The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling RuinWalker, James Herbert
History
The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
Over to the right, at the edge of a muddy lagoon which marks the limit
of the levelling rush of the mad torrent, there are dozens and dozens of
buildings leaning against each other in the oddest sort of jumble. The
spectacle would be ludicrous if it were not so awfully suggestive of the
tragic fate of the inmates. Behind this border land are the regions
where death was wofully busy. In some streets a mile from any railroad
track locomotives and cars are scattered among the smouldering ruins. In
the river the rescuers are busy, and so are the Hungarians and native
born thieves.
Men take queer souvenirs away sometimes. One came up the bank a short
time ago with a skull and two leg bones, all blackened and burned by the
fire.
There is, of course, no business done, and those who have been spared
have little to do save watch for a new phase of the greatest tragedy of
the kind in modern history. On Prospect Hill is a town of tents where
the homeless are housed and fed, and where also a formidable city of the
dead has been just prepared. Such are some of the scenes visible from
the window.
The Skeleton of Its Former Self.
The water has receded in the night almost as rapidly as it came, and
behind it remains the sorriest sight imaginable. The dove that has come
has no green leaf of promise, for its wings are draped with the hue of
mourning and desolation. There now lies the great skeleton of dead
Johnstown. The great ribs of rocky sand stretch across the chest scarred
and covered with abrasions. Acres of mud, acres of wreckage, acres of
unsteady, tottering buildings, acres of unknown dead, of ghastly objects
which have been eagerly sought for since Friday; acres of smoky,
streaming ruin, of sorrow for somebody, lie out there in the sunshine.
Like Unto Arcadia After the Fire.
The awful desolation of the scene has been described often enough
already to render a repetition of the attempt here unnecessary. These
descriptions have been as truthful and graphic as it is possible for man
to make them; but none have been adequate--none could be. Where once
stood solid unbroken blocks for squares and squares, with basements and
subcellars, there is now a level plain as free from obstruction or
excavation as the fair fields of Arcadia after they had been swept by
the British flames. The major and prettier portion of the beautiful city
has literally been blotted from the face of the earth.
Disease Succeeds to Calamity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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