St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-06-06
Thousands of Funerals Yes
terday, With Six Bodies to
a Pall-Bearep.
Corpses Mangled and Bruised
Beyond the Possibility Of
Identification.
More Piteous Tales of Expert
ences--Latest Estimate Of
the Dead.

GulS ulOIIlIIlS uulll d LIlOuSduu luucIdlS
were cOursing their green sides. There
were no hearses, few mOurners, and as
little sOlemnity as fOrmality. The ma
jOrity of the cOffins were of rough pine.
The pall-bearerS were strong farmers
teams, and instead of six pall-bearerS to
one coffin there were generally six cof-
fins to one team. Silently the process
sions moved, and silently they unloaded
their burdens in the lap Of mother
earth. No minister of God was there to
pronounce last blessing as the clOds
ratified down, except few faithful priests
who had followed some mangled rep
resentatives of their faith to the grave.
A fact that has been heretofore over
looked in the awful strain is the soiled
condition of the corpses. Fully one
third of those recovered have been so
mangled, prsised or charred that identi-
fcation was impossible. In an ordinary
flood this would not have been the case,
but here human bodies we've but the
filling in of mountain-like mass of
houses. railroad tracks, trains and other
debris. which went crunching and
crashing through valley three miles
long. How any of the lifeless clay re-
tanned form or substance is enigmatical.
All day long the cOrpses were being
hurried below ground. The unidenti-
fed bodies were grouped on high
hill west of the doomed city, where one
epitaph suited for all, and that the word
UNKNOWN"
There are hundreds of these graves
already, and each day will increase the
proportion. The possibility OF identif
cation diminiSheS every hour. Fires are
raging over the mangfed graves of hum
dreds, and the partial cremation of
many bodies is inevitable. Others are
becoming SO blackened in their contact
with the debris, or through putrifactiOn.
that a grinning skeleton would show as
much resemblance to the persons in
life as they. Almost every stroke of
the pick in some portions of the city to-
day resulted in the discovery of an
other victim, and although the funerals
of the morning relieved the mOrgues of
their crush, before night they were
as full of the Stinking dead as ever.
Wherever one turns the melancholy
view of a coffin is met. Every train into
Johnstown was laden with them, the
better ones being accompanied by
friends of the dead. Men could be seen
staggering over the ruins with shining
mahogany caskets on their shoulders.
Several stumbled and fell into the
abounding pits. The hollow houses of
the dead went bouncing over the stones
like drums in funeral march. The
coffin famine appears to be alleviated.
The enOrmity of the devastation
wrought by the Conemaugh flood is be-
coming more and more apparent with
every effort of the labOrers to
resolve order out of chaos. Over
one hundred men have been all
day engaged in an effort to clear mar
row passage from the death bridge up
ward through the sea of debris that
blocks the COnemaugh for nearly half
mile. Every ingenuity known to man
has been resorted to by this crew. The
giant power of dynamite was brought
into requisition, and at intervals the
roar of explosions reverberated through
the valley, and sticks, stones and logs
would fly high in the air. Gradually a
few of the heaviest timbers were de-
molished and the fragments permitted
to float downward through the center
a,ch. At nightfall, however, the
clear space above the bridge
did not exceed an area of
sixty feet in length by forty feet
in width. When one reflects that fully
twenty-five acres are to be cleared in
this way, the task ahead seems an in
terminable one. But there is no royal
road, and if the hundreds 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 vigOr. There are many
conservative minds that recommend the
use of the torch i'm 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 sea
of fotsam and jetsam, the suggestion of
cremation meets wild furor of Objec-
ton. 1t is only in Difference to the un
reasoning mandate of grief that the
Herculean labor of clearing the river by
means of the dynamite and the derrick is
persisted IN. There is no hope in the
calmer minds that this task can be pur-
sued to the end. The progress of to-
day is hardly discernible, and ere two
more days have elapsed there is little
doubt the emanations of putrid bodies
will have become so frightful as to
drive the hardest workman from the
scene. Until that time arrives, how
ever, there is no hope that this grief
stricken populace will abandon the
cherished hope of again, gazing upon
the forms of the loved ones whose lives
went out in the fire and flood of the
Conemaugh. The pleadings Of SANTA
rians and the logic of engineers alike
fail to find an echo in the minds of the
grieving and afflicted, but in few more
days the sterner. logic of nature will
assert itself, and in the face of impossi-
bility the task of cremation will become
a Christian duty.