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 this loose sand we will trudge and strike in by the Baltimore and
Ohio depot. Now we are in the camp of the workingmen. Here are the
stalls for the horses, too. The men, you see, live in tents. There are
not as many of them as there will be; probably not over fifteen hundred
to-day, but there will be twice that to-morrow, and five thousand men
will be employed here steadily for a long time to come. Now let us jump
right into Main street. It is the worst one in town. Just see! There is
the post-office, looking as if it never would be able to pull itself out
of the wreck. Across the street is the bank, with the soldiers guarding
it. There, just ahead, you see a tall brick building lifting its head
out of the midst of a pile of ruins. There is where many people were
saved. The current carried scores of men, women and children past it,
and those who had strength deserted their rafts and wrecks of houses and
crawled into its windows.
"Now our progress is blocked. That immense pile of wreckage is by no
means as high as it was; but you don't want to crawl over it yet. Phew!
Let's get out of this. How those piles of rubbish do smell. You know the
Board of Health says there is nothing the matter with Johnstown, but if
the Board of Health would only take the trouble to nose about a bit it
might learn a thing or two. You notice there have been grocery stores
and markets around here, and you notice, too, the pile of decaying
vegetable matter from them. These are worse than the dead bodies.
Horrible Scenes.
"Are there bodies under these ruins? Lots of them. There! what do you
see this minute? Those workmen have discovered one in the ruins of the
Merchants' Hotel. Poor fellow. He was pinned by falling walls, probably.
A man was found there the other day with his pockets full of money. He
had tried to save his fortune and lost his life. Near by a man was found
alive after an experience of a week in the debris. He called for water,
but never drank it. His tongue was too stiff, and he had not strength to
move a muscle. He died almost as soon as he was found.
"Well, did you ever see such a mass of wreckage? It doesn't look as if
there were twenty houses fit to live in all over this flat. But a good
many will be patched up after a fashion, no doubt. And this is only one
street out of several in the same condition.
"Hello! Those workmen are digging out of a cellar some barrels of
whisky. That liquor will be guarded, for the old policemen and the 'tin'
deputies have been having high old times with the liquor they have
unearthed. There were formerly forty-five saloons in this town. Do you
know how many there are left? Three. That's all. One saloon-keeper found
$1,700 in the ruins of his place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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