CHAPTER XV.
Terrible Pictures of Woe.
The proportion of the living registered since the flood as against the previous number of inhabitants is even less than was reported yesterday. It was ascertained to-day that many of the names on the list were entered more than once and that the total number of persons registered is not more than 13,000 out of a former population of between 40,000 and 50,000.
A new and more exact method of determining the number of the lost was inaugurated this morning. Men are sent out by the Relief Committee, who will go to every abode and obtain the names of the survivors, and if possible those of the dead.
The lack of identification of hundreds of bodies strengthens the inference that the proportion of the dead to the living is appalling. It is argued that the friends who might identify these unclaimed bodies are themselves all gone.
Another significant fact is that so large a number of those whom one meets in the streets or where the streets used to be are non-residents, strangers who have come here out of humane or less creditable motives. The question that is heard very often is, "Where are the inhabitants?" The town does not appear to have at present a population of more than 10,000.
It is believed that many of the bodies of the dead have been borne down into the Ohio, and perhaps into the Mississippi as well, and hence may finally be deposited by the waters hundreds of miles apart, perhaps never to be recovered or seen by man again.