On our way to Pittsburg we are soon pulling up the Allegheny Front by a great loop, or bend, which enables the tracks to reach the summit more than a thousand feet above Altoona. Nestling within the great bend is a reservoir of water to supply the houses and shops of the city lying below. Passing the highest point, we find ourselves descending the valley of the Conemaugh river to Johnstown, and surrounded by the high lands of the Allegheny plateau. Johnstown is much older than Altoona, for it was settled in 1791, but it has not grown so fast, and has only about as many inhabitants as the city of railroad shops. Most people know of Johnstown because of the flood which ruined the place in 1889. Several miles above the town was a reservoir more than two miles long and in several places one hundred feet deep. After the heavy rains of that spring the dam broke on the last day of May, and the wild rush of waters destroyed the town. Homes, stores, shops, and mills were torn away and carried down the river. Clara Barton of the Red Cross, who went to Johnstown as soon as she could get there, says that the few houses that were not crushed and strewn along the valley were turned upside down. More than two thousand men, women, and children lost their lives, and those that were left were in mourning and poverty. The whole land sent in its gifts of money, clothing, and food, and the town was built up again into a prosperous city. Near the city are found coal, iron, limestone, and fire clay, and these things make it easy to establish iron works. The Cambria Steel Company gives work to ten thousand men in its shops, mines, and furnaces. The main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad runs down the rugged Conemaugh valley through Johnstown, and is its chief means of traffic. As we go on to the west we near Pittsburg, but first we pass through a number of stirring towns. At one place fire bricks are made, and the clay for molding them and the coal for burning them are found in the same hill. In another town there are coal mines and glass works. Farther west the Pennsylvania road has more repair shops, and Braddock is the great Carnegie town. We shall see why many thriving young cities have grown up in this region when we take up Pittsburg, about which they are all clustered. At Pittsburg we pull into one of the finest railway stations in the United States. We may stop in the city of coal and iron, or we may go on to the west, over one of the main arms of the Pennsylvania Railroad system. If we take the northern branch, it will carry us across Ohio to Fort Wayne in Indiana and to Chicago. If we board a train on the southern arm, we shall go through Columbus and Indianapolis, and be set down on the farther side of the Mississippi river at St. Louis.