Connecticut western news., 1874-06-05
low it is Leeds: above it is Williams

Durg. It was a beautiful village
 William Skinner's silk mill, which wa
 just below the Williamsburg depot
 marked the dividing line between i
 and its neighbor village. The mill ii
 gone to the last brick, and the elegan
 mansion of it's proprietor is the shat
 tered monument of what this man hac
 wrought. The operatives at first re garded the story of the coming flood as
 joke, and it was not until the mil
 and many houses near it were swept
 away-not until the flood had come and
 almost gone that they awoke to the
 terrible reality.
 1 Onward swept the waters, and the
 mill of Hayden, Gere & Go. was also
 swept away, and with it the savings
 bank, where some foolhardy people had l ensconced themselves to witness and
 watch the flood. At this point the
 river was walled with solid masonry.
 but the walls were uprooted and the
 huge stones which composed them were
 tossed about like so many pebbles
 dropped into aD eddying current. On
 tho high ground above is the house of
 Joel Hayden, built by the late Governor
 Hay den, where the boiler from the mill
 now lies on the lawn. Other residences
 equally elegant stand in a line with it.
 and though they remain, every tree in
 front of them which was not swept
 away is lmbedded in immense masses
 of debris where, perhaps, some of the
 undiscovered bodies arc buried, On
 the other side of the liver the banks
 were not so high, and nearly everything
 went with the flood, line of rubbish on the hillside marking the height which the waters reached. And so rolled the flood on through Leeds, con- t1nulng it's work of destruction till it's force was weakened in the meadows above Florence. Thus weakened, on and on it went till the Connecticut swallowed it and all that came with it. calmly vanquishing what moment be- fore had been giant. My imagination has been so much impressed by what I witnessed coming here-the desolated valley, the ruined buildings, the houses filled with the dead, the vehicles bear ing the disfgured bodies of the victims, the possibilities of almost impossible revelations of disaster and death-that l cannot overlook the scene upon which my eyes have rested without emotions which come to few men in the course of long lifetime. This is no ordinary scene, even to one who has seen death ln every shape. It IS worse than bat tie field where the carnage has been terrible, fer here most of the victims have been women and children, too weak to run from the 6eath that over took them. It was an overwhelming torrent, rushing through peaceful val ley and showing itself messenger of destruction, which claimed first of all what Was choicest and best. That val ley, once noted for it's industry, and now historic from it's calamity, is before me, and it's woes may be seen wherever the eyes chance to rest. Williamsburg, Leeds are the names of one common misfortune which could not have happened if few men, con. sidered the safest and best in the com munity, had guarded as carefully their own interests and the lives of their operatives as they had shrewdly carved fortunes out of nothing.
 TOUCHING INCIDENTS.
 And, again, the disaster was full of incidents, it could not be otherwise where the story of every victim was a tragedy scarcely less terrible than the crimes of the French Revolution. The of Henry Hilton bearing his mother and his little son to 8 place of safety, but escaping, while both of hose he loved were swept away, is more | than Virgil's legend of Hneas bearing Anchises upon his shoulders | rom ruined Troy-more dramatic than | Henry Little's struggle with the Hills 'oro' flood for the safety of Grace Car len. But in the next breath we are told hat COW foated down from Williams 'urg to Florence, and escaped with 'nly broken horn. Poet never wrote nything finer in conception or truer to he grand and overpowering impulses f mothers heart and mothers love han is contained in the lament of the oor Irish woman who lost her husband ut saved her crippled child only to lose i'm also by subsequent accident 1hich befell him while they were bear 1g him to 8 place of safety. ooh l" ried she, "that should live to see his night An the boy cried to me, Sure you won't leave me, mother, to @ carried in the food r an I rushed nd snatched him out of bed, and got ut between the houses, and, as God ears me, couldn't get farther, an I tood there, an the boy in my arms, n the water going over me. And i 'as knocked from here wid timber nat hit me on my leg and again in the reast, but I'm alive and I saved the oy, but he'll die the mornin', an the lan's gone. Edwards gone Oh, but 'r the rainy morning, he'd been here work and saved Oh, my darling, y darling, God help us P No pen, save Victor Hugo's, flushed lth describing the horrors of La Ven ee, can adequately describe this disas- 1T. Among ealamities it is epic in all s phases. I can only survey the field yer which the mad waters rushed in leir fury and think that if I had tune
 collect all my thoughts and oppor- nifty to select the Attest words for Hing all I have heard might unfold chapter which other men would read