o the men. "There is one
body at least quite close to the surface." The men started in with a
will. A large pile of underclothes and household linen was brought up
first. It was of fine quality and evidently such as would be stored in
the bedroom of a house occupied by people quite well to do. Shovels full
of jumbled rubbish were thrown up, and the odor of flesh became more
pronounced. Presently one of the men exposed a charred lump of flesh and
lifted it up on the end of a pitchfork. It was all that remained of some
poor creature who had met an awful death between water and fire.

The trunk was put on a cloth, the ends were looped up making a bag of
it, and the thing was taken to the river bank. It weighed probably
thirty pounds. A stake was driven in the ground to which a tag was
attached giving a description of the remains. This is done in many cases
to the burned bodies, and they lay covered with cloths upon the bank
until men came with coffins to remove them. Then the tag was taken from
the stakes and tacked on the coffin lid, which was immediately closed
up, as identification was of course out of the question. There is a
stack of coffins by the railroad bridge. Sometimes a coffin is carried
to the spot on the charred debris where the find is made.

Prodding Corpses with Canes.

The searchers by thrusting down a stick or fork are pretty sure to find
a corpse. I saw a man run a cane in the debris down to the hilt and it
came up with human flesh sticking to it. Another ran a stick into the
thoroughly cooked skull of a little boy two feet below the surface.
There are bodies probably as far down as seventy feet in some cases, and
it does not seem plain now how they are to be recovered. One plan would
be to take away the top layers of wood with derricks, and of course the
mass beneath will rise closer to the surface. The weather is cold
to-day, and the offensive smell that was so troublesome on the warm days
is not noticeable at a distance.

Saved From Disfiguration.

The workers began on the wreck on Main street just opposite the First
National Bank, one of the busiest parts of the city. A large number of
people were lost here, the houses being crushed on one side of the
street and being almost untouched on the other, a most remarkable thing
considering the terrific force of the flood. Twenty-one bodies were
taken out in the early morning and removed to the morgue. They were not
very much injured, considering