"For nearly an hour we stood watching the mad flood go rushing by. The water was full of debris. When the flood caught Conemaugh it dashed against the little town with a mighty crash. The water did not lift the houses up and carry them off, but crushed them up one against the other and broke them up like so many egg-shells. Before the flood came there was a pretty little town. When the waters passed on there was nothing but a few broken boards to mark the central portion of the city. It was swept as clean as a newly-brushed floor. When the flood passed onward down the valley I went over to my train. It had been moved back about twenty yards, but it was not damaged. About fifteen persons had remained in the train and they were safe. Of the three trains ours was the luckiest. The engines of both the others had been swept off the track, and one or two cars in each train had met the same fate. What saved our train was the fact that just at the curve which I mentioned the valley spread out. The valley is six or seven hundred yards broad where our train was standing. This, of course, let the floods pass out. It was only about twenty feet high when it struck our train, which was about in the middle of the valley. This fact, together with the elevation of the track, was all that saved us. We stayed that night in the houses in Conemaugh that had not been destroyed. The next morning I started down the valley and by four o'clock in the afternoon had reached Conemaugh furnace, eight miles west of Johnstown. Then I got a team and came home. "In my tramp down the valley I saw some awful sights. On the tree branches hung shreds of clothing torn from the unfortunates as they were whirled along in the terrible rush of the torrent. Dead bodies were lying by scores along the banks of the creeks. One woman I helped drag from the mud had tightly clutched in her hand a paper. We tore it out of her hand and found it to be a badly water-soaked photograph. It was probably a picture of the drowned woman." Pemberton Smith is a civil engineer employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad. On Friday, when the disaster occurred, he was at Johnstown, stopping at the Merchants' Hotel. What happened he described as follows: