Sacramento daily record-union., 1889-06-06

JoHNsTowN tPa.), June 5th.-The gray
mists had scarcely risen from the hills this
morning when
THOUSAND FUNERALS
Were coursing their green sides. There
were no hearses, few mourners and as little
solemrity as tormality. Instead of six
pall-bearers to one coffin, there were gen.
orally six coffins to one team. No minister
of God was there to pronounce blessings as
the clods ratified down, except a few faith
full priests, who had followed some man
gled representative of their faith to their
graves.
A fact that heretofore has been over
looked in the awful strain is the soiled
condition of the corpses, fully one-third of
those recovered having been so mangled,
bruised or charred that Identification was
impossible.
All day long corpses were being buried
below ground.
UNIDENTIFIED BODIES
Were grouped on the high hill west of the
doomed city, where one epitaph must do
for all, and that consisting of the solitary
word, unknown"
There are hundreds of these graves
already, and each day will increase the
number. The possibility OF identification
diminishes every hour. Fires are raging
over the tangled graves of hundreds, and
the partial cremation of many bodies is
inevitable
Although the funerals of the morning
relieved the morgues of their crush, before
nj Iyhf how f,,If
ever.
The enormity of the devastation wrought
by the Conemaugh flood is becoming
more and more apparent with every effort
OF the labOrers to resolve
ORDER OUT OF CHAOS.
Over hundred men have been all day en-
gagged in the effort to clear the narrow pas
sage from the death bridge upward through
the sea of debris that blocks the Cone
maugh for nearly half a mile. Every in
genuity known to man has been resorted
TO by this crew.
THE GIANT POWER OF DYNAMITE
Has been brought into requisition, and at
frequent intervals the roar of the explo-
slons reverberated through the valley and
stones and logs would fly high in the air.
Gradually few of the heaviest timbers
CAS NSAAAOAAS4S1t anu were per-
mitted to float downward through the GEN.
ter slch. At nightfall, however, the clear
space above the bridge did not exceed an
area OF sixty feet in length and 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 hun
dreds or
THOUSANDS OF BODIES
Beneath the blackened rivers are to be re-
covered for Christian burial. the labor of
to-day must be continued with increased
yigor.
There are many conservative minds that
recommend the use of the torch in this
work of clearing the river, but they are not
among the sufferers, and when such
counsels are heard by those whose wives
children, sisters or brothers rest beneath
this tioatsam and ietsam, suggestions of
cremation meet with a wild frIror of OBJ
lection. 1t is only in Difference to the un-
reasoning mandate of grief that the hercu-
lean labor of clearing the river by means
OF dynamite and derrick is checked. There
is no hope in calmer 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 elansed
there is little doubt that the emanations
from the putrid bodies will have become
50 frightful as to drive the hardest work
men from the scene. Until that time ar
riyes, however, there is no hope that this
GRIEF-sTRICKEN PoPULACE
Will abandon the cherished hope of again
gazing upon the forms of their loved ones,
whose lives went out in the fire and flood
OF the Conemaugh. The pleadings of the
sanitarians and the logic of the engineers
alike fail to find echo in the minds of the
grieving and afflicted, but in a few more
days the sterner logic of nature will assert
itself, and in the face of the impossibility
tian duty