A long line of bodies lay packed on the bridge just above the water of
the stream. They were covered with trucks and brakes, and heavy bars,
and the debris of wood and the ashes of the wreck. Packed in a horrid
mass they lay, crushed and broken, and blackened by the smoke and heat.
Ghastly forms lay in this open grave. Headless, armless trunks were
packed with the broken limbs, and the heads from which the brains
were oozing, while the stumps of arms seemed lifted from the blackened
heaps as if in mute supplication--too shocking for any human heart. The
delicate form of a mother lay beside her little child, but both reduced
to mere black lumps with scarcely a semblance to a human form. A full
sized woman lay amid the mass but with no sign of either legs or arms
except the broken bones which had been crushed away by the fall. Bodies
of men also lay cut completely asunder, and presenting only the half of
the human form--an awful, sickening sight.
Everywhere through the valley there were bodies lying silent in death.
The pale flames which flickered here and there, betokened where many of
them lay. Underneath the horrid bars of iron, on the black, deceitful
ice, in the watery depths of the unconscious stream, packed in heaps
underneath the burning cars--were the dead! It was an appalling and
terrifying scene. The darkness and loneliness, and the very desertion,
were enough, but through the very nerves there came the horrid
consciousness of the many, many dead.
Far away were their friends, the night was lonely, and the storm was
pitiful, but scattered through that grave were the bodies of the
dead. It was hard to realize it, but, to the hearts of friends, these
unburied were no strangers, and yet they burned, in loneliness.
The railroad authorities came at half past one o’clock. Five surgeons
from the Homœopathic College, in Cleveland, the superintendent, the
assistant superintendent, the train-despatcher and others. The wounded
were in their beds at the time. The fireman was at the Eagle Hotel.
The engineer was at Mr. Apthorp’s, two other persons, also, who needed
surgical operations, were at the same house. The surgeons of the road,
as they arrived, sought first the employees--the fireman and the
engineer--and to these, gave their professional attention. The surgeons
of the village had already attended to the passengers, had dressed the
wounds of most of them, and were waiting for the proper reaction, to
perform the amputation on those whose limbs were broken.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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