Laden with corpses and debris gathered from five towns; with cars and trees and all the nameless accumulation from a valley twelve miles long, the torrent now swept down on Conemaugh Borough. This in turn was quickly swept away, though more of the inhabitants succeeded in escaping to the hills. At the lower end of the borough were the Gautier Mills, a part of the great Cambria Iron Company’s plant. These occupied perhaps ten or twelve acres of ground. When the flood struck them with their hundreds of fierce fires, there were thunderous explosions that shook the hills, and the whole seemed to rise up at once and slide forward on the slanting flood. One or two experiences from this part of the town must suffice for hundreds more. One lady drifted far down across the Seventh Ward and lay all night among the wreckage, within easy reach of seven dead persons, while the luxuriant hair of a dead woman drifted frequently across her face, half buried beneath the water. A wealth German lady, a prominent member of the Lutheran church, said, “My son Henry and his wife, my son Charles and my son-in-law were all drowned; my pastor and his wife and four nice little children were lost; there is not one brick of our good, big church left on top of another; and here is the key, which alone remains. I think my heart must break from overmuch sorrow.” A few days later she sank into the grave. CHAPTER XVII. INCIDENTS AT JOHNSTOWN. “They shall sleep Where death may deal not again forever, Where change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left naught living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones and thorns, of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be, Till a last wind’s breath, upon all these blowing, Roll the sea.” * * * * * And till in his triumph, where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, Like a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.” The Johnstown flood has no parallel in suddenness and destructiveness, save in the convulsions of the earthquake and volcano, agencies which will be noticed shortly, but which have never wrought such serious havoc in our own land as elsewhere. But the most deplorable feature of this terrible calamity is, that it might easily have been averted. It was due entirely to the culpable carelessness of a club of wealthy pleasure-seekers. It would be senseless to prate of “mysteries of Providence” in this connection.