“I went to Williamsport last Thursday,” said Mr. Skinner, “and on Friday the rain fell as I had never seen it fall before. The skies seemed simply to open and unload the water. The Susquehanna was booming and kept on rising rapidly, but the people of Williamsport did not seem to be particularly alarmed. On Saturday the water had risen to such a height that the people quit laughing and gathered along the sides of the torrent with a sort of awe-stricken curiosity.
“A friend of mine, Mr. Frank Bellows, and myself went out to see the grand spectacle, and found a place of observation on the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge. Great rafts of logs were swept down the stream, and now and then a house would be brought with a crash against the bridge. Finally, one span gave way and then we beat a hasty retreat. By wading we reached the place of a man who owned a horse and buggy. These we hired and started to drive to the hotel, which is on the highest ground in the city. The water was all the time rising, and the flood kept coming in waves. These waves came with such frequency and volume that we were forced to abandon the horse and buggy and try wading. With the water up to our armpits we got to an outhouse, and climbing to the top of it made our way along to a building. This I entered through a window, and found the family in the upper stories. Floating outside were two canoes, one of which I hired for two dollars and fifty cents. I at once embarked in this and tried to paddle for my hotel. I hadn’t gone a hundred feet when I capsized. Going back, I divested myself of my coat, waistcoat, shoes, and stockings. I tried again to make the journey, and succeeded very well for quite a distance, when the canoe suddenly struck something and over it went. I managed to hold the paddle and the canoe, but everything else was washed away and lost. After a struggle in the water, which was running like a mill-race, I got afloat again and managed to lodge myself against a train of nearly submerged freight cars. Then, by drawing myself against the stream, I got opposite the hotel and paddled over. My friend Bellows was not so fortunate. The other canoe had a hole in it, and he had to spend the night on the roof of a house.
“The trainmen of the Pennsylvania road thought to sleep in the cars, but were driven out, and forced to take refuge in the trees, from which they were subsequently rescued. The Beaver Dam mill was moved from its position as though it was being towed by some enormous steam tug. The river swept away everything that offered it any resistance. Saturday night was the most awful I ever experienced. The horrors of the flood were intensified by an inky darkness, through which the cries of women and children were ceaselessly heard. Boatmen labored all night to give relief, and hundreds were brought to the hotel for safety.
“On Sunday the waters began to subside, and then the effects were more noticeable. All the provision stores were washed out completely, and one of the banks had its books, notes, and greenbacks destroyed. I saw rich men begging for bread for their children. They had money, but there was nothing to be bought. This lack of supplies is the greatest trouble that Williamsport has to contend with, and I really do not see how the people are to subsist.
“Sunday afternoon Mr. C. H. Blaisdell, Mr. Cochrane, a lumberman and woodman, a driver, and myself started in a wagon for Canton, with letters and appeals for assistance. The roads were all washed away, and we had to go over the mountains. We had to cut our way through the forests at times, hold the wagon up against the sides of precipices, ford streams, and undergo a thousand hardships. After two days of travel that even now seems impossible, we got into Canton more dead than alive. The soles were completely gone from my boots, and I had on only my night-shirt, coat, and trousers, which I had saved from the flood. A relief corps was at once organized, and sent with provisions for the sufferers. But it had to take a roundabout way, and I do not know what will become of those poor people in the meantime.”
Mr. Richard P. Rothwell, the editor of the New York Engineering and Mining Journal, and Mr. Ernest Alexander Thomson, the two men who rowed down the Susquehanna River from Williamsport, Pa., to Sunbury, and brought the first news of the disaster by flood at Williamsport, came through to New York by the Reading road. The boat they made the trip in was a common flat-bottom rowboat, about thirteen feet long, fitted for one pair of oars. There were three men in the crew, and her sides were only about three inches above the water when they were aboard. The third was Mr. Aaron Niel, of Phœnixville, Pa. He is a trotting-horse owner.
Mr. Thomson is a tall, athletic young man, a graduate of Harvard in ’87. He would not acknowledge that the trip was very dangerous, but an idea of it can be had from the fact that they made the run of forty-five miles in four and one-half hours.
“My brother, John W. Thomson, myself, and Mr. Rothwell,” he said, “have been prospecting for coal back of Ralston. It began to rain on Friday just after we got into Myer’s Hotel, where we were staying. The rain fell in torrents for thirty-two hours. The water was four or five feet deep in the hotel when the railroad bridge gave way, and domestic animals and outhouses were floating down the river by scores. The bridge swung around as if it were going to strike the hotel. Cries of distress from the back porch were heard, and when we ran out we found a parrot which belonged to me crying with all his might, ‘Hellup! hellup! hellup!’ My brother left for Williamsport by train on Friday night. We followed on foot. There were nineteen bridges in the twenty-five miles to Williamsport, and all but three were gone.
“In Williamsport every one seemed to be drinking. Men waited in rows five or six deep in front of the bars of the two public houses, the Lush House and the Concordia. We paid two dollars each for the privilege of sleeping in a corner of the bar-room. Mr. Rothwell suggested the boat trip when we found all the wagons in town were under water. The whole town except Sauerkraut Hill was flooded, and it was as hard to buy a boat as it was to get a cab during the blizzard. It was here we met Niel. ‘I was a raftsman,’ he said, ‘on the Allegheny years ago, and I may be of use to you,’ and he was. He sat in the bow, and piloted, I rowed, and Mr. Rothwell steered with a piece of board. Our danger was from eddies, and it was greatest when we passed the ruins of bridges. We started at 10.15, and made the run to Montgomery, eighteen miles, in one and a quarter hours. In places we were going at the rate of twenty miles an hour. There wasn’t a whole bridge left on the forty-five miles of river. As we passed Milton we were in sight of the race-track, where Niel won a trot the week before. The grand stand was just toppling into the water.
“I think I ought to row in a ’Varsity crew now,” Mr. Thomson concluded. “I don’t believe any crew ever beat our time.”