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  THE DISASTER WHICH ECLIPSED
  HISTORY


  THE
  JOHNSTOWN
  FLOOD


  ILLUSTRATED


  PUBLISHED BY
  RICHARD K. FOX,
  FRANKLIN SQ., NEW YORK.

  PRICE,      10 CENTS.

  Copyrighted 1889, by Richard K. Fox.




  PARIS UNVEILED

  --OR--

  An Expose of Vice AND Crime

  --IN THE--

  GAY FRENCH CAPITAL.


  Depicting in a truly graphic manner the
  doings and sayings of the liveliest
  people on the face of the earth
  in the liveliest capital in
  the world.

  Handsomely and profusely illustrated with
  innumerable Engravings.

  Translated from the French Expressly for
  Richard K. Fox

  PRICE BY MAIL, 25 CENTS.


  RICHARD K. FOX, Publisher,
  Franklin Square, New York




HORROR!

THE JOHNSTOWN DISASTER WHICH ECLIPSED HISTORY.

A DEATH-DEALING DAM.

Hundreds upon Hundreds of People Swept Away by the Flood.


There is not one chance in a million that the Conemaugh river would
ever have been heard of in history had it not been for its action on
Friday evening, May 31.

The Conemaugh river is, or rather was, a simple little stream that
meandered through Northwestern Pennsylvania and made glad by its
peaceful murmurings those who dwelt by its bankside, or bore tokens of
affection in the way of pleasure-seeking picnickers, moonlight parties
or across-stream excursionists upon its placid bosom. It was one of
those inoffensive creeks, termed by courtesy a river, that the Hudson
river of the East, the Mississippi of the Middle or the Red river of
the West might call a stripling.

There are times when even the still, small voice arises in its might
and asserts its supremacy, and the wee small river of Conemaugh did
that self-same thing on Friday evening, May 31. All along the banks
of the listless, yet ever flowing, little alleged river the farmers
were preparing for their anticipated harvests; the fishermen of the
section--amateur fishermen indeed, for they were only equal to the
fish--small and incomplete as was the Conemaugh, such as you and I,
reader, who took pleasure in flinging their worm-crowded hooks into
the stomach of a log and then going home for more bait; bonny fairies,
brisk young tillers of the soil, toilers, and seeming-tired miners,
these and all other human concomitants that go to make up such a quiet,
thriving bailiwick dwelt in the locality.

And so went on the listless life of the denizens of the Conemaugh
Valley, nestling at the foot of the Allegheny range.

Snuggling in the cosiest nook, right where no prying reporter or
trout-fishing President ever bent his way was Johnstown. The word "was"
is used advisedly, Johnstown is no more. At four o'clock on the fateful
day all was serene. At six o'clock all was desolation and destruction.

[Illustration: THE OLD JOHNSTOWN.]

The "big dam" had broken and the little brooklet had burst its sides
for very glee at being dubbed a creek, and was making itself known in
history. The Brooklyn Theatre holocaust, with its dead three hundred,
paled into insignificance. The Mud Run and Reading disasters had to
take a back seat.

"Let me alone for horror," murmured the Conemaugh, "and I'll get there!"

It did get there.

Right above Johnstown on the self-same Conemaugh, or rather where
the North Fork glides into that erstwhile inoffensive stream, was a
reservoir.

The reservoir is on the site of the old lake, which was one of the
feeders of the Pennsylvania Canal. It is the property of a number
of wealthy gentlemen in Pittsburgh, who formed themselves into the
corporation, the title of which is the South Fork Fishing and Hunting
Club. This sheet of water was formerly known as Conemaugh Lake. It is
from two hundred to three hundred feet above the level of Johnstown,
being in the mountains. It is about three and one-half miles long and
from a mile to one and one-fourth miles in width, and in some places
it is 100 feet in depth. It holds more water than any other reservoir,
natural or artificial, in the United States. The lake has been
quadrupled in size by artificial means, and was held in check by a dam
from 700 to 1,000 feet wide. It was 90 feet in thickness at the base,
and the height was 110 feet. The top has a breadth of over twenty feet.

From what could be ascertained by the writer, the reservoir-banks
had not been considered absolutely safe by the people of the big and
growing town. The reservoir was an artificial rather than a natural
lake. The art came in when the South Fork Club, a corporation of
gentlemen, took charge of the reservoir and dammed it. The South Fork
Club had the dam inspected once a month by the Pennsylvania Railroad
engineers, and their investigation showed that nothing less than some
convulsion of nature would tear the barrier away and loosen the weapon
of death. The steady rains of the past forty-eight hours had increased
the volume of water in all the small mountain streams, which had
already been swelled by the lesser rains earlier in the week. At this
time it was evident that something in the nature of a cloudburst must
have occurred just before the waters broke through the embankment.

Then the water came.

It came with a rush that astonished the natives.

There was a low murmuring at first, and then a rushing, hissing noise;
then crevices appeared in the dam side. Then the embankment gave away,
and onward rushed the torrent. It meant death and destruction to the
fairest country on God's footstool. Johnstown became a City of the
Dead, and the once pleasant valley was the Valley of Death.

Only those who were on the spot at the time can or could tell of the
terrible scenes that ensued, and even they could not depict them in
their real colors. It would take the pen of a mightier than human
hand to indite the story, and a brush of a heaven-inspired artist to
delineate the action. All was desolation, death and destruction.

Men, women and children, animals, houses, furniture, were swept on the
hell-bent waters!

All through Cambria came the flood. Then on to Cooperdale. Frantic
mothers, with children born and unborn were compelled to flee, and then
had to succumb to the deluge. The cruel, on-rushing tide had nothing in
its instincts humanitarian. The death-tide rolled onward and suckling
babes were swept from their mother's breasts even as if the King of Old
had proclaimed.

So on to St. Florence in Fairfield--well-named. The people at Ninevah
and the quiet, easy-going folk of the cruel-river towns counted their
losses by hundreds.

"Ten thousand dead," was the announcement that came over the wires.

The effect can never be told. Centuries may come and go, but no century
can make its mark in the history of time like that of the Nineteenth,
with its aide, the Conemaugh.

[Illustration: MIDST FIRE AND FLOOD.]

Hundreds upon hundreds of lives were lost. The number cannot even
be approximated, for in such regions there are always innumerable
people--what the careless world calls its floating population--who
would not be missed or accounted for until the Judgment roll is called.

Even on Monday, three days after the horror, mothers meandered about
frantically begging that their children might be returned to them, and
men with hearts brushed tears from their eyes and endeavored to make
them believe that their dear ones had been rescued. Children pleadingly
prayed that they might be saved, but the cruel, ever onward-rushing
flood gathered them in and swept them onward.

To add to the horror the Johnstown Bridge, as if to add terror to
terror and to make confusion worse confounded, swept from its
approaches and precipitated the horror-stricken multitude into the
torrent. An overturned stove in a dwelling inaugurated a conflagration.
Nearly a hundred people were literally burned to death, thus adding
holocaust to the far more preferable death by drowning.

Scarcely had the news of the terrible disaster been sent abroad than
the alert newspapers had their commissioners speedily on their way to
the scene.

Only the most meagre accounts had been given to the public for the
reason that every mode of communication via telegraph or train had been
cut off.

When the newspaper representatives reached Johnstown the scene was a
pitiable one. The former town was a swamp. Debris was piled here, there
and everywhere, and the pestilential stench from the dead bodies was
next to unbearable.

The scene beggars description.

Even the trained newspaper men turned their eyes aside and held their
nostrils. Corpses everywhere. Dank corpses at that, with glazed, fishy
eyes and sloppy wet hair, that made the onlooker feel aweary, and not
over anxious to handle.

In a single hole, after the waters had passed by, one hundred and fifty
bodies were found. Just imagine it! Two hours before these one hundred
and fifty souls were alive, but there they were, huddled together as if
they had been congregated for the purpose which had asserted itself.

East Conemaugh was almost depopulated, and Franklinborough, on the
north of Johnstown, was entirely swept away. Mineral Point, between
Johnstown and the viaduct, was blotted out of existence. If any of the
six hundred souls that formerly resided there are alive, the reporters
could not find them. Ninevah, just below the Conemaugh furnace, is a
city of corpses. Indeed, from South Fork to Bolivar and for a distance
of a dozen miles or so the banks of the old-time river are literally
strewn with corpses.

After the death-dealing current had gone on the work of tallying began.
It will never be ended.

Then the fiends in human shape began their ghoulish work of robbing the
dead. Summary punishment was dealt out to some of them. A vigilance
committee, hastily organized, ran a score of them into the river, and
that was the end of them.

At five o'clock on Monday evening hundreds upon hundreds of citizens
are arriving upon the scene. Coffins are coming in by the carload, and
the result of philanthropic and necessary aid began to pour in.

More relief is needed.

The best story of the horror can be gathered from the tale of an
eye-witness, C. W. Linthicum. Said he:

"My train left Pittsburgh Friday morning for Johnstown. The train was
due at Sang Hollow at 4.02, but was five minutes late.

"At Sang Hollow, just as we were about to pull out, we heard that the
flood was coming. Looking ahead up the valley, we saw an immense wall
of water thirty feet high raging, roaring, rushing toward us.

"The engineer reversed his engine and rushed back to the hills at full
speed, and we barely escaped the waters. We ran back three hundred
yards and the flood swept by, tearing up tracks, telegraph poles,
houses and trees.

[Illustration: A STEAM HORSE WRECKED.]

"Superintendent Pitcairn was on the train. We all got out and tried to
save the floating people. Taking the bell-cord, we formed a line and
threw the rope out, thus saving seven persons.

"We could have saved more, but many were afraid to let go the debris.
It was an awful sight. The immense volume of water was roaring along,
whirling over huge rocks, dashing against the banks and leaping high
in the air, and this seething flood was strewn with timber, trunks of
trees, parts of houses, and hundreds of human beings, cattle and almost
every animal.

"The fearful peril of the living was not more awful than the horror of
hundreds of distorted, bleeding corpses whirling along the avalanche of
death.

"We counted 107 people floating by and dead without number. A section
of roof came by, on one of which were sitting a woman and a girl."

Other tales by eye-witnesses confirm the fact that the horror has never
been excelled by anything of its kind in history.

Indeed, it will never perhaps be known what the real extent of the
awful calamity is.

Johnstown, with its former population of ten thousand or thereabouts,
was almost entirely swept away when the awful floods came, and many of
the villages between that point and Nineveh are things of the past so
far as life is concerned. Indeed the whole valley is a veritable Valley
of the Shadow of Death.

So great was the crush of the wreckage, debris and dead bodies, at some
points along the valley that dynamite had to be used, thus adding to
the horror of the scene.

Nineveh is twenty-three miles below Johnstown, yet a large number
of the bodies found at Nineveh were those of former residents of
Johnstown, who had been swept that great distance down the valley to
their death.

There are incidents where bodies were carried a hundred miles and there
deposited.

A relation of some of the real facts, circumstances and scenes and
incidents of the terrible disaster would be considered Munchausenish by
the majority of our readers, but some of them were miraculous. Here is
one. S. H. Klein, a New Yorker, had a queer experience. He was at the
Merchants' Hotel and he worked like a beaver during the trying times of
Friday night and Saturday morning, aiding in the rescue of no less than
sixty persons from the floating debris. Among these were the Rev. Mr.
Phillips, his wife and two children. Mr. Phillips is a stalwart man and
when the flood struck his house he fled to the roof with his family.
Presently the house floated and the sturdy dominie placed his wife and
two children on a table. Then he got under the table, and, letting it
rest with its precious burden on his head, arose to his feet. As the
house floated down on the tide it grazed the hotel building, and Mr.
Klein and others assisted in hauling the imperilled parson and his
family into an upper window of the hotel.

Here are other incidents: The story of the mishap to the day express
train at Conemaugh bridge is developing slowly through the efforts of
the railway authorities to obtain definite information. Of the 300
passengers on the train, all but eight seem to be accounted for, and it
is believed that these eight are lost. They are Bessie Bryan, daughter
of Mahlon Bryan of Philadelphia, and her companion, Miss Paulson of
Pittsburgh; Mrs. Easley, Rev. Mr. Goodchild and Robert Hutchinson, of
Newark, N. J.; Andrew Leonard, Mrs. J. Smith and Chris Meisel, manager
of the Newark baseball club.

Miss Bryan was a delicate young woman. She was returning from a
Pittsburgh wedding with Miss Paulson. They had been preceded the night
before by the bridal couple, who were to be guests at the Bryan home at
Germantown. They rode in the Pullman car, and did not get out quickly
enough. Fearing that they could not reach the hill where the other
passengers took refuge, they returned towards the car, but before they
had reached it the waters caught them and carried them away.

Miss Rose Clarke, a beautiful and well-known young lady, the daughter
of a very prominent citizen, had a remarkable experience.

[Illustration: A SECTION OF JOHNSTOWN NOW.]

"When the water rose," she said, "we were all at home. It drove us
from floor to floor, and we had just reached the roof when the house
started. It went whirling toward the bridge, struck it, and went down.
Mother, my little sister and I all caught on another roof that was
just above the water, but father and my little brother went down with
the house. Father's face was towards us as he sank. He shouted goodby,
and that was the last. Just then my little sister lost her hold and
she followed father and brother. Then mother called out that she was
going to drown. I got to her and raised her head out of the water.
My head rested on a sawlog and a board protected me from the other
timbers. Some rescuers came running down the bridge and saw us. I made
them take mother out first and meantime I struggled to get out of the
timbers, but they closed in on me.

"The more I struggled the tighter they held me. The fire was just
behind me, and I could feel its heat. By the time the men had carried
mother to the bank the fire was so fierce they could hardly get back.
When they did reach me they could not get me out, for my foot was fast
between a saw log and a piece of timber. Then they ran for tools. The
fire kept sweeping on before the breeze from up stream. I had almost
resigned myself to an awful death when some other men braved the fire
and reached me. They began chopping and sawing. One blow of an axe cut
off a drowned man's hand. The men tied a rope around me. How they got
me out finally I scarcely know. My kneecap was almost cut off. When the
current sucked my father down he caught me by the foot; that is what
dragged me so far into the timbers."

Miss Clarke and her mother are both badly injured. Some of the men who
rescued the young lady were Slavs.

Miss Mamie Brown was caught in the timbers in almost the same way as
Miss Clarke, near the bank. The fire was coming on towards her, and the
would-be rescuers had been driven back. Finally John Schmidt braved the
dangers and rescued her. Father Trautwein, of St. Columbia's church,
who witnessed Schmidt's brave conduct, said if any man is a hero
Schmidt is that man.

As has been written dynamite had added its horror to the sixty-acre
mass of wrecked buildings, railroads, streets and human beings that lie
above the railroad bridge. A half dozen times