Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1894-09-05
4 DESOLATE SCENE.
Path of the Forest Fires Ex-
 tremeIy Heartrending.
DEAD BODIES ARE EVERYWHERE.

The Charred Remains of 362 Persons
 Have Keen Found and There Is No
 Telling How Many More Are Lying In
 the Woods The Dead at Hinekley
 Buried Tn Plain Boxes.
 HNcKLEY, Afinn., Sept. 5.-The 30 or 40 caskets and boxes with their grue- some contents still lay along the track, where they were placed on Sunday night, when the relief train arrived yesterday No attempt had been made to dress or embalm the bodies and they were growing very offensive. Every attempt at identification is exhausted. From these bodies the officials of fhe Duluth road had removed and carefully preserved every trinket and article Of jewelry and even shoes and scraps of clothing, placing these from each body in a receptacle numbered electrically with the caslxet or box, so that possibly when relatives return they may recognize them and know whether their friends have been inferred
 Out in the cemetery, a mile east of the town, was scene which words are ab- selptely powerless to describe,
 In an indiscriminate heap lay more than 90 corpses, men, women and little children. Some burned to a crisp, others only Drowned by heat, and none with a fragment of clothing larger than 8 mans hand to conceal the awful nakedness. Some were mere trunks, the extremities having been burned off.
 Some were bloated until the abdomen had cracked open and the intestines were protruding. Skulls were burned open and brains escaped and all were twisted and cramped in the exquisite agony of death.
 4 force of men were quickly at work digging shallow trench along the south end of tue railroad in the sandy soil which was as hard as flint. It had been baked to crust by weeks of drouth and almost solidified by fire. Work pro gressed slowly,
 Off in clearing two smaller graves were being dug. One for Mrs. William Grissinger and her two baby girls, Car oline, aged 6, and Mabel, aged 8. Her husband and father recognized them in a heap and went to work prepar- ing them for their final resting place in part of the trench designated for the unidentified.
 The other grave was for the Best family, whose numbers make their de- struction notable even in this time of death. John Best, Jr., was digging a pit with the friendly assistance of two neighbors. Laid in row, decently covered, were the bodies of John Best, Sr., Mrs. Best, Fred Best, aged 93, Bertha, aged l7, Mrs. Annie Wiegel, q married daughter, and her 3-year-old daughter, Mrs Annie Truetman of Diamond Bluff, a visitor, aged 26, and Victor Best, aged s. Two other sons, George, aged 9, and Willie, aged q, are missing and certaily dead. Of this whole family of three generations. Only the sorrowing gravedigger and his wife and child, who took refuge in 8 dugout were left. They all lived together about two miles southeast of Hinckley.
 The only others of 90 odd recognized were Charles Anderson, cashier of the bank; Mrs. William Grinder and daugh- ter, Winifred, aged 6years. One or two others were imperfectly identified, but it was largely guess work. Enough rude boxes were knocked together from rough boards to contain most of these bodies and they were rapidly laid away under the sand, but not before other bodies began to come.
 In the swamp across the Grindstone where those corpses were found Mon day, were about B others, making the total upwards of l30 dead in this little space of four or five acres.
 i Down near the river was found the 1 body of Thomas Dunn of Duluth, the operator at Hinckley Dunn stuck to his IT k ksy z nnt11 tA6 sz hla