upper stories; the wave, even more than it did, would have crushed as with the single blow of a mighty hammer, and the number of survivors who could tell a tale of wonderful deliverance would have been correspondingly diminished. The lesson of these facts is for those who dwell below dams or reservoirs. If there be nothing in the nature of the channel to distribute the water, and the rupture be instantaneous, the destruction of life and property will be awful to contemplate.
At the Gautier Works, the flood, while extending over all the valley, was yet parted into three principal divisions. One of these, following the course of the Conemaugh, rushed down against the foot of the hill, just above the Stone Bridge, and would have instantly swept away that magnificently solid structure, had it not stood parallel to, rather than at right angles with the torrent; another turning to the left, swept across Conemaugh Borough and the upper wards of Johnstown, destroying hundreds of stone buildings, the German Lutheran church, and the Hulbert House; while the third swept straight down through the middle of the city, demolishing the Y. M. C. A. Hall, the Municipal buildings, and scores of the finest residences. This last, turned into a reverse current by the damming of the water at the bridge, was presently rolled back, to ensure the destruction of whatever had escaped in its downward course.
Thousands of people, drifted from the towns above, were dead already, or still struggling in the water; and to these were now quickly added many thousands more. Of the people of Johnstown, it may be said that not a soul had time to fly. We hear nothing at all about escapes to the hills. At the scream of the warning whistle, some were startled, and looked up the river. According to their place in the town, they saw, at the distance of a mile, half a mile, or only a hundred yards away, an ominous and inexplicable dark cloud, which might be smoke or spray, hanging upon the surface of the water. They felt that something unusual had taken place, but of its nature they were not well aware. Those who saw it at the greatest distance had hardly time to scramble to the upper stories of their dwellings, before, even there, they found themselves struggling in the water; while the vast majority, on looking forth, saw buildings, not a half block above them, already leaping from their foundations. Simultaneous with the roar and rush of the torrent, came the crash of houses, the shrieks and cries of men, women and children, the revolution of everything as in a kaleidoscope, and then, driven with the speed of a race-horse, houses, furniture, cars, locomotives, railroad tracks, the Gautier plant, animals alive and dead, trees, lumber and infinite wreckage were rushed onward to be jammed and piled at the railroad bridge in a maze of ruin fifty feet high and covering forty acres of ground. Here the laboring waters finding no ready exit, were in part turned to the left up Stony Creek, and in part rolled swiftly backward across the center of the city, bearing the drift on their bosom, and in some instances dropping shattered houses within a square or two of their former places. The wreckage above the bridge, entangling and holding fast, hundreds, if not thousands, as well of the living as the dead, presently caught fire, thus adding, through all the long awful night, to the horrors of flood, the fiercer horrors of flame. From the roaring conflagration, a sickly, baleful gleam was thrown through a mile radius of surrounding gloom; but like the Miltonic fires of perdition, from those flames
“No light, but rather darkness visible,
Served only to discover sights of woe.”
Some say they saw hundreds throw themselves backward into the flames, to perish, and the record of the morgues, showing how often a charred arm or leg or half a body was interred, prove that upon many, dead or alive, the fire did its awful work, while in many cases, doubtless, it was done so effectually that not a remnant could be found.
As the night drew on, St. John’s Roman Catholic church which had successfully withstood the angry waters, was seen to be on fire, driving out the miserable creatures that had taken refuge in it, and with its fierce heat scorching those on the surrounding drift, till they were fain to relax their hold and drop into the water. Those flames, as they climbed the beautiful spire and seized the emblem of Christianity on its lofty top, seemed to mock the confidence of those who in their last extremity were still clinging to the cross. In the tower of the Lutheran church, near to Stony Creek, the town clock was still sustained far above the raging waters. The flood had struck the city at four, and as the hour of five drew on, when drifting corpses were now everywhere, and thousands clinging to the wreck lay at the mercy of the flood or flame, the mechanism of the clock serenely moving brought the hands to mark the hour, and slowly five times the ponderous hammer smote the massive bell, tolling the knell of thousands which that hour had rushed into eternity. On the ears of the living, the sound of those slowly beating strokes fell with a horrible sensation; for at the end of another hour would be tolled a dirge for them. There was something terrible in the calmness of that clock, faithfully telling the flight of Father Time, reckless whether he had brought joy or woe to mortal men.
But not engulfing flood, nor burning temple, nor holocaust of victims at the bridge could shake the steadfast confidence of many in their God. One little boy, when his mother and the rest were clinging in the drift at the
