sponges, chloroforming the suffering, before
his scalpel aid reached them. Sometimes there were a dozen victims ahead
of his knives.

Once these sisters stopped, for the first time showing horror, by a
great pile of dead children and infants on the river bank laid one on
top of the other. By one man each little body was seized and the
clothing quickly cut from it. Then he passed it to another, who washed
it in the river. Then a third man took it in the line of the dead. But
the Sisters of Mercy saw they were too late there, and passed on among
the living.

Most of the Pennsylvania Railroad passengers who left Pittsburgh for the
East last Friday and were caught in the flood in the Conemaugh Valley
reached Philadelphia in a long special train at 5 o'clock Friday
morning, June 7th, after a week of adventure, peril and narrow escapes
which none of them will ever forget. A few of their number who lost
presence of mind when the flood struck the train were drowned. The
survivors are unanimous in their appreciation of the kindness shown them
by Pennsylvania officials, and in their praise of the hospitality and
generosity of the country folk, among whom they found homes for three
days. The escapes in some instances seem miraculous.

An hour before the flood the first section of the day express stopped at
Conemaugh City, about ten miles below the dam at South Fork, on account
of a washout farther up the valley. The second section of the express
and another passenger train soon overtook the first and half an hour
before the dam broke all these trains stood abreast on the four-track
road. The positions now occupied seems providential. If the railroad men
had foreseen the disaster they could not have shown greater prudence,
for the engine of the first section of the express, on the track nearest
the mountain side, stood about a car's length ahead of the second. The
engine of the third train came to a stop a car's length behind the
second and on the outer track, which was within a few feet of the
swollen Conemaugh River, stood a heavily laden freight train.

When the flood came it struck the slanting front of the four
locomotives. Most of the passengers had, in the meantime, escaped up the
mountain side. Three of the locomotives were carried down by the
irresistible torrent, but the fourth turned on its side and was soon
buried under sand, tree trunks and other debris. This served as a
breakwater for the flood and accounts for t