EXTREME SUFFERING AMONG SURVIVORS—FEW WOMEN AND CHILDREN SAVED—CROWD GREETS SURVIVORS—MANY INJURED—EXPERIENCES OF SURVIVORS
A GRIM reminder of the fact that even the most perfect of modern Atlantic liners is subject to the dangers of the sea was given when the survivors of the passengers and crew who so gaily sailed from Quebec on Thursday returned to that city, ragged, exhausted and wounded, leaving hundreds of their shipmates dead in the river or strewing the shore with their corpses.
EXTREME SUFFERING AMONG SURVIVORS
The survivors were carried by the special Intercolonial Railway, and a more mixed, worn-out crowd of passengers never appeared on a train in Canada. It was more like a relief train after a battle than a returning party from a steamship. The men were weary and worn, dressed in anything that could be secured at Rimouski to cover them, most of them having been rescued either nude or in their night clothes.
FEW WOMEN AND CHILDREN SAVED
The women in the party were few, it being evident that the terrible experiences of the early part of the day, when the Empress of Ireland went to the bottom of the St. Lawrence, had claimed a far greater toll of the weaker sex.
Such few women as were left showed shocking traces of the hardships and anguish they had endured. Most of them were supported by men, and after disembarking from the train walked through the lane of curious sight-seers with drawn features and the utter indifference of suffering and fatigue.
A pathetic contrast was furnished by the presence of a few children in the sad procession, who had with the buoyancy of youth recovered from the shipwreck and prattled merrily to mothers or to their protectors when their mothers were not there, evidently enjoying the excitement of the rescue.