Thousands upon thousands of dollars are being telegraphed here hourly, yes, every minute, for the relief of the bereaved. New York has come to the front nobly with over $200,000, and Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities, and, indeed, nearly every town and village in the country has sent its quota of relief funds. A word should be said right here regarding the cause of the disaster. The South Fork Fishing Club is held chiefly responsible. The broken dam shows that it was simply a pile of dirt and rubble dumped across a stream between two hills that formed the banks of the reservoir. When the water began to break through this dam everything had to give way, causing a torrent sixty feet high to rush onward toward the doomed valley. [Illustration: DOWN WITH THE TIDE.] The dam was built many years ago to create a reservoir for use as a feeder to the Pennsylvania Canal. The builders placed in the forty-foot space at the bottom, where the creek ran, five huge pipes, each as large as a hogshead. These were covered by an arch of massive masonry, and were arranged to be opened or closed by levers in a tower that was built in the centre of the dam. These five big pipes were calculated to be large enough to carry off all surplus water that could ever be poured into the lake above and which could not escape by the regular exit, which was a sluiceway around one corner of the dam at a level of eight or ten feet below the top. This sluiceway was really a new stream, the water passing off through it finding its picturesquely winding course down the hillside and running with the stream again some distance below the dam. The sluiceway and waste gates never failed to do the work for which they were designed, and there is no reason to suppose that they would have failed to do so at the present time and for the future had they been maintained as the builders contemplated. When the Pennsylvania Canal was abandoned the dam became useless, and was neglected. The tower in which the machinery managing the waste gates is located is said to have fallen into ruin a few years ago. The lake was then leased by the Pittsburgh Sportsman’s Association. Engineer Fulton, of the Cambria Iron Company made an inspection of it and pronounced it dangerous. The Association set out, they declared, to improve and strengthen it. They did cut off two feet from the top of the dam, and may have strengthened it in some respects; but either because the waste gates were so damaged that to repair them would have been an expensive job, or, for the other reason mentioned, that the fish would escape by the waste gates, everyone who lives near says the gates were permanently stopped up. The present appearance of the wreck of the dam indicates the truthfulness of the story. There are remnants of the waste gate masonry, but there is no indication that they have been of any practical use for a long time.