The record of June 3rd continues as follows: The horror of the situation
does not lessen. The latest estimate of the number of dead is an
official one by Adjutant General Hastings, and it places the number
between 12,000 and 15,000.

The uncovering of hundreds of bodies by the recession of the waters has
already filled the air with pestilential odors. The worst is feared for
the surviving population, who must breathe this poisoned atmosphere.
Sharp measures prompted by sheer necessity have resulted in an almost
complete subsidence of cowardly efforts to profit by the results of the
disaster. Thieves have slunk into places of darkness and are no longer
to be seen at their unholy work.

All thoughts are now fixed upon the hideous revelation that awaits the
light of day, when the waters shall have entirely quitted the ruins that
now lie beneath them, and shall have exposed the thousands upon
thousands of corpses that are massed there.

A sad and gloomy sky, almost as sad and gloomy as the human faces under
it, shrouded Johnstown to-day. Rain fell all day and added to the
miseries of the wretched people. The great plain where the best part of
Johnstown used to stand was half covered with water. The few sidewalks
in the part that escaped the flood were inches thick with black, sticky
mud, through which tramped a steady procession of poor women who are
left utterly destitute. The tents where the people are housed who cannot
find other shelter were cold and cheerless.

A Great Tomb.

The town seemed like a great tomb. The people of Johnstown have supped
so full of horrors that they go about in a sort of a daze and only half
conscious of their griefs. Every hour, as one goes through the streets,
he hears neighbors greeting each other and then inquiring without show
of feeling how many each had lost in his family. To-day I heard a gray
haired man hail another across the street with this question.

"I lost five; all are gone but Mary and I," was the reply.

"I am worse off than that," said the first old gentleman. "I have only
my grandson left. Seven of us gone."

And so they passed on without apparent excitement. They and everyone
else had heard so much of these melancholy conversations that somehow
the calamity had lost its significance to them. They treat it exactly as
if the dead persons had gone away and were coming back in a week.

The Ghastly Search.

The melancholy task of searching the ruins for more