, 1889-06-06
DESOLATED TRACTS
Hundreds OF Recovered Bodies
Inferred Daily.
Humanitarian and Samaritan
Efforts.
Relief St,ll Inadequato--D Destit ots ~
many Points -Iuoreased Consribu-
lions Arriving.

mists bad scarcely risen from the hills
this morning until u thousand funerals
we're coursing their green sides. There
we're no heasses and few mourners, and as
little solemnity as formality. Instead of
pall-bearers to one coffin, there we're gen
orally ak coffins to one team. No minis
ter OF God was there to pronounce the
last blessing as the clods ratified down,
except a few faithful friends who had
tives Of their faith to the grave.
fact that has heretofore
been overlooked in the awful strain, is
the seiled condition of the corpses. Fully
one'third of those recovered have been 80
mangled and bruised, or charred, that
Identification has been impossible. All
day long the corpses we're being hurled
below ground. Unidentified bodies we're
grouped on high Hill west of the doom.
ed city, where one epitaph must do for all
and that the one word unknown" There
are hundreds OF these graves already, and
each day will increase the proportion.
The possibility of identification dimin-
thes every hour. Fires are raging over
the
TANGLED eRAvEs OF HUNDREDS,
Inevitable. Although the funerals of the
morning relieved the morgues of their
crush, before night they we're as full of
the ad IS ever. The enormity Of the de.
vastation wrought by the ConemauRh Hood
Is becoming more and more apparent with
every effort of the laborers to resolve Or
der out of chaos. Over one hundred men
have been all day engaged in an effort to
clear narrow passage from the death
bridge upward through the sea Of debris
that blocks Conemaugh for nearly half
a mile Every ingenuity known to man
has been resorted to by this crew.
Giant powder and dynamite we're brought
into requisition, and at frequent intervals
the roar of explosions reverberated through
the valley, and sticks, stones and logs
would hy high in the air. Gradually a
few of the heaviest timbers were demol-
lshed and the fragment permitted to float
downward through the center arch. At
nightfall, however, the clear space above
the bridge did not exceed an area sixty
feet in length aud forty feet in width.
When one reflects that fully twenty five
acres are to be cleared in this way the
task ahead seems an interminable one.
But there is no royal road, and If hum
dreds or thousands of bodies beneath these
blackened ruins are to be recovered for
christian burial the labors Of to-day must
be continued with increased viRor. There
are many conservative minds that recon.
mend
THE USE OF THE TORCH.
ia this work of clearing the river, but
they are not among the sufferers, and
when such counsels are heard by those
whose wives and children, slsters or broth.
ers, rest beneath this sea of fotsam and
jetsam, the suggestions of cremation meet
furious objection. 1t is only In defiance
OF the unreasoning mandate of grief that
the herculean labor Of clearing the river
by means of dynamite and derricks is per.
sisted in, There is no hope in calm minds
that this task can be pursued to the end.
The progress of to day is hardly discern
able, and ere two more days have elapsed
there is little doubt that the
emanations from putrid bodies
will have become 80 frightful as to drive
the hardest workmen from the scene.
Until that time arrives. however, there ia
no hope that this grief stricken populace
will abandon the cherished hope Of again
gazing upon the forms of their low, d ones,
whose lives went out in the fire and flood
Of Conemau9h. The pleadinRs Of Sani-
tarians and the logic CT engineers alike
fail to find an echo in the minds of the
grievlnR and afflicted but In few more
days the sterner logic Of nature will assert
itself, and in the face OF the impcss bility
of che task cremation will become u
Christian duty.