Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1889-06-03
StrvNn With Corpses.
They Fairly Litter the Valley OF
the Conemaugh.
FIFTEEN HUNDRED DEAD BODIES
Less Than One Days Work of the Search
ers at the Annihilated City
of JOhnstown.
The Drifts and Silt Full of the CHASTITY
Work of the Unprecedented Calami-
ty-Dreadful Sights Among the
Wreckage of Homes.

Story of Death and Desolation-A Funeral
Pyre in Which Probably More Than a Thou
sand Bodies Were Reduced to Ashes-A Ca
tastrophe That Language Is Too Feeble to
Describe-The Victims Buried as Fast as
ldentifed-The furnishing and Destitute
Survivors Hardly Worse Off Than Their Lost
Kindred and Neig hbors- Ghouls Robbing the
Bodies and Meeting Their Reward in the
Quick Justice of the Citizens-A Doomed
Railway Train and Some of Those Saved
from Destruction-Terrible Details OF the
Havoc of the Deluge.
PTTsBURG, June Sin the presence of a
| calamity like that which on Friday last
strewed the valley of the Conemaugh with
tile bruised, bleeding, and mangled bodies of
hundreds of all ages and conditions-from the
infant in arms to the gray headed-man-
kind stands appalled,, stunned and crushed
overwhelmed with the manifestation of the
tremendous and awful energy of nature
when she exerts her strength; and of his ut
tr incapacity to control or confine her
powers
A Triumph of Engineering.
The dam, the bursting of which wrought
| such dreadful havoc on life and property,
was structure to the building of which all
| tile skill and resources of the engineers pro-
ftssion had been brought 1t was of solid
masonry, built in a chasm rock-founded and
hiEked. Its thickness at the base was $50
feet and at the top thirty-five feet Men
how to safely dam up the waters had pro-
| nounced it as safe as the everlasting hills
IL was regularly and frequently inspected,
lad every precaution that the skill of man
| could devise was used to make assurance
| sure.
Rage of the Waters
In the fancied security of this splendid
work the people of Johnstown and the other
dosolated places lived, little thinking of the
| dreadful doom that but awaited its time to
burst upon them. Friday afternoon was the
| tine. In a moment, without warming, ex-
cept the awful roar of the coming destruc-
ton, thousands of men, women and children
were swept into a torrent that, after hurting
them about, the sport of the mad waters for
| time, sucked them under or cast them on
the banks bleeding, mangled corpses.
No Lack of Heroism.
In the midst of this carnival of death the
heroic in human nature is the only bright
| ness that relieves the black shadow. To
on umerate the instances would require col
| uInns Mother love in particular shone out.
omen went to death to save their
little ones, or rather than accept life and
leave them; wives rejected rescue without
their husbands, husbands without their
wives. Brothers and sisters died together
rather than that one should be saved that the
OF Ter might live. Fathers looked the grim
terror in the face undaunted for their chill
DIR ans sake. Men with no interest except the
promptings of humanity, braved the roaring
winters to save the perishing
An Unparalleled Catastrophe.
Language is inadequate to convey even a
conception of the awfulness of this catastro-
phe. 1t stands unparalleled in the history of
the country. 1t will be one of the historic
disasters How many were lost? God knows
The estimates range from 5000 to Is, 600
There were hundreds-probably thousands
who will never know other burial save what
the waters gave them.
1t was a tremendously impressive lesson of
the uncertainty of life, of the weakness and
poverty of human skill. The magnitude of
the horror is not yet known; it grows with
each succeeding day.
The Kind of Sympathy Wanted.
And the fate of the survivors is hardly less
de Dlorable than that of the lost Naked and
an -hungered, they appeal to the hearts of
their countrymen for help in this hour of
calamity. Widows and orphans abound
They are destitute aud starving Their all,
be it little or great, has been swallowed up in
that tremendous cataclysm that destroyed
their kindred and their neighbors The re-
sponse should be ready and prompt Let the
nation look to it that it is