A GRAVEYARD WASHED AWAY BY A FLOOD.

Evening Star, Issue 3297, 13 September 1873, Page 3

A GRAVEYARD WASHED AWAY BY A FLOOD.

An Arkansas paper says : —From parties who arrived lately from the neighborhood of the Perkins’ Place, about eighteen miles down the river, we learn the particulars of one of the most ghastly and sickening spectacles which we have, ever been called on to publish. Those of our readers who have ever visited this locality will remember the old graveyard which was situated a short distance below Perkins’ Place, and which, for many years prior to the war, was the common cemetery of the entire surrounding neighborhood. It has been used for the same purpose since that time, and yyas the receptacle of about 500 bodies. The graveyard contains about soiu* acres, and the interments were so numerous that the entire space was well filled, and was situated immediately on the bank of the river. The recent rise in the Arkansas was so great, and the current of the river so swift, that it carried oil the Tvhole cemetery apd its mouldering contents of humanity. The river for miles down stream was literally covered with the floating regains of the dead. The many old and ancient interments, as soon as the water struck them, crumbled into atoms and were borne off on the bosom of the current in unreclaimed particles. Those more recently buried, and in a moderate state of preservation floated off like so many logs, and in many cases were rescued by the inhabitants, who towed them to the shore. When the terrible and sickly disaster became known the entire population turned out to a man, and by every means in their power, improvised for the occasion, commenced the rescue of the floating coffins from a surging river. §ome forty or fifty in all had been rescued

and safely deposited on land. Representstive Brown, of Pulaski,. was present, and assisted in the rescue of many of the bodies. The shattered remains of some have been borne to the sea, never to be reclaimed. Some of the minor details, as related to us, are too sickening for publication, and conse quently we refrain from giving them to the public. It is supposed that one-third of the bodies will ever be recovered.