A long line of bodies lay packed on the bridge just above the water of the stream. They were covered with trucks and brakes, and heavy bars, and the debris of wood and the ashes of the wreck. Packed in a horrid mass they lay, crushed and broken, and blackened by the smoke and heat. Ghastly forms lay in this open grave. Headless, armless trunks were packed with the broken limbs, and the heads from which the brains were oozing, while the stumps of arms seemed lifted from the blackened heaps as if in mute supplication--too shocking for any human heart. The delicate form of a mother lay beside her little child, but both reduced to mere black lumps with scarcely a semblance to a human form. A full sized woman lay amid the mass but with no sign of either legs or arms except the broken bones which had been crushed away by the fall. Bodies of men also lay cut completely asunder, and presenting only the half of the human form--an awful, sickening sight.
Everywhere through the valley there were bodies lying silent in death. The pale flames which flickered here and there, betokened where many of them lay. Underneath the horrid bars of iron, on the black, deceitful ice, in the watery depths of the unconscious stream, packed in heaps underneath the burning cars--were the dead! It was an appalling and terrifying scene. The darkness and loneliness, and the very desertion, were enough, but through the very nerves there came the horrid consciousness of the many, many dead.
Far away were their friends, the night was lonely, and the storm was pitiful, but scattered through that grave were the bodies of the dead. It was hard to realize it, but, to the hearts of friends, these unburied were no strangers, and yet they burned, in loneliness.
The railroad authorities came at half past one o’clock. Five surgeons from the Homœopathic College, in Cleveland, the superintendent, the assistant superintendent, the train-despatcher and others. The wounded were in their beds at the time. The fireman was at the Eagle Hotel. The engineer was at Mr. Apthorp’s, two other persons, also, who needed surgical operations, were at the same house. The surgeons of the road, as they arrived, sought first the employees--the fireman and the engineer--and to these, gave their professional attention. The surgeons of the village had already attended to the passengers, had dressed the wounds of most of them, and were waiting for the proper reaction, to perform the amputation on those whose limbs were broken.