Connecticut western news., 1874-06-05
THE VALE OF DEATH.

| THE VALE OF DEATH.
 After the Mill River Disaster--A Thrill. | ing Picture of the Sad Scene.
 | l have before me, writes @ core
 spondent from the Mill River Valley
 Massachusetts, bird 's-eye view of the
 vale of devastation. At my feet is the
 bottom of the reservoir itself, black, ghastly and menacing. The very stumps which lift themselves above the
 dark mass of sediment seem to mock at
 the desolation of the valley below and | at those who come to look on the
 source of the disaster. There are hills | all around except where the brook,
 which now meanders quietly through
 the black bed to the lake. finds an oat-
 let over the remains of the dike. Here
 two miniature mountains nearly touch
 each other, and were joined together by
 the wall and dirt of the embankment.
 At each side there is now a part of the
 wall as 1t originally stood. At the bot
 tom 8 straight line. of masonry even
 with the bed shows the base of the wall
 from side to side. Seen from the hill
 above it looks very narrow. and actual
 measurement shows that in it's strongest
 part it was only five feet nine inches
 wide. The width gradually diminished,
 and at. the summit it was scarcely wider
 than an ordinary stone fence, Most
 prison walls are stronger in every way
 than this dam, which held prisoner for
 nine years l25 acres of water. Below the
 dam IS narrow gorge, extending from
 the reservoir to Williamsburg, and
 almost in an instant the dike gave way
 and the unclaimed waters went rushing in wrath and fury down this narrow de. file, heralded only by flying horse man, who bore the tidings of impendine destruction and death to the doomed villagers below the defle.
 THE FEARFUL FLOOD.
 The scene which followed bafles de. scription. It was awful beyond the power of words to describe. No i'm agination short of Dore's wonderful conceptions of the terrible could guide the brush which would put it upon canvas. The only account of like disaster which approaches it in it's awful sublimity is Charles Reade's story of the breaking away of the Hills bero' dam in "Put Yourself in His Place. Even that account, once so vivid to my imagination, is dull and tame to me now-inane. indeed, after seeing what I saw in the chain of viii lages through h which sadly and labori. ously struggled to reach this spot. Yet In many respects the two disasters are wonderfully like. There was the same Parleylng over the question whether the dam would give way, the same playing with danger till the flood was on it's way. George Cheney, ,dashing down the narrow defile to Williamsburg, has m hls analogy in Charles Reade's hero, The dlsbeltof, the fright, the paralysis ] of tefror which met Cheney at the vil- lage was the reception that was also accorded the messenger of death of Reaae's imagination. The analogy did not cease even with this, and Haydens- vile is to-day the counterpart of Poma Bridge. Never were two tales so similar. And in the one | case as in the other the mad waters were upon the operatives before their dull sense of the awful danger enabled many of them to comprehend the i'm. pending disaster and to escape from it. had ten minutes to pre- pare, and Williamsburg mourns sixty lead. Haydensville had four minutes. md it gave forty victims to the flood. leeds had only two minutes, and fifty lfeless forms were buried in the debris. lashed against the hillsides, and trewn over the meadows above Florence.
 THE SCENE OF DEso1ATIoN,
 On the spot where stand I can see he black bed of the reservoir. the butments which remain of the broken ana, and the wild gorge through which he waters rushed on their way to the illages which stretch before me in the 1isty distance. Though called by diff srent names they are, in fact, one town { a chain of villages stretching all the 'ay from Northampton to Williams { urg, at the opening of the gorge. 1 luch of the latter place still remains, ne town hall being the middle of a amlet left untouched by the waters. , milling over it in the sunlight saw i ae village cemetery, it's green sward ( awning with opening graves. A little 1 arther to the east, and closely hugging ( ne eastern hills, the work of death and I esolation begun. Here the bed of the { bream Is lost, and for mile below the ( 'aters percolate in 1000 rills through l many channels till they come togeth- $ r again just above Haydensville. The z oadbed is gone. and for two days long , nes of vehicles have been slowly find- t lg their way through the submerged | leadows where the mills and dwellings ! 'ood. The depot is mile below, and I Il above 1t is a waste. On Saturday f le valley was impossible above the a epot. There is no highway even now, | nd good road will be the work of ears. The sites of the houses and V ills, as well as the buildings, have d isappeared. Surveys based upon old t tie deeds will be necessary to deter i inc what is whose, and where the old O ndmarks were. Maps are of no use t]
 visitor like me, for where I see t, buses marked on the page I behold t, lly desolatien in the valley. Here is t, house toppled over on it's side, but a here it was or whence it came I know W 't. There is structure tossed about 7 the flood till it was left with the roof the ground. But most of the build gs marked on the map have not only sappeared, but all traces of them are n ne. Their fragments strew the earth cl the way down the valley, and the c ,nnectieut has carried much of the P bris out to the sea. le
 THE FORGE OF THE WATERS, re And even the earth, the ground, the o' nks or the conglomerate masses which M al ss for these are difficult of recogni- IL 'n in the clements which constitute ts em. Great rolls of cloth are inter- st wen with the debris and the soil. m lttons and instruments of brass and ps 'n and steam boilers and brick and ar 'ne and parts of buildings and rem to nts of household furniture are strewn "