Are any of you alive?

James.

Are you all safe? Is it our John Burn that is dead? Is Eliza safe? Answer.

It is worth repeating again that the majority of these telegrams will never be answered.

The Post-office letter carriers have only just begun to make their rounds in that part of the town which is comparatively uninjured. Bags of first-class mail matter are alone brought into town. It will be weeks before people see the papers in the mails. The supposition is that nobody has time to read papers, and this is about right. The letter carriers are making an effort, as far as they can, to distribute mail to the families of the deceased people. Many of the letters which arrive now contain money orders, and while great care has to be taken in the distribution, the postal authorities recognize the necessity of getting these letters to the parties addressed, or else returning them to the Dead Letter Office as proof of the death of the individuals in question. It is no doubt that in this way the first knowledge of the death of many will be transmitted to friends.

It is fair to say that the best part of the energies of the State of Pennsylvania at present are all turned upon Johnstown. Here are the leading physicians, the best nurses, some of the heaviest contractors, the brightest newspaper men, all the military geniuses, and, if not the actual presence, at least the attention, of the capitalists. The newspapers, medical reviews, and publications of all sorts teem with suggestions. Johnstown is a compendium of business, and misery, and despair. One class of men should be given credit for thorough work in connection with the calamity. These are the undertakers. They came to Johnstown, from all over Pennsylvania, at the first alarm. They are the men whose presence was imperatively needed, and who have actually been forced to work day and night in preserving bodies and preparing them for burial. One of the most active undertakers here is John McCarthy, of Syracuse, N. Y., one of the leading undertakers there, and a very public-spirited man. He brought a letter of introduction from Mayor Kirk, of Syracuse, to the Citizens Committee here. He said to a reporter:—

“It is worthy of mention, perhaps, that never before in such a disaster as this have bodies received such careful treatment and has such a wholesale embalming been practiced. Everybody recovered, whether identified or not, whether of rich man or poor man, or of the humblest child, has been carefully cleaned and embalmed, placed in a neat coffin, and not buried when unidentified until the last possible moment. When you reflect that over one thousand bodies have been treated in this way it means something. It is to be regretted that some pains were not taken to keep a record of the bodies recovered, but the undertakers cannot be blamed for that. They should have been furnished with clerks, and that whole matter made the subject of the work of a bureau by itself. We have had just all we could do cleaning and embalming the bodies.”

The unsightliest place in Johnstown is the morgue in the Presbyterian Church. The edifice is a large brick structure in the centre of the city, and was about the first church building in the city. About one hundred and seventy-five people took refuge there during the flood. After the first crash, when the people were expecting another every instant, and of course that they would perish, the pastor of the church, the Rev. Mr. Beale, began to pray fervently that the lives of those in the church might be spared. He fairly wrestled in prayer, and those who heard him say that it seemed to be a very death-struggle with the demon of the flood itself. No second crash came, the waters receded, and the lives of those in the church were spared. The people said that it was all due to the Rev. Mr. Beale’s prayer. The pews in the church were all demolished, and the Sunday-school room under it was flooded with the angry waters, and filled up to the ceiling with débris. The Rev. Mr. Beale is now general morgue director in Johnstown, and has the authority of a dictator of the bodies of the dead. In the Presbyterian Church morgue the bodies are, almost without exception, those which have been recovered from the ruins of the smashed buildings. The bodies are torn and bruised in the most horrible manner, so that identification is very difficult. They are nearly all bodies of the prominent or well-known residents of Johnstown. The cleaning and embalming of the bodies takes place in the corners of the church, on either side of the pulpit. As soon as they have a presentable appearance, the bodies are placed in coffins, put across the ends of the pews near the aisles, so that people can pass around through the aisles and look at them. Few identifications have yet been made here. In one coffin is the body of a young man who had on a nice bicycle suit when found. In his pockets were forty dollars in money. The bicycle has not been found. It is supposed that the body is that of some young fellow who was on a bicycle tour up the Conemaugh River, and who was engulfed by the flood.

The waters played some queer freaks. A number of mirrors taken out of the ruins with the frames smashed and with the glass parts entirely uninjured have been a matter for constant comment on the part of those who have inspected the ruins and worked in them. When the waters went down, the Sunday-school rooms of the Presbyterian Church just referred to were found littered with playing cards. In a baby’s cradle was found a dissertation upon infant baptism and two volumes of a history of the Crusades. A commercial man from Pittsburgh, who came down to look at the ruins, found among them his own picture. He never was in Johnstown but two or three times before, and he did not have any friends there. How the picture got among the ruins of Johnstown is a mystery to him.

About the only people who have come into Johnstown, not having business there connected with the clearing up of the city, are people from a great distance, hunting up their friends and relatives. There are folks here now from almost every State in the Union, with the exception, perhaps, of those on the Pacific coast. There are people, too, from Pennsylvania and States near by, who, receiving no answer to their telegrams, have decided to come on in person. They wander over the town in their search, at first frantically asking everybody right and left if they have heard of their missing friends. Generally nobody has heard of them, or some one may remember that he saw a man who said that he happened to see a body pulled out at Nineveh or Cambria City, or somewhere, that looked like Jack So-and-So, naming the missing one. At the morgues the inquirer is told that about four hundred unidentified dead have already been buried, and on the fences before the morgues and on the outside house walls of the buildings themselves he reads several hundred such notices as these, of bodies still unclaimed:—

A woman, dark hair, blue eyes, blue waist, dark dress, clothing of fine quality; a single bracelet on the left arm; age, about twenty-three.

An old lady, clothing undistinguishable, but containing a purse with twenty-seven dollars and a small key.

A young man, fair complexion, light hair, gray eyes, dark blue suit, white shirt; believed to have been a guest at the Hurlburt House.

A female; supposed to belong to the Salvation Army.

A man about thirty-five years old, dark-complexioned, brown hair, brown moustache, light clothes, left leg a little shortened.

A boy about ten years old, found with a little girl of nearly same age; boy had hold of girl’s hand; both light-haired and fair-complexioned, and girl had long curls; boy had on dark clothes, and girl a gingham dress.

The people looking for their friends had lots of money, but money is of no use now in Johnstown. It cannot hire teams to go up along the Conemaugh River, where lots of people want to go; it cannot hire men as searchers, for all the people in Johnstown not on business of their own are digging in the ruins; it cannot even buy food, for what little food there is in Johnstown is practically free, and a good square meal cannot be procured for love nor money anywhere. Under these discouragements many people are giving up the search and going home, either giving their relatives up for dead or waiting for them to turn up, still maintaining the hope that they are alive.

Johnstown at night now is a wild spectacle. The major part of the town is enveloped in darkness, and lights of all colors flare out all around, so that the city looks something like a night scene in a railroad yard. The burning of immense piles of débris is continued at night, and the red glare of the flames at the foot of the hills seems like witch-fires at the mouth of caverns. The camp-fires of the military on the hills above the Conemaugh burn brightly. Volumes of smoke pour up all over the town. Along the Pennsylvania Railroad gangs of men are working all night long by electric light, and the engines, with their great headlights and roaring steam, go about continually. Below the railroad bridge stretches away the dark, sullen mass of the drift, with its freight of human bodies beyond estimate. Now and then, from the headquarters of the newspaper men, can be heard the military guards on their posts challenging passers-by.

CHAPTER XXXII.

It is now a week since the flood, and Johnstown is a cross between a military camp and a new mining town, and is getting more so every day. It has all the unpleasant and disagreeable features of both, relieved by the pleasures of neither. Everywhere one goes soldiers are lounging about or standing guard on all roads leading into the city, and stop every one who cannot show a pass. There is a mass of tents down in the centre of the ruins, and others are scattered everywhere on every cleared space beside the railroad tracks and on the hills about. A corps of engineers is laying pontoon bridges over the streams, pioneers are everywhere laying out new camps, erecting mess sheds and other rude buildings, and clearing away obstructions to the ready passage of supply wagons. Mounted men are continually galloping about from place to place carrying orders. At headquarters about the Pennsylvania Railroad depot there are dozens of petty officers in giddy gold lace, and General Hastings, General Wiley, and a few others in dingy clothes, sitting about the shady part of the platform giving and receiving orders. The occasional thunder of dynamite sounds like the boom of distant cannon defending some outpost. Supplies are heaped up about headquarters, and are being unloaded from cars as rapidly as locomotives can push them up and get the empty cars out of the way again. From cooking tents smoke and savory odors go up all day, mingled with the odor carbolic from hospital tents scattered about. It is very likely that within a short time this military appearance will be greatly increased by the arrival of another regiment and the formal declaration of martial law.

On the other hand the town’s resemblance to a new mining camp is just as striking. Everything is muddy and desolate. There are no streets nor any roads, except the rough routes that the carts wore out for themselves across the sandy plain. Rough sheds and shanties are going up on every hand. There are no regular stores, but cigars and drink—none intoxicating, however—are peddled from rough board counters. Railroads run into the camp over uneven, crooked tracks. Trains of freight cars are constantly arriving and being shoved off onto all sorts of sidings, or even into the mud, to get them out of the way. Everybody wears his trousers in his boots, and is muddy, ragged, and unshaven. Men with picks and shovels are everywhere delving or mining for something that a few days ago was more precious than gold, though really valueless now. Occasionally they make a find and gather around to inspect it as miners might a nugget. All it needs to complete the mining camp aspect of the place is a row of gambling hells in full blast under the temporary electric lights that gaudily illuminate the centre of the town.

Matters are becoming very well systematized, both in the military and the mining way. Martial law could be imposed to-day with very little inconvenience to any one. The guard about the town is very well kept, and the loafers, bummers, and thieves are being pretty well cleared out. The Grand Army men have thoroughly organized the work of distributing supplies to the sufferers by the flood, the refugees, and contraband of this camp.

The contractors who are clearing up the débris have their thousands of men well in hand, and are getting good work out of them, considering the conditions under which the men have to live, with insufficient food, poor shelter, and other serious impediments to physical effectiveness. All the men except those on the gorge above the bridge have been working amid the heaps of ruined buildings in the upper part of the city. The first endeavor has been to open the old streets in which the débris was heaped as high as the house-tops. Fair progress has been made, but there are weeks of work at it yet. Only one or two streets are so far cleared that the public can use them. No one but the workmen are allowed in the others.

Up Stony Creek Gap, above the contractors, the United States Army engineers began work on Friday under command of Captain Sears, who is here as the personal representative of the Secretary of War. The engineers, Captain Bergland’s company from Willet’s Point, and Lieutenant Biddle’s company from West Point, arrived on Friday night, having been since Tuesday on the road from New York. Early in the morning they went to work to bridge Stony Creek, and unloaded and launched their heavy pontoons and strung them across the streams with a rapidity and skill that astonished the natives, who had mistaken them, in their coarse, working uniforms of over-all stuff, for a fresh gang of laborers. The engineers, when there are bridges enough laid, may be set at other work about town. They have a camp of their own on the outskirts of the place. There are more constables, watchmen, special policemen, and that sort of thing in Johnstown than in any three cities of its size in the country. Naturally there is great difficulty in equipping them. Badges were easily provided by the clipping out of stars from pieces of tin, but every one had to look out for himself when it came to clubs. Everything goes, from a broomstick to a base ball bat. The bats are especially popular.

“I’d like to get the job of handling your paper here,” said a young fellow to a Pittsburgh newspaper man. “You’ll have to get some newsman to do it anyhow, for your old men have gone down, and I and my partner are the only newsmen in Johnstown above ground.”

The newsdealing business is not the only one of which something like that is true.

There has been a great scarcity of cooking utensils ever since the flood. It not only is very inconvenient to the people, but tends to the waste of a good deal of food. The soldiers are growling bitterly over their commissary department. They claim that bread, and cheese, and coffee are about all they get to eat.

The temporary electric lights have now been strung all along the railroad tracks and through the central part of the ruins, so that the place after dark is really quite brilliant seen from a distance, especially when to the electric display is added the red glow in the mist and smoke of huge bonfires.

Anybody who has been telegraphing to Johnstown this week and getting no answers, would understand the reason for the lack of answers if he could see the piles of telegrams that are sent out here by train from Pittsburgh. Four thousand came in one batch on Thursday. Half of them are still undelivered, and yet there is probably no place in the country where the Western Union Company is doing better work than here. The flood destroyed not only the company’s offices, but the greater part of their wires in this part of the country. The office they established here is in a little shanty with no windows and only one door which won’t close, and it handles an amount of outgoing matter, daily, that would swamp nine-tenths of the city offices in the country. Incoming business is now received in considerable quantities, but for several days so great was the pressure of outgoing business that no attempt was made to receive any dispatches. The whole effort of the office has been to handle press matter, and well they have done it. But there will be no efficient delivery service for a long time. The old messenger boys are all drowned, and the other boys who might make messenger boys are also most of them drowned, so that the raw material for creating a service is very scant. Besides that, nobody knows nowadays where any one else lives.

The amateur and professional photographers who have overrun the town for the last few days came to grief on Friday. A good many of them were arrested by the soldiers, placed under a guard, taken down to the Stony Creek and set to lugging logs and timbers. Among those arrested were several of the newspaper photographers, and these General Hastings ordered released when he heard of their arrest. The others were made to work for half a day. They were a mad and disgusted lot, and they vowed all sorts of vengeance. It does seem that some notice to the effect that photographers were not permitted in Johnstown should have been posted before the men were arrested. The photographers all had passes in regular form, but the soldiers refused even to look at these.

More sightseers got through the guards at Bolivar on Friday night, and came to Johnstown on the last train. Word was telegraphed ahead, and the soldiers met them at the train, put them under arrest, kept them over night, and in the morning they were set to work in clearing up the ruins.

The special detail of workmen who have been at work looking up safes in the ruins and seeing that they were taken care of, reports that none of the safes have been broken open or otherwise interfered with. The committee on valuables reports that quantities of jewelry and money are being daily turned into them by people who have found them in the ruins. Often the people surrendering this stuff are evidently very poor themselves. The committee believes that as a general thing the people are dealing very honestly in this matter of treasure-trove from the ruins.

Three car-loads of coffins was part of the load of one freight train. Coffins are scattered everywhere about the city. Scores of them seem to have been set down and forgotten. They are used as benches, and even, it is said, as beds.

Grandma Mary Seter, aged eighty-three years, a well-known character in Johnstown, who was in the water until Saturday, and who, when rescued, had her right arm so injured that amputation at the shoulder was necessary, is doing finely at the hospital, and the doctors expect to have her around again before long.

One enterprising man has opened a shop for the sale of relics of the disaster, and is doing a big business. Half the people here are relic cranks. Everything goes as a relic, from a horseshoe to a two-foot section of iron pipe. Buttons and little things like that, that can easily be carried off, are the most popular.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A mantle of mist hung low over the Conemaugh Valley when the people of Johnstown rose on Sunday morning, June 9th; but about the time the two remaining church bells began to toll, the sun’s rays broke through the fog, and soon the sky was clear save for a few white clouds which sailed lazily to the Alleghenies. Never in the history of Johnstown did congregations attend more impressive church services. Some of them were held in the open air, others in half-ruined buildings, and one only in a church. The ceremonies were deeply solemn and touching. Early in the forenoon German Catholics picked their way through the wreck to the parsonage of St. Joseph’s, where Fathers Kesbernan and Ald said four masses. Next to the parsonage there was a great breach in the walls made by the flood, and one-half of the parsonage had been carried away. At one end of the pastor’s reception-room had been placed a temporary altar lighted by a solitary candle. There were white roses upon it, while from the walls, above the muddy stains, hung pictures of the Immaculate Conception, the Crucifixion, and the Virgin Mary. The room was filled with worshipers, and the people spread out into the lateral hall hanging over the cellar washed bare of its covering. No chairs or benches were in the room. There was a deep hush as the congregation knelt upon the damp floors, silently saying their prayers. With a dignified and serene demeanor, the priest went through the services of his church, while the people before him were motionless, the men with bowed heads, the women holding handkerchiefs to their faces.

Back of this church, on the side of a hill, there gathered another congregation of Catholics. Their church and parsonage and chapel had all been destroyed, and they met in a yard near their cemetery. A pretty arbor, covered with vines, ran back from the street, and beneath this stood their priest, Father Tahney, who had worked with them over a quarter of a century. His hair was white, but he stood erect as he talked to his people. Before him was a white altar. This, too, was lighted with a single candle. The people stood before him and on each side, reverently kneeling on the grass as they prayed. Three masses were said by Father Tahney and by Father Matthews, of Washington, and then the white-haired priest spoke a few words of encouragement to his listeners. He urged them to make a manful struggle to rebuild their homes, to assist one another in their distress, and to be grateful to all Americans for the helping hand extended to them. Other Catholic services were held at the St. Columba’s Church, in Cambria, where Father Troutwein, of St. Mary’s Church, Fathers Davin and Smith said mass and addressed the congregation. Father Smith urged them not to sell their lands to those who were speculating in men’s misery, but to be courageous until the city should rise again.

At the Pennsylvania station a meeting was held on the embankment overlooking the ruined part of the town. The services were conducted by the Rev. Mr. McGuire, chaplain of the 14th Regiment. The people sang “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and then Mr. McGuire read the psalm beginning “I will bless the Lord at all times.” James Fulton, manager of the Cambria Iron Works, spoke encouraging words. He assured them that the works would be rebuilt, and that the eight thousand employés would be cared for. Houses would be built for them and employment given to all in restoring the works. There was a strained look on men’s faces when he told them in a low voice that he held the copy of a report which he had drawn up on the dam, calling attention to the fact that it was extremely dangerous to the people living in the valley.

One of the peculiar things a stranger notices in Johnstown is the comparatively small number of women seen in the place. Of the throngs who walk about the streets searching for dead friends, there is not one woman to ten men. Occasionally a little group of two or three women with sad faces will pick their way about, looking for the morgues. There are a few Sisters of Charity, in their black robes, seen upon the streets, and in the parts of the town not totally destroyed the usual number of women are seen in the houses and yards. But, as a rule, women are a rarity in Johnstown now. This is not a natural peculiarity of Johnstown, nor a mere coincidence, but a fact with a dreadful reason behind it. There are so many more men than women among the living in Johnstown now, because there are so many more women than men among the dead. Of the bodies recovered there are at least two women for every man. Besides the fact that their natural weakness made them an easier prey to the flood, the hour at which the disaster came was one when the women would most likely be in their homes and the men at work in the open air or in factory yards, from which escape was easy.

Children also are rarely seen about the town, and for a similar reason. They are all dead. There is never a group of the dead discovered that does not contain from one to three or four children for every grown person. Generally the children are in the arms of the grown persons, and often little toys and trinkets clasped in their hands indicate that the children were caught up while at play, and carried as far as possible toward safety.

Johnstown when rebuilt will be a city of many widowers and few children. In turning a school-house into a morgue the authorities probably did a wiser thing than they thought. It will be a long time before the school-house will be needed for its original purpose.

The miracle, as it is called, that happened at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, has caused a tremendous sensation. A large number of persons will testify as to the nature of the event, and, to put it mildly, the circumstances are really remarkable. The devotions in honor of the Blessed Virgin celebrated daily during the month of May were in progress on that Friday when the water descended on Cambria City. The church was filled with people at the time, but when the noise of the flood was heard the congregation hastened to get out of the way. They succeeded as far as escaping from the interior is concerned, and in a few minutes the church was partially submerged, the water reaching fifteen feet up the sides and swirling around the corners furiously. The building was badly wrecked, the benches were torn out, and in general the entire structure, both inside and outside, was fairly dismantled. Yesterday morning, when an entrance was forced through the blocked doorway the ruin appeared to be complete. One object alone had escaped the water’s wrath. The statue of the Blessed Virgin, that had been decorated and adorned because of the May devotions, was as unsullied as the day it was made. The flowers, the wreaths, the lace veil were undisturbed and unsoiled, although the marks on the wall showed that the surface of the water had risen above the statue to a height of fifteen feet, while the statue nevertheless had been saved from all contact with the liquid. Every one who has seen the statue and its surroundings is firmly convinced that the incident was a miraculous one, and even to the most skeptical the affair savors of the supernatural.

A singular feature of the great flood was discovered at the great stone viaduct about half way between Mineral Point and South Fork. At Mineral Point the Pennsylvania Railroad is on the south side of the river, although the town is on the north side. About a mile and a half up the stream there was a viaduct built of very solid masonry. It was originally built for the old Portage Road. It was seventy-eight feet above the ordinary surface of the water. On this viaduct the railroad tracks crossed to the north side of the river and on that side ran into South Fork, two miles farther up. It is the general opinion of engineers that this strong viaduct would have stood against the gigantic wave had it not been blown up by dynamite. But at South Fork there was a dynamite magazine which was picked up by the flood and shot down the stream at the rate of twenty miles an hour. It struck the stone viaduct and exploded. The roar of the flood was tremendous, but the noise of this explosion was heard by farmers on the Evanston Road, two miles and a half away. Persons living on the mountain sides, in view of the river, and who saw the explosion, say that the stones of the viaduct at the point where the magazine struck it, were thrown into the air to the height of two hundred feet. An opening was made, and the flood of death swept through on its awful errand.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

It is characteristic of American hopefulness and energy that before work was fairly begun on clearing away the wreck of the old city, plans were being prepared for the new one that should arise, Phœnix-like, above its grave. If the future policy of the banks and bankers of Johnstown is to be followed by the merchants and manufacturers of the city the prospects of a magnificent city rising from the present ruins are of the brightest. James McMillen, president of the First National and Johnstown Savings Banks, said:

“The loss sustained by the First National Bank will be merely nominal. It did a general commercial business and very little investing in the way of mortgages. When the flood came the cash on hand and all our valuable securities and papers were locked in the safe and were in no way affected by the water. The damage to the building itself will be comparatively small. Our capital was one hundred thousand dollars, while our surplus was upwards of forty thousand dollars. The depositors of this bank are, therefore, not worrying themselves about our ability to meet all demands that may be made upon us by them. The bank will open up for business within a few days as if nothing had happened.

“As to the Johnstown Savings Bank it had probably $200,000 invested in mortgages on property in Johnstown, but the wisdom of our policy in the past in making loans has proven of great value to us in the present emergency. Since we first began business we have refused to make loans to parties on property where the lot itself would not be of sufficient value to indemnify us against loss in case of the destruction of the building. If a man owned a lot worth $2,000 and had on it a building worth $100,000 we would refuse to loan over the $2,000 on the property. The result is that the lots on which the buildings stood in Johnstown, on which $200,000 of our money is loaned, are worth double the amount, probably, that we have invested in them.

“What will be the effect of the flood on the value of lots in Johnstown proper? Well, instead of decreasing, they have already advanced in value. This will bring outside capital to Johnstown, and a real estate boom is bound to follow in the wake of this destruction. All the people want is an assurance that the banks are safe and will open up for business at once. With that feeling they have started to work with a vim. We have in this bank $300,000 invested in Government bonds and other securities that can be converted into cash on an hour’s notice. We propose to keep these things constantly before our business men as an impetus to rebuilding our principal business blocks as soon as possible.”

“What do you think of the idea projected by Captain W. R. Jones, to dredge and lower the river bed about thirty feet and adding seventy per cent. to its present width, as a precautionary measure against future washouts?”

“I not only heartily indorse that scheme, but have positive assurance from other leading business men that the idea will be carried out, as it certainly should be, the moment the work of cleaning away the debris is completed. Besides that, a scheme is on foot to get a charter for the city of Johnstown which will embrace all those surrounding boroughs. In the event of that being done, and I am certain it will be, the plan of the city will be entirely changed and made to correspond with the best laid-out cities in the country. In ten years Johnstown will be one of the prettiest and busiest cities in the world, and nothing can prevent it. The streets will be widened and probably made to start from a common centre, something after the fashion of Washington City, with a little more regard for the value of property. With the Cambria Iron Company, the Gautier Steel Works, and other manufactories, as well as yearly increasing railroad facilities, Johnstown has a start which will grow in a short time to enormous proportions. From a real estate standpoint the flood has been a benefit beyond a doubt. Another addition to the city will be made in the shape of an immense water-main to connect with a magnificent reservoir of the finest water in the world to be located in the mountains up Stony Creek for supplying the entire city as contemplated in the proposed new charter. This plant was well under way when the flood came, and about ten thousand dollars had already been expended on it which has been lost.”

Mr. John Roberts, the surviving partner of the banking-house of John Dibert & Company, said:

“Aside from the loss to our own building we have come out whole and entire. We had no money invested in mortgages in Johnstown that is not fully indemnified by the lots themselves. Most of our money is invested in property in Somerset County, where Mr. Dibert was raised. We will exert every influence in our power to place the city on a better footing than was ever before. The plan of raising the city or lowering the bed of the river as well as widening its banks will surely be carried out. In addition, I think the idea of changing the plan of the city and embracing Johnstown and the surrounding buroughs in one large city will be one of the greatest benefits the flood could have wrought to the future citizens of Johnstown and the Conemough Valley.

“I have been chairman of our Finance Committee of Councils for ten years past, and I know the trouble we have had with our streets and alleys and the necessity of a great change. In order to put the city in the proper shape to insure commercial growth and topographical beauty, we will be ready for business in a few days, and enough money will be put into circulation in the valley to give the people encouragement in the work of rebuilding.”

CHAPTER XXXV.

Among the travelers who were in or near the Conemaugh Valley at the time of the flood, and who thus narrowly escaped the doom that swallowed up thousands of their fellow-mortals, was Mr. William Henry Smith, General Manager of the Associated Press. He remained there for some time and did valuable work in directing the operations of news-gatherers and in the general labors of relief.

The wife and daughter of Mr. E. W. Halford, private secretary to President Harrison, were also there. They made their way to Washington on Thursday, to Mr. Halford’s inexpressible relief, they having at first been reported among the lost. On their arrival at the Capital they went at once to the Executive Mansion, where the members of the Executive household were awaiting them with great interest. The ladies lost all their baggage, but were thankful for their almost miraculous delivery from the jaws of death. Mrs. Harrison’s eyes were suffused with tears as she listened to the dreadful narrative. The President was also deeply moved. From the first tidings of the dire calamity his thoughts have been absorbed in sympathy and desire to alleviate the sufferings of the devastated region. The manner of the escape of Mrs. Halford and her daughter has already been told. When the alarm was given, she and her daughter rushed with the other passengers out of the car and took refuge on the mountain side by climbing up the rocky excavation near the track. Mrs. Halford was in delicate health owing to bronchial troubles. She has borne up well under the excitement, exposure, fatigue, and horror of her experiences.

Mrs. George W. Childs was also reported among the lost, but incorrectly. Mr. Childs received word on Thursday for the first time direct from his wife, who was on her way West to visit Miss Kate Drexel when detained by the flood. Indirectly he had heard she was all right. The telegram notified him that Mrs. Childs was at Altoona, and could not move either way, but was perfectly safe.

George B. Roberts, President of the Pennsylvania Railway Company, was obliged to issue the following card: “In consequence of the terrible calamity that has fallen upon a community which has such close relations to the Pennsylvania Railway Company, Mr. and Mrs. George B. Roberts feel compelled to withdraw their invitations for Thursday, June 6th.” Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Pugh also felt obliged to withdraw their invitations for Wednesday, June 5th.

The Rev. J. A. Ranney, of Kalamazoo, Mich., and his wife were passengers on one of the trains wrecked by the Conemaugh flood. Mr. Ranney said:

“Mrs. Ranney and I were on one of the trains at Conemaugh when the flood came. There was but a moment’s warning and the disaster was upon us. The occupants of our car rushed for the door, where Mrs. Ranney and I became separated. She was one of the first to jump, and I saw her run and disappear behind the first house in sight. Before I could get out the deluge was too high, and, with a number of others, I remained in the car. Our car was lifted up and dashed against a car loaded with stone and badly wrecked, but most of the occupants of this car were rescued. As far as I know all who jumped from the car lost their lives. The remainder of the train was swept away. I searched for days for Mrs. Ranney, but could find no trace of her. I think she perished. The mind cannot conceive the awful sight presented when we first saw the danger. The approaching wall of water looked like Niagara, and huge engines were caught up and whirled away as if they were mere wheel-barrows.”

D. B. Cummins, of Philadelphia, the President of the Girard National Bank, was one of the party of four which consisted of John Scott, Solicitor-General of the Pennsylvania Railroad; Edmund Smith, ex-Vice-President of the same company; and Colonel Welsh himself, who had been stopping in the country a few miles back of Williamsport.

Mr. Cummins, in talking of the condition of things in that vicinity and of his experience, said: “We were trout-fishing at Anderson’s cabin, about fourteen miles from Williamsport, at the time the flood started. We went to Williamsport, intending to take a train for Philadelphia. Of course, when we got there we found everything in a frightful condition, and the people completely disheartened by the flood. Fortunately the loss of life was very slight, especially when compared with the terrible disaster in Johnstown. The loss, from a financial standpoint, will be very great, for the city is completely inundated, and the lumber industry seriously crippled. Besides, the stagnation of business for any length of time produces results which are disastrous.”

The first passengers that came from Altoona to New York by the Pennsylvania Railroad since the floods included five members of the “Night Off” Company, which played in Johnstown on Thursday night, about whom considerable anxiety was felt for some time, till E. A. Eberle received telegrams from his wife, the contents of which he at once gave to the press. Mrs. Eberle was among the five who arrived.

“No words can tell the horrors of the scenes we witnessed,” she said in answer to a request for an account of her experiences, “and nothing that has been published can convey any idea of the awful havoc wrought in those few but apparently never-ending minutes in which the worst of the flood passed us.

“Our company left Johnstown on Friday morning. We only got two miles away, as far as Conemaugh, when we were stopped by a landslide a little way ahead. About noon we went to dinner, and soon after we came back some of our company noticed that the flood had extended and was washing away the embankment on which our train stood. They called the engineer’s attention to the fact, and he took the train a few hundred feet further. It was fortunate he did so, for a little while after the embankment caved in.

“Then we could not move forward or backward, as ahead was the landslide and behind there was no track. Even then we were not frightened, and it was not till about three o’clock, when we saw a heavy iron bridge go down as if it were made of paper, that we began to be seriously alarmed. Just before the dam broke a gravel train came tearing down, with the engine giving out the most awful shriek I ever heard. Every one recognized that this was a note of warning. We fled as hard as we could run down the embankment, across a ditch, and for a distance equal to about two blocks up the hillside. Once I turned to look at the vast wall of water, but was hurried on by my friends. When I had gone about the distance of another block the head of the flood had passed far away, and with it went houses, cars, locomotives, everything that a few minutes before had made up a busy scene. The wall of water looked to be fifty feet high. It was of a deep yellow color, but the crest was white with foam.

“Three of us reached the house of Mrs. William Wright, who took us in and treated us most kindly. I did not take any account of time, but I imagine it was about an hour before the water ceased to rush past the house. The conductor of our train, Charles A. Wartham, behaved with the greatest bravery. He took a crippled passenger on his back in the rush up the hill. A floating house struck the cripple, carried him away and tore some of the clothes off Wartham’s back, and he managed to struggle on and save himself. Our ride to Ebensburg, sixteen miles, in a lumber wagon without springs, was trying, but no one thought of complaining. Later in the day we were sent to Cresson and thence to Altoona.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

No travelers in an upheaved and disorganized land push through with more pluck and courage than the newspaper correspondents. Accounts have already been given of some of their experiences. A writer in the New York Times thus told of his, a week after the events described:

“A man who starts on a journey on ten minutes’ notice likes the journey to be short, with a promise of success and of food and clothes at its end. Starting suddenly a week ago, the Times’s correspondent has since had but a small measure of success, a smaller measure of food, and for nights no rest at all; a long tramp across the Blue Hills and Allegheny Mountains, behind jaded horses; helping to push up-hill the wagon they tried to pull or to lift the vehicle up and down bridges whose approaches were torn away, or in and out of fords the pathways to which had disappeared; and in the blackness of the night, scrambling through gullies in the pike road made by the storm, paved with sharp and treacherous rocks and traversed by swift-running streams, whose roar was the only guide to their course. All this prepared a weary reporter to welcome the bed of straw he found in a Johnstown stable loft last Monday, and on which he has reposed nightly ever since.

“And let me advise reporters and other persons who are liable to sudden missions to out-of-the-way places not to wear patent leather shoes. They are no good for mountain roads. This is the result of sad experience. Wetness and stone bruises are the benisons they confer on feet that tread rough paths.

“The quarter past twelve train was the one boarded by the Times’s correspondent and three other reporters on their way hither a week ago Friday night. It was in the minds of all that they would get as far as Altoona, on the Pennsylvania Road, and thence by wagon to this place. But all were mistaken. At Philadelphia we were told that there were wash-outs in many places and bridges were down everywhere, so that we would be lucky if we got even to Harrisburg. This was harrowing news. It caused such a searching of time-tables and of the map of Pennsylvania as those things were rarely ever subjected to before. It was at last decided that if the Pennsylvania Railroad stopped at Harrisburg an attempt would be made to reach the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Martinsburg, West Virginia, by way of the Cumberland Railroad, a train on which was scheduled to leave Harrisburg ten minutes after the arrival of the Pennsylvania train.

“It was only too evident to us, long before we reached Harrisburg, that we would not get to the West out of that city. The Susquehanna had risen far over its banks, and for miles our train ran slowly with the water close to the fire-box of the locomotive and over the lower steps of the car platform. At last we reached the station. Several energetic Philadelphia reporters had come on with us from that lively city, expecting to go straight to Johnstown. As they left the train one cried: ‘Hurrah, boys, there’s White. He’ll know all about it.’ White stood placidly on the steps, and knew nothing more than that he and several other Philadelphia reporters, who had started Friday night, had got no further than the Harrisburg station, and were in a state of wonderment, leaving them to think our party caught.

“As the Cumberland Valley train was pulling out of the station, its conductor, a big, genial fellow, who seemed to know everybody in the valley, was loth to express an opinion as to whether we would get to Martinsburg. He would take us as far as he could, and then leave us to work out our own salvation. He could give us no information about the Baltimore and Ohio Road. Hope and fear chased one another in our midst; hope that trains were running on that road, and fear that it, too, had been stopped by wash-outs. In the latter case it seemed to us that we should be compelled to return to Harrisburg and sit down to think with our Philadelphia brethren.

“The Cumberland Valley train took us to Hagerstown, and there the big and genial conductor told us it would stay, as it could not cross the Potomac to reach Martinsburg. We were twelve miles from the Potomac and twenty from Martinsburg. Fortunately, a construction train was going to the river to repair some small wash-outs, and Major Ives, the engineer of the Cumberland Valley Road, took us upon it, but he smiled pitifully when we told him we were going across the bridge.

“‘Why, man,’ he said to the Times’s correspondent, ‘the Potomac is higher than it was in 1877, and there’s no telling when the bridge will go.’

“At the bridge was a throng of country people waiting to see it go down, and wondering how many more blows it would stand from foundering canal-boats, washed out of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, whose lines had already disappeared under the flood. A quick survey of the bridge showed that its second section was weakening, and had already bent several inches, making a slight concavity on the upper side.

“No time was to be lost if we were going to Martinsburg. The country people murmured disapproval, but we went on the bridge, and were soon crossing it on the one-foot plank that served for a footwalk. It was an unpleasant walk. The river was roaring below us. To yield to the fascination of the desire to look between the railroad ties at the foaming water was to throw away our lives. Then that fear that the tons of drift stuff piled against the upper side of the bridge, would suddenly throw it over, was a cause of anything but confidence. But we held our breath, balanced ourselves, measured our steps, and looked far ahead at the hills on the Western Virginia shore. At last the firm embankment was reached, and four reporters sent up one sigh of relief and joy.

“Finding two teams, we were soon on our way to Martinsburg.

“The Potomac was nine feet higher than it was ever known to be before, and it was out for more than a mile beyond the tracks of the Cumberland Valley Railroad at Falling Waters, where it had carried away several houses. This made the route to Martinsburg twice as long as it otherwise would have been. To weary, anxious reporters it seemed four times as long, and that we should never get beyond the village of Falling Waters. It confronted us at every turn of the crooked way, until it became a source of pain. It is a pretty place, but we were yearning for Johnstown, not for rural beauty.

“All roads have an end, and Farmer Sperow’s teams at last dragged us into Martinsburg. Little comfort was in store for us there. No train had arrived there for more than twenty-four hours. Farmer Sperow was called on to take us back to the river, our instructions being to cross the bridge again and take a trip over the mountains. Hope gave way to utter despair when we learned that the bridge had fallen twenty minutes after our passage. We had put ourselves into a pickle. Chief Engineer Ives and his assistant, Mr. Schoonmaker joined us a little while later. They had followed us across the bridge and been cut off also. They were needed at Harrisburg, and they backed up our effort to get a special train to go to the Shenandoah Valley Road’s bridge, twenty-five miles away, which was reported to be yet standing.

“The Baltimore and Ohio officials were obdurate. They did not know enough about the tracks to the eastward to experiment with a train on them in the dark. They promised to make up a train in the morning. Wagons would not take us as soon. A drearier night was never passed by men with their hearts in their work. Morning came at last and with it the news that the road to the east was passable nearly to Harper’s Ferry. Lots of Martinsburg folks wanted to see the sights at the Ferry, and we had the advantage of their society on an excursion train as far as Shenandoah Junction, where Mr. Ives had telegraphed for a special to come over and meet us if the bridge was standing.

“The telegraph kept us informed about the movement of the train. When we learned that it had tested and crossed the bridge our joy was modified only by the fear that we had made fools of ourselves in leaving Harrisburg, and that the more phlegmatic Philadelphia reporters had already got to Johnstown. But this fear was soon dissipated. The trainman knew that Harrisburg was inundated and no train had gone west for nearly two days. A new fear took its place. It was that New York men, starting behind us, had got into Johnstown through Pittsburg by way of the New York Central and its connections. No telegrams were penned with more conflicting emotions surging through the writer than those by which the Times’s correspondent made it known that he had got out of the Martinsburg pocket and was about to make a wagon journey of one hundred and ten miles across the mountains, and asked for information as to whether any Eastern man had got to the scene of the flood.

“The special train took us to Chambersburg, where Superintendent Riddle, of the Cumberland Valley Road, had information that four Philadelphia men were on their way thither, and had engaged a team to take them on the first stage of the overland trip. A wild rush was made for Schiner’s livery, and in ten minutes we were bowling over the pike toward McConnellsburg, having already sent thither a telegraphic order for fresh teams. The train from Harrisburg was due in five minutes when we started. As we mounted each hill we eagerly scanned the road behind for pursuers. They never came in sight.

“In McConnellsburg the entire town had heard of our coming, and were out to greet us with cheers. They knew our mission and that a party of competitors was tracking us. Landlord Prosser, of the Fulton Hotel, had his team ready, but said there had been an enormous wash-out near the Juniata River, beyond which he could not take us. We would have to walk through the break in the pike and cross the river on a bridge tottering on a few supports. Telegrams to Everett for a team to meet us beyond the river and take us to Bedford, and to the latter place for a team to make the journey across the Allegehenies to Johnstown settled all our plans.

“As well as we could make it out by telegraphic advices, we were an hour ahead of the Philadelphians. Ten minutes was not, therefore, too long for supper. Landlord Prosser took the reins himself and we started again, with a hurrah from the populace. As it was Sunday, they would sell us nothing, but storekeeper Young and telegraph operator Sloan supplied us with tobacco and other little comforts, our stock of which had been exhausted. It will gratify our Prohibition friends to learn that whisky was not among them. McConnellsburg is, unfortunately, a dry town for the time being. It was a long and weary pull to the top of Sidling Hill. To ease up on the team, we walked the greater part of the way. A short descent and a straight run took us to the banks of Licking Creek.

“Harrisonville was just beyond, and Harrisonville had been under a raging flood, which had weakened the props of the bridge and washed out the road for fifty feet beyond it. The only thing to do was to unhitch and lead the horses over the bridge and through the gully. This was difficult, but it was finally accomplished. The more difficult task was to get the wagon over. A long pull, with many strong lifts, in which some of the natives aided, took it down from the bridge and through the break, but at the end there were more barked shins and bruised toes than any other four men ever had in common.

“It was a quick ride from Everett to Bedford, for our driver had a good wagon and a speedy team. Arriving at Bedford a little after two o’clock in the morning, we found dispatches that cheered us, for they told us that we had made no mistake, and might reach the scene of disaster first. Only a reporter who has been on a mission similar to this can tell the joy imparted by a dispatch like this:

“‘New York—Nobody is ahead of you. Go it.’

“At four o’clock in the morning we started on our long trip of forty miles across the Alleghenies to Johnstown. Pleasantville was reached at half-past six A. M. Now the road became bad, and everybody but the driver had to walk. Footsore as we were, we had to clamber over rocks and through mud in a driving rain, which wet us through. For ten miles we went thus dismally. Ten miles from Johnstown we got in the wagon, and every one promptly went to sleep, at the risk of being thrown out at any time as the wagon jolted along. Tired nature could stand no more, and we slumbered peacefully until four half-drunken special policemen halted us at the entrance to Johnstown. Argument with them stirred us up, and we got into town and saw what a ruin it was.”

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Nor was the life of the correspondents at Johnstown altogether a happy one. The life of a newspaper man is filled with vicissitudes. Sometimes he feeds on the fat of the land, and at others he feeds on air; but as a rule he lives comfortably, and has as much satisfaction in life as other men. It may safely be asserted, however, that such experiences as the special correspondents of Eastern papers have met with in Johnstown are not easily paralleled. When a war correspondent goes on a campaign he is prepared for hardship and makes provision against it. He has a tent, blankets, heavy overcoat, a horse, and other things which are necessaries of life in the open air. But the men who came hurrying to Johnstown to fulfill the invaluable mission of letting the world know just what was the matter were not well provided against the suffering set before them.

The first information of the disaster was sent out by the Associated Press on the evening of its occurrence. The destruction of wires made it impossible to give as full an account as would otherwise have been sent, but the dispatches convinced the managing editors of the wide-awake papers that a calamity destined to be one of the most fearful in all human history had fallen upon the peaceful valley of the Conemaugh. All the leading Eastern papers started men for Philadelphia at once. From Philadelphia these men went to Harrisburg. There were many able representatives in the party, and they are ready to wager large amounts that there was never at any place a crowd of newspaper men so absolutely and hopelessly stalled as they were there. Bridges were down and the roadway at many places was carried away.

Then came the determined and exhausting struggle to reach Johnstown. The stories of the different trips have been told. From Saturday morning till Monday morning the correspondents fought a desperate battle against the raging floods, risking their lives again and again to reach the city. At one place they footed it across a bridge that ten minutes later went swirling down the mad torrent to instant destruction. Again they hired carriages and drove over the mountains, literally wading into swollen streams and carrying their vehicles across. Finally one party caught a Baltimore and Ohio special train and got into Johnstown.

It was Monday. There was nothing to eat. The men were exhausted, hungry, thirsty, sleepy. Their work was there, however, and had to be done. Where was the telegraph office? Gone down the Conemaugh Valley to hopeless oblivion. But the duties of a telegraph company are as imperative as those of a newspaper. General Manager Clark, of Pittsburgh, had sent out a force of twelve operators, under Operator Munson as manager pro tem., to open communications at Johnstown. The Pennsylvania Railroad rushed them through to the westerly end of the fatal bridge. Smoke and the pall of death were upon it. Ruin and devastation were all around. To get wires into the city proper was out of the question. Nine wires were good between the west end of the bridge and Pittsburgh. The telegraph force found, just south of the track, on the side of the hill overlooking the whole scene of Johnstown’s destruction, a miserable hovel which had been used for the storage of oil barrels. The interior was as dark as a tomb, and smelled like the concentrated essence of petroleum itself. The floor was a slimy mass of black grease. It was no time for delicacy. In went the operators with their relay instruments and keys; out went the barrels. Rough shelves were thrown up to take copy on, and some old chairs were subsequently secured. Tallow dips threw a fitful red glare upon the scene. The operators were ready.

Toward dusk ten haggard and exhausted New York correspondents came staggering up the hillside. They found the entire neighborhood infested with Pittsburgh reporters, who had already secured all the good places, such as they were, for work, and were busily engaged in wiring to their offices awful tales of Hungarian depredations upon dead bodies, and lynching affairs which never occurred. One paper had eighteen men there, and others had almost an equal number. The New York correspondents were in a terrible condition. Some of them had started from their offices without a change of clothing, and had managed to buy a flannel shirt or two and some footwear, including the absolutely necessary rubber boots, on the way. Others had no extra coin, and were wearing the low-cut shoes which they had on at starting. One or two of them were so worn out that they turned dizzy and sick at the stomach when they attempted to write. But the work had to be done. Just south of the telegraph office stands a two-story frame building in a state of dilapidation. It is flanked on each side by a shed, and its lower story, with an earth floor, is used for the storage of fire bricks. The second-story floor is full of great gaps, and the entire building is as draughty as a seive and as dusty as a country road in a drought. The Associated Press and the Herald took the second floor, the Times, Tribune, Sun, Morning Journal, World, Philadelphia Press, Baltimore Sun, and Pittsburgh Post took possession of the first floor, using the sheds as day outposts. Some old barrels were found inside. They were turned up on end, some boards were picked up outdoors and laid on them, and seats were improvised out of the fire-bricks. Candles were borrowed from the telegraph men, who were hammering away at their instruments and turning pale at the prospect, and the work of sending dispatches to the papers began.

Not a man had assuaged his hunger. Not a man knew where he was to rest. All that the operators could take, and a great deal more, was filed, and then the correspondents began to think of themselves. Two tents, a colored cook, and provisions had been sent up from Pittsburgh for the operators. The tents were pitched on the side of the hill, just over the telegraph “office,” and the colored cook utilized the natural gas of a brick-kiln just behind them. The correspondents procured little or nothing to eat that night. Some of them plodded wearily across the Pennsylvania bridge and into the city, out to the Baltimore and Ohio tracks, and into the car in which they had arrived. There they slept, in all their clothing, in miserably-cramped positions on the seats. In the morning they had nothing to wash in but the polluted waters of the Conemaugh. Others, who had no claim on the car, moved to pity a night watchman, who took them to a large barn in Cambria City. There they slept in a hay-loft, to the tuneful piping of hundreds of mice, the snorting of horses and cattle, the nocturnal dancing of dissipated rats, and the solemn rattle of cow chains.