of lumber it carried, that gave it an additional and terrific
force, and houses, five bridges, railroad trains, boilers and factories
were whirling furiously about. What could stand against such an
instrument of destruction as this? It swept the triangle as clean as a
board. It tore up pavements. It dug out railroad tracks, and twisted
them into strange and fantastic shapes. It carried with it thousands of
human beings, crushing them against the fragments, and drove their
bodies into the thick mass of mud and sand which it carried at the
bottom. It went on and on straight as an arrow, and piled masses of all
it had gathered against and over the solid arches of the stone bridge.
The bridge sustained the shock. How it did it engineers who have seen
the effects and the marvellous strength of the flood in other places
wonder. An immense raft of houses and lumber and trees and rubbish of
every kind, acres in extent, collected here.

Roasted in the Debris.

In these houses were imprisoned people still alive, in numbers estimated
at two or three thousand, tossed about in the whirling flood which was
turned into strange eddies by the obstruction it had met. In some way
not explained a fire broke out.

The frame structures packed in closely together were like so much tinder
wood. Those who had escaped drowning died in their prisons a more
horrible death.

While this was going on that part of the divided stream which turned to
the south continued on its way. At first its violence was undiminished,
but as it went on the inclination of the land and the obstacles it met
somewhat broke its force. It swept across the triangle, inclining toward
the south, and was turned still further in that direction by the bed of
Stony Creek, at the foot of the mountain which forms the western barrier
of the basin in which Johnstown lies. Its course is plainly visible now,
as it was two hours afterward. Where it started everything is cleared
away.

A little further along the houses are still standing, but they are only
masses of lumber and laths. Still further to the north they are
overturned or lying upon their sides or corners, some curiously battered
and as full of great holes as if they had been shot at with cannon. They
are surrounded by driftwood and timbers, ground into splinters, railroad
cars, ties and beams, all in a wild, untraceable jumble.

The wave reached to the north at least a distance of a mile from the
point where it was d