The surging river had climbed up the bluffs like a devouring monster and possessed the town; large steamers could have plied along its business streets; ordinary vocations were abandoned. Bankers and merchants stood in its relief houses and fed the hungry populace, and men and women were out in boats passing baskets of food to pale, trembling hands stretched out to reach it from third-story windows of the stately blocks and warehouses of that beautiful city. Sometimes the water soaked away the foundations and the structure fell with a crash and was lost in the floods below; in one instance seven lives went out with the falling building; and this was one city, and probably the best protected and provided locality in a thousand miles of thickly populated country. It had not been my intention to remain at the scene of disaster, but rather to see, investigate, establish an agency, and return to national headquarters at Washington, which in the haste of departure had been left imperfectly cared for. But I might almost say, in military parlance, that I was “surprised and captured.” I had made no call beyond the Red Cross societies,--expected no supplies from other sources,--but scarcely had news of our arrival at Cincinnati found its way to the public press when telegrams of money and checks, from all sides and sources, commenced to come in, with letters announcing the sending of material. The express office and freight depots began filling up until within two weeks we were compelled to open large supply rooms, which were generously tendered to the use of the Red Cross. A description could no more do justice to our flood of supplies than to the flood of waters which had made them necessary--cases, barrels and bales of clothing, food, household supplies, new and old; all that intelligent awakened sympathy could suggest was there in such profusion that, so far from thinking of leaving it, one must call all available help for its care and distribution. The Government would supply the destitute people with food, tents, and army blankets, and had placed its military boats upon the river to rescue the people and issue rations until the first great need should be supplied.