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
The big man sent out a terrible blow that would have left the
Lieutenant senseless had not one of the privates dashed in between,
receiving part of it and warding it off. The Lieutenant got out of his
military coat. The privates seized the big man and with another, who ran
to the scene, held him back. The Lieutenant put his hand to his pistol
pocket, the deputy Fitzpatrick seized him and the struggle for the
weapon began. For a moment it was fierce and desperate, then another
private came to the deputy's assistance. The revolver was wrested from
the drunken officer and he himself was pushed back panting to the
ground.
The Victor was Magnanimous.
Deputy Fitzpatrick seized the military coat he had thrown on the ground,
and with it and the weapon started to the regimental headquarters. Then
the privates got around him and begged him, one of them with tears in
his eyes, not to report their officer, saying that he was a good man
when he was sober. He studied a long while, standing in the road, while
the officer slunk away over the hill. Then he threw the disgraced
uniform to them, and said: "Here, give them to him; and, mind you, if he
does not go at once to his quarters, I'll take him there, dead or
alive."
Sanitarians at Work.
Dr. Benjamin Lee, secretary of the State Board of Health, has taken hold
with a grip upon the handle. When he surveyed the ground to-day he found
that there were no disinfectants in town, and no utensils in which to
distribute them had there been any disinfectants, so he sent a squad
across the river to the supply train, below the viaduct, and had all the
copperas and chloride of lime to be had carried across the bridges in
buckets. He sent another squad hunting the ruins for utensils, and in
the wreck of a general store on Main street they discovered pails,
sprinkling pots and kettles. The copperas and chloride were promptly set
heating in the kettles over the streets and in a short time a squad was
out sprinkling the debris which chokes Main street almost to the
housetops for three squares.
The reason of this was that a brief inspection had satisfied Dr. Lee
that under the wreckage were piled the bodies of scores of dead horses.
Meantime other men were at work collecting the bodies of other dead
horses, which were hauled to the fire and with the aid of rosin burned
to the number of sixty. A large number of dead horses were buried
yesterday, but this course did not meet the State Board's approval and
Dr. Lee has ordered their exhumation for burning.
Dr. R. Lowrie Sibbett, of Carlisle, was made medical inspector and sent
up through the boroughs up the river. To-morrow a house-to-house
inspection will be made of the remaining and inhabited portion of the
cities and boroughs. The overcrowding makes this necessary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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