ies taken to the hose house in Minersville were buried
shortly after ten o'clock yesterday morning. Of the twenty-six, thirteen
were identified. Eight women, a baby and four men were buried without
having been identified.

All day yesterday men were engaged in burying the dead. They ran short
of coffins, and in order to dispose of the rapidly decomposing bodies
they built rough boxes out of the floating lumber that was caught. In
this way they buried temporarily over fifty bodies in the cemetery just
above the town.

Putrefaction of dead bodies threatens the health of the whole region.
Now that the waters are fast shrinking back from the horrid work of
their own doing and are uncovering thousands of putrid and ill-smelling
corpses the fearful danger of pestilence is espied, stalking in the wake
of more violent destruction.

The air is already reeking with infectious filth, and the alarm is
widespread among the desolated and overwrought population.

Cremation Best.

Incident to this phase of the situation the chief sensation of the
morning was the united remonstrance of the physicians against the
extinguishment of the burning wreck of the demolished town which is
piled up against the bridge. They maintain, with a philosophy that to
anxious searchers seems heartless, that hundreds, if not thousands, of
lifeless and decaying bodies lie beneath this mass of burning ruins.

"It would be better," they say, "to permit Nature's greatest
scavenger--the flames--to pursue his work unmolested than to expose to
further decay the horde of putrefying bodies that lie beneath this
debris. There can be but one result. Days will elapse before the rubbish
can be sufficiently removed to permit the recovery of these bodies, and
long before that every corpse will be a putrid mass, giving forth those
frightful emanations of decaying human flesh that in a crowded community
like this can have but one result--the dreadful typhus. Every
battlefield has demonstrated the necessity of the hasty interment of
decaying bodies, and the stench that already arises is a forerunner of
impending danger. Burn the wreck, burn the wreck."

Sorrow Rejects Safety.

A loud cry of indignation arose from the lips of the vast multitude and
the warnings of science were lost in the eager demands of those that
sought the remains of the near and dear. The hose was again turned upon
the hissing mass, and rapidly the flames yielded to the supremacy of
water.