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
Slowly something like order is beginning to appear in the chaos of
destruction. Enough militia came to-day to put the town under strict
martial law. Four hundred men of the Fourteenth regiment, of Pittsburgh,
are here. There will be no more tramping over the ruins by ungoverned
mobs. There will be no more fears of rioting.
The supplies of food are constantly growing. The much needed money is
beginning to come in, though not at all needless relief committees are
beginning to go out. Better quarters for the sufferers are being
provided. Better arrangements for systematic relief are made. Something
of the deep gloom has been dispelled, though Johnstown is still the
saddest spot on earth.
The systematic attempt to clear up the ruins at the gorge and get out
the bodies imprisoned there began to-day. The expectations of ghastly
discoveries were more than realized. Scores of burned and mangled bodies
were removed.
Freaks of the Torrent.
The great waste where the city stood looked a little different to-day.
Some attempt was made to clear up the rubbish, and fires were burning in
a dozen places to get rid of it. Tents for the soldiers and some of the
sufferers were put up in the smooth stretch of sand where a great, five
story hardware store used to stand. The dead animals that were here and
there in the debris were removed, to the benefit of the towns-people's
health.
Curious things come to light where the rubbish was cleared away. The
solid cobblestone pavement had been scooped up by the force of the water
and in some places swept so far away that there was not a sign of it.
Behind a house that was resting on one corner was found a wickerwork
baby carriage full of mud, but not injured or scratched in the least nor
yet buried in the mud, but looking as if it had been rolled there and
left. Very close to it was a piece of railroad iron that must have been
carried half a mile, bent as it it were but common wire. Exactly on the
site of a large grocery store was a box of soap and a bundle of
clothespins, while of all the brick and stone, of which the store was
built, and all the heavy furniture it contained there was not the
slightest trace.
Many articles of wearing apparel were found here, but no bodies could be
discovered in the whole stretch of the plain, from which it is inferred
that most of the deaths occurred at the gorge or else the flood swept
them far away.
Reminders of a Broken Home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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