and
other debris and other exposure in the water have tended to hasten
decomposition, which has set in in scores of cases, making interment
instantly necessary.

Bodies are being buried as rapidly as they are identified. The work of
Pittsburgh undertakers in examining the dead has rendered it possible to
keep all those embalmed two or three days longer, but this is desirable
only in cases where identification is dubious and no claimants appear at
all.

To-day the cars sent out from Pittsburgh with provisions for the living
were hastily cleared in order to contain the bodies of the dead intended
for interment in suburban cemeteries and in graveyards handy to the
city.

Formality is dispensed with. In some instances only the undertaker and
his assistants are present, and in others only one or two members of
the family of the dead.

The dead are more plentiful than the mourners.

Death has certainly dealt briefly with the stricken city. "Let the dead
bury the dead" has been more nearly exemplified in this instance than in
any other in this country's history. The magnitude of the horror
increases with the hours. It is believed that not less than two thousand
of the drowned found lodgment beneath the _omnium gatherum_ in the
triangle of ground that the Conemaugh cut out of the bank between the
river and the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge.

The Greatest Funeral Pyre in History.

The victims were not upon it, but were parts of it. Whole houses were
washed into the apex of the triangle. Hen coops, pigstys and stables
were added to the mass. Then a stove ignited the mass and the work of
cremation began. It was a literal breast of fire. The smoke arose in a
huge funnel-shaped cloud, and at times it changed to the form of an hour
glass. At night the flames united would light up this misty remnant of
mortality. The effect upon the living, both ignorant and intelligent,
was the same. That volume of smoke with its dual form, produced a
feeling of awe in many that was superior in most cases to that felt in
the awful moment of the storm's wrath on Friday.

Hundreds stood for hours regarding the smoke and wondering whether it
foreboded another visitation more dire than its predecessor.

The people hereabouts this morning awoke to find that nothing was left
but a mass of ashes, calcined human bones, stoves, old iron and other
approximately indestructible matter, from which only a light blue vapor
was arising. General Hasting