear of ever having to suffer for my crime. Two miles below here I watched three men going along the banks stealing the jewels from the bodies of the dead wives and daughters of men who have been robbed of all they hold dear on earth.”
He had no sooner finished the last sentence than five burly men, with looks of terrible determination written on their faces, were on their way to the scene of plunder, one with a coil of rope over his shoulder and another with a revolver in his hand. In twenty minutes, so it is stated, they had overtaken two of their victims, who were then in the act of cutting pieces from the ears and fingers from the hands of the bodies of two dead women. With revolver leveled at the scoundrels, the leader of the posse shouted:—
“Throw up your hands, or I’ll blow your heads off!”
With blanched faces and trembling forms, they obeyed the order and begged for mercy. They were searched, and, as their pockets were emptied of their ghastly finds, the indignation of the crowd intensified, and when a bloody finger of an infant encircled with two tiny gold rings was found among the plunder in the leader’s pocket, a cry went up, “Lynch them! Lynch them!” Without a moment’s delay ropes were thrown around their necks and they were dangling to the limbs of a tree, in the branches of which an hour before were entangled the bodies of a dead father and son. After half an hour the ropes were cut and the bodies lowered and carried to a pile of rocks in the forest on the hill above. It is hinted that an Allegheny county official was one of the most prominent in this justifiable homicide.
One miserable wretch who was caught in the act of mutilating a body was chased by a crowd of citizens, and when captured was promptly strung up to a telegraph pole. A company of officers rescued him before he was dead, much to the disgust of many reputable people, whose feelings had been outraged by the treatment of their deceased relations. Shortly after midnight an attempt was made to rob the First National Bank, which, with the exception of the vaults, had been destroyed. The plunderers were discovered by the citizens’ patrol, which had been established during the night, and a lively chase ensued. A number of the thieves—six, it is said—were shot. It is not known whether any were killed or not, as their bodies would have been washed away almost immediately if such had been the case.
A number of Hungarians collected about a number of bodies at Cambria which had been washed up, and began rifling the trunks. After they had secured all the contents they turned their attention to the dead.
The ghastly spectacle presented by the distorted features of those who had lost their lives during the flood had no influence upon the ghouls, who acted more like wild beasts than human beings. They took every article from the clothing on the dead bodies, not leaving anything of value or anything that would serve to identify the remains.
After the miscreants had removed all their plunder to dry ground a dispute arose over a division of the spoils. A pitched battle followed, and for a time the situation was alarming. Knives and clubs were used freely. As a result several of the combatants were seriously wounded and left on the ground, their fellow-countrymen not making any attempt to remove them from the field of strife.
A Hungarian was caught in the act of cutting off a dead woman’s finger, on which was a costly ring. The infuriated spectators raised an outcry and the fiend fled. He was hotly pursued, and after a half-hour’s hard chase, was captured and hanged to a telegraph pole, but was cut down and resuscitated by officers. Liquor emboldened the ghouls, and Pittsburg was telegraphed for help, and the 18th and 14th Regiments, Battery B and the Washington Infantry were at once called out for duty, members being apprised by posters in the newspaper windows.
One correspondent wrote: “The number of drunken men is remarkable. Whiskey seems marvelously plenty. Men are actually carrying it around in pails. Barrels of the stuff are constantly located among the drifts, and men are scrambling over each other and fighting like wild beasts in their mad search for it. At the cemetery, at the upper end of town, I saw a sight that rivals the Inferno. A number of ghouls had found a lot of fine groceries, among them a barrel of brandy, with which they were fairly stuffing themselves. One huge fellow was standing on the strings of an upright piano singing a profane song, every little while breaking into a wild dance. A half-dozen others were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight over the possession of some treasure stolen from a ruined house, and the crowd around the barrel were yelling like wild men.”
These reports were largely discredited and denied by later and probably more trustworthy authorities, but there was doubtless a considerable residue of truth in them.
There were so many contradictory stories about these horrible doings that our painstaking correspondent put to “Chall” Dick, the Deputy Sheriff, this “leading question”: “Did you shoot any robbers?” Chall did not make instant reply, but finally looked up with a peculiar expression on his face and said:—
“There are some men whom their friends will never again see alive.”
“Well, now, how many did you shoot?” was the next question.
“Say,” said Chall. “On Saturday morning I was the first to make my way to Sang Hollow to see if I could not get some food for people made homeless by the flood. There was a car-load of provisions there, but the vandals were on hand. They broke into the car and, in spite of my protestations, carried off box after box of supplies. I only got half a wagon load. They were too many for me. I know when I have no show. There was no show there and I got out.
“As I was leaving Sang Hollow and got up the mountain road a piece, I saw two Hungarians and one woman engaged in cutting the fingers off of corpses to get some rings. Well, I got off that team and—well, there are three people who were not drowned and who are not alive.”
“Where are the bodies?”
“Ain’t the river handy there? I went down to Sang Hollow on Sunday, but I went fixed for trouble that time. When I got into the hollow the officers had in tow a man who claimed he was arrested because he had bummed it on the freight train. A large crowd of men were trying to rescue the fellow. I rode into that crowd and scattered it. I got between the crowd and officers, who succeeded in getting their man in here. The fellow had been robbing the dead and had a lot of jewelry on his person. I see by the papers that Consul Max Schamberg, of Pittsburg, asserts that the Huns are a law-abiding race, and that when they were accused of robbing the dead they were simply engaged in trying to identify some of their friends. Consul Schamberg does not know what he is talking about. I know better, for I saw them engaged in robbing the dead.
“Those I caught at it will never do the like again. Why, I saw them let go of their friends in the water to catch a bedstead with a mattress on it. That’s the sort of law-abiding citizens the Huns are.”
Down the Cambria road, past which the dead of the river Conemaugh swept into Nineveh in awful numbers, was witnessed a wretched scene—that of a young officer of the National Guard in full uniform, and a poor deputy-sheriff, who had lost home, wife, children and all, clinched like madmen and struggling for the former’s revolver. If the officer of the Guard had won, there might have been a tragedy, for he was drunk. The homeless deputy-sheriff, with his wife and babies swept to death past the place where they struggled, was sober and in the right.
The officer was a first lieutenant. His company came with that regiment into this valley of distress to protect survivors from ruffianism and maintain the peace and dignity of the State. The man with whom he fought for the weapon was almost crazy in his own woe, but singularly cool and self-possessed regarding the safety of those left living.
It was one o’clock in the afternoon when a Philadelphia Press correspondent noticed on the Cambria road the young officer with his long military coat cut open, leaning heavily for support upon two privates. He was crying in a maudlin way, “You just take me to a place and I’ll drink soft stuff.” They entreated him to return at once to the regimental headquarters, even begged him, but he cast them aside and went staggering down the road to the line, where he met the grave-faced deputy face to face. The latter looked in the white of his eyes and said: “You can’t pass here, sir.”
“Can’t pass here?” he cried, waving his arms. “You challenge an officer? Stand aside!”
“You can’t pass here!” this time quietly, but firmly; “not while you’re drunk.”
“Stand aside!” yelled the lieutenant. “Do you know who I am? You talk to an officer of the National Guard.”
“Yes; and listen,” said the man in front of him so impatiently that it hushed his antagonist’s tirade. “I talk to an ‘officer’ of the National Guard—I who have lost my wife, my children and all in this flood no man has yet described; we who have seen our dead with their bodies mutilated and their fingers cut from their hands by dirty foreigners for a little gold, are not afraid to talk for what is right, even to an officer of the National Guard.”
While he spoke another great, dark, stout man, who looked as if he had suffered, came up, and upon taking in the situation every vein in his forehead swelled purple with rage.
“You dirty cur,” he cried to the officer; “you dirty, drunken cur, if it was not for the sake of peace I’d lay you out where you stand.”
“Come on,” yelled the Lieutenant, with an oath.
The big man sent out a terrible blow that would have left the Lieutenant senseless had not one of the privates dashed in between, receiving part of it and warding it off. The Lieutenant got out of his military coat. The privates seized the big man and with another correspondent, who ran to the scene, held him back. The Lieutenant put his hand to his pistol pocket, the deputy seized him, and the struggle for the weapon began. For a moment it was fierce and desperate, then another private came to the deputy’s assistance. The revolver was wrested from the drunken officer and he himself was pushed back panting to the ground.
The deputy seized the military coat he had thrown on the ground, and with it and the weapon started to the regimental headquarters. Then the privates got around him and begged him, one of them with tears in his eyes, not to report their officer, saying that he was a good man when he was sober. He studied a long while, standing in the road, while the officer slunk away over the hill. Then he threw the disgraced uniform to them, and said: “Here, give them to him; and, mind you, if he does not go at once to his quarters, I’ll take him there, dead or alive.”
CHAPTER XXII.
While yet the first wild cry of anguish was thrilling among the startled hills of the Conemaugh, the great heart of the nation answered it with a mighty throb of sympathy. On Tuesday afternoon, at Washington, the President called a gathering of eminent citizens to devise measures of relief. The meeting was held in Willard’s Hall, on F street, above Fourteenth, and President Harrison made such an eloquent appeal for assistance that nearly $10,000 was raised in the hour and a half that the meeting was in session.
As presiding officer the Chief Magistrate sat in a big arm-chair on the stage. On his right were District Commissioner Douglass, Hine and Raymond, and on his left sat Postmaster-General Wanamaker and Private Secretary Halford. In the audience were Secretaries Noble, Proctor and Tracy, Attorney-General Miller, Congressman Randall and Senators and Representatives from all parts of the country.
President Harrison called the meeting to order promptly at 3 o’clock. A dead silence fell over the three hundred people as the President stepped to the front of the platform and in a clear, distinct voice appealed for aid for the thousands who had been bereft of their all by the terrible calamity. His voice trembled once or twice as he dwelt upon the scene of death and desolation, and a number of handkerchiefs were called into use at his vivid portrayal of the disaster.
Upon taking the chair the President said:—
“Every one here to-day is distressingly conscious of the circumstances which have convened this meeting. It would be impossible to state more impressively than the newspapers have already done the distressing incidents attending the calamity which has fallen upon the city of Johnstown and the neighboring hamlets, and upon a large section of Pennsylvania situated upon the Susquehanna river. The grim pencil of Doré would be inadequate to portray the horrors of this visitation. In such meetings as we have here in the national capital and other like gatherings that are taking place in all the cities of this land, we have the only rays of hope and light in the general gloom. When such a calamitous visitation falls upon any section of our country we can do no more than to put about the dark picture the golden border of love and charity. [Applause.] It is in such fires as these that the brotherhood of man is welded.
“And where is sympathy and help more appropriate than here in the national capital? I am glad to say that early this morning, from a city not long ago visited with pestilence, not long ago itself appealing to the charitable people of the whole land for relief—the city of Jacksonville, Fla.—there came the ebb of that tide of charity which flowed toward it in the time of its need, in a telegram from the Sanitary Relief Association authorizing me to draw upon them for $2000 for the relief of the Pennsylvania sufferers. [Applause.]
“But this is no time for speech. While I talk men and women are suffering for the relief which we plan to give. One word or two of practical suggestion, and I will place this meeting in your hands to give effect to your impatient benevolence. I have a despatch from the Governor of Pennsylvania advising me that communication has just been opened with Williamsport, on a branch of the Susquehanna river, and that the losses in that section have been appalling; that thousands of people there are homeless and penniless, and that there is an immediate call for food to relieve their necessities. He advises me that any supplies of food that can be hastily gathered here should be sent via Harrisburg to Williamsport, where they will be distributed. I suggest, therefore, that a committee be constituted having in charge the speedy collection of articles of food.
“The occasion is such that the bells might well be rung through your streets to call the attention of the thoughtless to this great exigency—in order that a train load of provisions may be despatched to-night or in the early morning to this suffering people.
“I suggest, secondly, as many of these people have had the entire furnishings of their houses swept away and have now only temporary shelter, that a committee be appointed to collect such articles of clothing, and especially bed clothing, as can be spared. Now that the summer season is on, there can hardly be a house in Washington which cannot spare a blanket or a coverlet.
“And, third, I suggest that from the substantial business men and bankers there be appointed a committee who shall collect money, for after the first exigency is past there will be found in those communities very many who have lost their all, who will need aid in the construction of their demolished homes and in furnishing them so that they may be again inhabited.
“Need I say in conclusion that, as a temporary citizen of Washington, it would give me great satisfaction if the national capital should so generously respond to this call of our distressed fellow citizens as to be conspicuous among the cities of our land. [Applause.] I feel that, as I am now calling for contributions, I should state that on Saturday, when first apprised of the disaster at Johnstown, I telegraphed a subscription to the Mayor of that city. I do not like to speak of anything so personal as this, but I felt it due to myself and to you that I should say so much as this.”