Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1889 — JOHNSTOWN VICTIMS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

JOHNSTOWN VICTIMS.

THE NUMBER BETWEEN TWELVE AND FIFTEEN THOUSAND. ' The Enormity of the Disaster Becoming More and More Apparent— Burying the Dead- The Country Responding to the Appeal for Aid. A Johnstown special of Thursday says: The gray mists had scarcely arisen from the >hiils this morning until a thousand funerals were courting their green sides. There were no hearses, few mourners, and as ■little solemnity as formality. The majority of the coffins were of rough pine. The hearses were strong farmers’ teams, and instead of six pall bearers to one coffin there were generally six coffins to one team. Silently the processions moved and silently they unloaded their burdens in the lap of Mother Earth. No minister was there to pronounce a last blessing as the clods rattled down. A fact that has been heretofore overlooked in the awful strain is the soiled condition of the corpse-. Fully one-third of those recovered have been so mangled, bruised or charred that identification was impossible. In an ordinary flood this would not have been the case, but here human bodies were the filling in of a mountain-like mass of Louses, railroad tracks, trains, and other debris which went crunching and crashing through a valley three miles long. How any of life's clay retained form or semblance is enigmatical. All day long the corpses were being buried below ground. The unidentified bodies were grouped on a high hill west of the doomed city, where one epitaph must do for all, and that the word “unknown.” There are hundreds of these graves already, and each day will increase the proportion. 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. Others are becoming so blackened in their contact with the debris or

through putrifaction that a grinning skeleton would show as much resemblance co 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 another victim, and although the funerals of the morning relieved the morgue of their crush before night they were as full 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 generally accompanied by fiiends 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 a funeral march. The coffin famine seems to be alleviated. The enormity of the devastation wrought by the flood is becoming more. and more apparent with every effort of the laborers to resolve order out of chaos. Over 100 men have been all day engaged in an effort to clear a narrow passage Irom the death-bridge upward through the sea of debris that blocks the Conemaugh for i early half a mile. Every ingenuity known to men has been restored to by the crew. The giant power of dynamite was brought into requisition, and at frequent intervals the roar of explosions reverberated through the valley, and sticks, stones, and Jogs would fly high in the air. Gradually a few of the heaviest timbers were demolished and the fragments permitted to float ■downward through the center arch. At nightfall, however, the clear space above the bridge did not exceed an area of sixty leet in length, by forty feet in width. When one reflects that f ully 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 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 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 sea of flotsam j and jetsam, this suggestion of cremation meets a wild furore of objection. It is only in deference to the unrea oning mandate of grief that the hurculear 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 pursued to the end. The progress to-day is hardly discernible, and ere two days more have elapsed there is little doubt that the emanations of putrid bodies will have become so frightItl as to drive the hardiest workmen from the scene. Until that time arrives, how--ever, there is no hope that the grief-strick--en populace will abandon the cherished

hope of again gazing upon the lorms of loved ones whose lives went out in the fire and flood of the Conemaugh. The pleadings of sanitarians and the logic of engineers alike fail to find an echo in the minJs of the grieving and afflicted, but in a few more days the sterner logic of nature will assert itself, and in the face of imposi sibility the task of cremation will become 1 a Christian duty. Where Johnstown’s principal stores stood last Friday are now pitched 1,000 tents, and before night this number will probably be doubled. Under this shelter are accommodated the workmen who are trying to clear the streets. Over 5,00'1 men are thus employed in Johnstown proper, about l.'fOO of these being the regular street hands hired by Contractors Booth and Flynn of Pittsburg, the others being volunteers. Mr. Flynn’s estimates show more than anything the chaotic condition of this city. He says: “It will take 10,0X1 men thirty days to clear tire ground so that the streets are passable and the work of rebuilding can be commenced, and lamat a loss to know how the work is to be done. This enthusiasm will soon die out and the volunteers will want to return home. It would take all summer for my men alone to do what work is necessary. Steps must be taken at once to furnish gangs of workmen. THE BREAK IN THE DAM. An Engineer’s Story of the Terrible Flood. Mr. Fred B. Giles, the special correspondent of the Chicago Daily News at the scene of the calamity, telegraphs that journal as follows: I ascended the valley to inspect the country and investigate the cause of the disaster. The rich Pittsbur gers who maintained the ill-starred lake have been prompt to deny the cause. They can rationally ao so no more.’ The proof of the fact is evident. It is eighteen miles to the lake by the devious course of the valley down which the torrent descended. No harm aas done to the club house and cottages of the South Fork Club, but the transformation worked by the flood is ■ even more striking there than anywhere else, i The house formerly stood by the shores of a I beautiful lake. Now the cottages are on a bluff 1 above a wide ravine, seventy-five feet deep, at

the bottom of which rolls a muddy stream. The picturesque beauty of the place was extracted when the water rushed out at the gau in the great eml aukment. 1 When one examines the breach in the dam the feeling is one of great surprise. There is none °i the laceration of the edges that one would expect from a rending force, but, on the contrary, the aperture has a symmetry that suggests art rather than accident. The middle of the dam has been scooped ou t for about two-thirds of its height. The lower portion of this is again nnd . * his ' Matter excavation extends to tne bottom of the dam, making an opening that affords ample space for the stream now running through it. ° i embankment of earth faced on both sides With loose stone in the style called bv engineers “riprapping." It is still Intact for about three hundred feet on each side of ti e gap. On the east end close to the shore the dam is grooved by a wiet over seventy-live feet wide 1 ten feet dee P> which w’as the outlet bv which the stream below was fed from the lake. v ‘b® west end of the dam is now a sluiceway about twenty feet wide and three feet deep This was hastily dug to relieve the pressure on the dam, but failed to save it. It so happened that at the time of the flood there wa,s a civil engineer present in charge of the construction of a sewer and water works on the club grounds. This gentleman, Mr. John G. Parke, Jr., saw the catastrophe from first to last. Here is his account of it: “On Thursday night the dam was in perfect condition and the water was not within seven feet of the top. At that stage the lake is nearly three miles long. It rained very hard Thursday night. When I got up Friday morning I could see there was a flood, for the water was over «he drive in front of the club-house, and the level of the water in the lake bad risen until it was only four feet below the top of the dam. I rode up to the head of the lake, and saw that the woods were boiling full of water. South Fork and Muddy Bun, which emptied into the lake, were fetching down trees logs and cut timber from a sa.v-mill that was up in the woods in that di.eciion. A plow was run along the top of the dam and earth was thrown in the face of the dam to strengthen it. At the same t me a channel was dug on the west end to make a. sluiceway there. There was about three feet of shale rock through which it was possible to cut. but theu we slruck bedrock that WWS3 impossi He to get into wi.hout blasting. When we got the channel opened the water soon scoured down to the bedrock, and a stream twenty feet wide and three deep rushed out on that end o', the dam, while the liver was letting out an enormous quantity on the other end Notwithstanding these outlets the water kept rising at the rate of ton inches an hour. By 11:3J I had made up my mind that it was impossible to save the dam, and, getting on my horse, I galloped down the road to South Fork to warn the people of their danger. The telegraph tower is a mile from the town, and I sent two men there to have messages sent to Johnstown and other points below. I heard that the lady operator fainted when she had sent off the news, and had to be carried off The people of South Fork had ample time to get to high ground, and they were able to move thew furniture, too. In fact, only one person was drowned in South Fork, and he while attempting to flsh something from the flood as it lolled by. It was just 12 o’clock when the telegraph messages were set out, so that the people ,at Johnstown had over tl#ee hours’ warning. “The break took place at 3 o'clock. It was about two feet wide at first, and shallow, but grew wider with increasing rapidity, and the lake went roaring down the vallev: that three miles of water was drained out in forty-five minutes. The downfall of those 60,0j0,000 tons was simply ftresislible. Stones from the dam and bowlders in the river bed were carried for miles. It was a terrible sight to see that avalanche of water go down that valley already choked with floods. * y

Texas Jack’s Grave. “Not far from Charlie Vivian’s grave in Leadville’s cemetery, * began the old actor, “is the earthly tenement of another man whose reputation was world-wide. A rough pine slab, ujxm which are inscribed the simple words, ‘John Oniahundra,’ marks the spot where the once famous Texas Jack is interred. When the pneumonia scourge carried him away he- was the dimenovel ideal of a frontiersman. Tall and muscular, with long laven hair and mustache and features of Grecian beauty, ’twas no wonder that the first time Morlacchi met him she loved him. Morlacchi was a Parisian danseuse who came to this country with one of the French opera companies. She saw Omahundra one night in aNew Orleans case, and a week later she married him. She was a blase woman of the world—his life hod been spent on the plains. She was gifted with all the graces ultra-refinement could bestow—he was a beautiful brute. “The queerly assorted couple drifted into Leadville with the ‘rush.’ Morlacchi’s talent was in demand. She danced divinely, and the princely salary she received from the management of the Grand Central Theater was only an insignificant portion of the emolu,ments showered upon her. Golden coins were flung uj>on the stage every time she graced it. Meantime her beloved husband drank and gambled with the many kindred spirits he found in the new camp. The woman danced and made money, and the man spent her earnings in the wildest sort of dissipation. She never complained of Iris conduct. Stories of his marital infidelity reached her ears, but she dismissed the gossips with a shrug of her shapely shoulders and a snap of her fingers. ‘Pouf,’she would say, ‘ze enfant enjoy heemself—why not ?’ Yet to him she was true as steel. Perhaps her love was mingled with fear, for her spouse had a playful habit of publicly proclaiming his intention to commit a double crime if his wife shouldever forget her vows. And so he drank and gambled and blustered until King Pneumonia cut him down and hurried him away from the world in which he was less useful than ornamental. Morlacchi was with him when he died, and remained with the corpse until it was buried with all the tinsel honors her professional associates could bestow. Yet not a tear did she shed. She silently stole away from the city in which the last act of her life romance was played, and in a quiet Vermont village shut herself up with her memolies until death claimed her, about a year ago.”— Omaha Herald.

Never Too Late to Learn.

Socrates, at an extreme old age, learned to play on musical instruments. Cato, at eighty years of age, began to study the Greek language. Plutarch, when between seventy and eighty, commenced the study of Latin. Boccaccio was thirty-five years of age when he commenced his studies in light literature; yet he became one of the greatest masters of the Tuscan dialect, Dante and Plutarch being the other two. • Sir Henry Spellman neglected the sciences in his youth, but commenced the study of them when he was between fifty and sixty years of age. After this time he became a most learned antiquarian and lawyer. Dr. Johnson applied himself to the Dutch language but a few years before his death. Ludovoico Monaldesco, at the great age of 115 years, wrote the memoirs of his own times. Ogilby, the translator of Homer and Virgil, was unaquainted with Latin and Greek till he was past fifty. Franklin did not commence his philosophical pursuits till he had reached his fiftieth year. Dryden, in his sixty-eighth year, commenced the translation of the JEneid, his most pleasing production. Corporal Tanner’s Old Commander. Here in Washington is the place to see the ups and downs of political life. Old commanders during the war times become askers of their farmer subordinates for offices in their gift after the shuffle of a quarter of a century of politics. The file in a great many instances has become the rank and thy rank the file. Corporal .Tanner, for instance, became Commissioner Tanner, and Gen. Sigel, his old commander, became Pension Agent Sigel and one of his underlings. “I tell yon/' said Commissioner Tanner, the other night, “it was pathetic. I could remember how Gen. Sigel’s horse had splashed inud over me as I stood in the ranks, and he galloped along ths line with his splendid staff, and here ha was, a broken old man, offering me his resignation.”— Washington Critic.

She Felt It>

“Hannah,” she began, as she called the girl into the sitting-room, “haven’* I alwavs used, vou well ?” “Yes’m.” “Paid you the highest wages and given vou many afternoons out ?” “Yes’m.” “Well, then, I want to ask you t questioned receive an honest answer.*' “Oh, ma’am, I’m going to quit! Ye*, I’ll go right off!” “ Going to quit ? Why ?” “Because I feel that you are going to ask me if your husband and me were riding on the ferry boat together the other day, and I couldn’t tell you. I promised him on my sacred word I wouldn’t!”—Detroit Free Press. The hail fellow was not well met by Texas crops. Some damage was done the other day 4

The view is taken, from a point below the dam and shows the peonhar way in which the water ent through it.

THE DAM AT SOUTH FORK LAKE.