It is doubtful whether it will be possible even to reclaim what was once the business portion of the city. The river will have to be returned to its old bed in order to do this.
Among the lost is H.G. Rose, the District Attorney of Cambria county, whose body was among the first discovered.
Governor Foraker, of Ohio, this afternoon sent five hundred tents to this city. They will be pitched on the hillside to-morrow. They are sadly needed, as the buildings that are left are either too damp or too unsafe for occupancy.
Burying the Dead.
The work of burying the dead began this morning and has been kept up till late this evening. The bruising of the bodies by logs and trees and other débris and other exposure in the water have tended to hasten decomposition, which has set in in scores of cases, making interment instantly necessary.
Bodies are being buried as rapidly as they are identified. The work of Pittsburgh undertakers in examining the dead has rendered it possible to keep all those embalmed two or three days longer, but this is desirable only in cases where identification is dubious and no claimants appear at all.
To-day the cars sent out from Pittsburgh with provisions for the living were hastily cleared in order to contain the bodies of the dead intended for interment in suburban cemeteries and in graveyards handy to the city.
Formality is dispensed with. In some instances only the undertaker and his assistants are present, and in others only one or two members of the family of the dead.
The dead are more plentiful than the mourners.
Death has certainly dealt briefly with the stricken city. "Let the dead bury the dead" has been more nearly exemplified in this instance than in any other in this country's history. The magnitude of the horror increases with the hours. It is believed that not less than two thousand of the drowned found lodgment beneath the omnium gatherum in the triangle of ground that the Conemaugh cut out of the bank between the river and the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge.