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
She says: "We had been making but slow progress all the day. Our train
laid at Johnstown nearly the whole day of Friday. We then proceeded as
far as Conemaugh, and had stopped for some cause or other, probably on
account of the flood. Miss Paulson and a Miss Bryan were seated in front
of me. Miss Paulson had on a plaid dress with shirred waist of red cloth
goods. Her companion was dressed in black. Both had lovely corsage
bouquets of roses. I had heard that they had been attending a wedding
before they left Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh lady was reading a novel.
Miss Bryan was looking out of the window. When the alarm came we all
sprang toward the door, leaving everything behind us. I had just
reached the door when poor Miss Paulson and her friend, who were behind
me, decided to return for their rubbers, which they did.
Chased as by a Serpent.
"I sprang from the car into a ditch next the hillside in which the water
was already a foot and a half deep and with the others climbed up the
mountainside for our very lives. We had to do so as the water glided up
after us like a huge serpent. Any one ten feet behind us would have been
lost beyond a doubt. I glanced back at the train when I had reached a
place of safety, but the water already covered it and the Pullman car in
which the ladies were was already rolling down the valley in the grasp
of the angry waters. Quite a number of us reached the house of a Mr.
Swenzel, or some such name, one of the railroad men, whom we afterward
learned had lost two daughters at Johnstown. We made ourselves as
comfortable as possible until the next day, when we proceeded by
conveyances as far as Altoona, having no doubt but what we could
certainly proceed east from that point. We found the middle division of
the Pennsylvania Railroad was, if anything, in a worse condition than
the western, so we determined to go as far as Ebensburg by train, whence
we reached Johnstown to-day by wagon."
Mrs. G.W. Childs' Escape.
Mrs. George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, was also a member of the party.
She was on her way West, and reached Altoona on Friday, after untold
difficulties. She is almost prostrated by the severe ordeal through
which she and many others have passed, and therefore had but little to
say, only averring that Mrs. Wilcox and her friends, who were on the
lost train, had passed through perils beside which her own sank into
insignificance.
[Illustration: SWEPT AWAY ON THE TRAIN.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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