Yet it was an awful, shocking sight, when the removal had been accomplished. It was a horrid thing to take these bodies, in all their deformed and distorted shapes, from their beds of ice and snow and iron and ashes and the coals of wood, but it was still more horrid, to look upon them as they were gathered in that gloomy morgue. The freight house was turned into the place for the dead; its doors were closed, and the darkness of a winter’s day settled down in that cheerless place; it was cold, and bare and gloomy, a fit place for death. As the sleds arrived from the deep gorge below, bringing the awful human freight, this large room was nearly filled with the ghastly rows. Thirty-six bodies were arranged, in boxes, in a double line along the sides; a few had been taken out, with their bodies uninjured, except as they had died from the breath of fire. These were placed by themselves upon the floor, and from their very attitude, showed how awful had been their death. They were mostly men. There they lay, with limbs distorted, with hands uplifted, with averted faces, and with all the agonized and awful shapes which death by fire must produce. One had endeavored to throw his coat over his face, and lay with arms and coat above his head, caught by the flames and transfixed in that shape. Another had twisted his neck and face away, until the head rested upon the shoulders and back, and only the burned hair and whiskers could be seen. Another lay with limbs drawn up and body doubled, and yet his graceful shape and form could be read, through the agony of death. Others seemed to have stood, and held up beseeching arms and hands. With some, even the stumps of arms were outstretched, as if in mute appeal. A few were drenched, with their clothing on, but partly burned, as if the water and the fire together conspired for their death. These all impressed the eye, with the agony of death by fire. The fear of such a fate, was that which the survivors felt the most. The agony, depicted in these few distorted forms and faces, showed how well founded was that fear. But, fortunately, there were but few. Not a dozen bodies were taken out that, to any human appearance, could have lived, if this fire had been kept down. The rest were broken and bruised, or else their bodies had been completely burned. A more affecting sight was that, of those who were placed in the boxes, broken and bruised, as they were, in every limb. The boxes could not contain them, as their clothes were stiffened by the water and ice and snow. Those, too, whose clothes had been burned away, were so distorted in limb and body that no box could hold their forms. Though dead, and stiff and cold, they seemed as if they would start from their graves, and escape the fearful fate, which had seized and destroyed their life.