About the only people who have come into Johnstown, not having business there connected with the clearing up of the city, are people from a great distance, hunting up their friends and relatives. There are folks here now from almost every State in the Union, with the exception, perhaps, of those on the Pacific coast. There are people, too, from Pennsylvania and States near by, who, receiving no answer to their telegrams, have decided to come on in person. They wander over the town in their search, at first frantically asking everybody right and left if they have heard of their missing friends. Generally nobody has heard of them, or some one may remember that he saw a man who said that he happened to see a body pulled out at Nineveh or Cambria City, or somewhere, that looked like Jack So-and-So, naming the missing one. At the morgues the inquirer is told that about four hundred unidentified dead have already been buried, and on the fences before the morgues and on the outside house walls of the buildings themselves he reads several hundred such notices as these, of bodies still unclaimed:—
A woman, dark hair, blue eyes, blue waist, dark dress, clothing of fine quality; a single bracelet on the left arm; age, about twenty-three.
An old lady, clothing undistinguishable, but containing a purse with twenty-seven dollars and a small key.
A young man, fair complexion, light hair, gray eyes, dark blue suit, white shirt; believed to have been a guest at the Hurlburt House.
A female; supposed to belong to the Salvation Army.
A man about thirty-five years old, dark-complexioned, brown hair, brown moustache, light clothes, left leg a little shortened.
A boy about ten years old, found with a little girl of nearly same age; boy had hold of girl’s hand; both light-haired and fair-complexioned, and girl had long curls; boy had on dark clothes, and girl a gingham dress.
The people looking for their friends had lots of money, but money is of no use now in Johnstown. It cannot hire teams to go up along the Conemaugh River, where lots of people want to go; it cannot hire men as searchers, for all the people in Johnstown not on business of their own are digging in the ruins; it cannot even buy food, for what little food there is in Johnstown is practically free, and a good square meal cannot be procured for love nor money anywhere. Under these discouragements many people are giving up the search and going home, either giving their relatives up for dead or waiting for them to turn up, still maintaining the hope that they are alive.
Johnstown at night now is a wild spectacle. The major part of the town is enveloped in darkness, and lights of all colors flare out all around, so that the city looks something like a night scene in a railroad yard. The burning of immense piles of débris is continued at night, and the red glare of the flames at the foot of the hills seems like witch-fires at the mouth of caverns. The camp-fires of the military on the hills above the Conemaugh burn brightly. Volumes of smoke pour up all over the town. Along the Pennsylvania Railroad gangs of men are working all night long by electric light, and the engines, with their great headlights and roaring steam, go about continually. Below the railroad bridge stretches away the dark, sullen mass of the drift, with its freight of human bodies beyond estimate. Now and then, from the headquarters of the newspaper men, can be heard the military guards on their posts challenging passers-by.