od. The big stone bridge is crowded with freight
cars loaded with material for repairing the structure and with people
who are eager to see something horrible.

That Funeral Pyre.

The further half of the bridge which was swept away has been replaced by
a trembling wooden affair, wide enough only for two persons to walk
abreast. To the left of the bridge and across the river are the great
brick mills of the Cambria Iron and Steel Company, crushed and torn out
of a semblance to workshops. Just in front of the office is what has
been called the "funeral pyre," and which threatens to become a
veritable breeding spot of pestilence.

Just before me a group of red-capped firemen are directing a stream of
water upon such portions of the mass as can be reached from the shore.

Where Death Was Busiest.

Over to the right, at the edge of a muddy lagoon which marks the limit
of the levelling rush of the mad torrent, there are dozens and dozens of
buildings leaning against each other in the oddest sort of jumble. The
spectacle would be ludicrous if it were not so awfully suggestive of the
tragic fate of the inmates. Behind this border land are the regions
where death was wofully busy. In some streets a mile from any railroad
track locomotives and cars are scattered among the smouldering ruins. In
the river the rescuers are busy, and so are the Hungarians and native
born thieves.

Men take queer souvenirs away sometimes. One came up the bank a short
time ago with a skull and two leg bones, all blackened and burned by the
fire.

There is, of course, no business done, and those who have been spared
have little to do save watch for a new phase of the greatest tragedy of
the kind in modern history. On Prospect Hill is a town of tents where
the homeless are housed and fed, and where also a formidable city of the
dead has been just prepared. Such are some of the scenes visible from
the window.

The Skeleton of Its Former Self.

The water has receded in the night almost as rapidly as it came, and
behind it remains the sorriest sight imaginable. The dove that has come
has no green leaf of promise, for its wings are draped with the hue of
mourning and desolation. There now lies the great skeleton of dead
Johnstown. The great ribs of rocky sand stretch across the chest scarred
and covered with abrasions. Acres of mud, acres of wreckage, acres of
unsteady, tottering buildings, acres of unknown dead, of ghastly objects
which h