AFTER A TORNADO.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 536, 25 January 1913, Page 2

AFTER A TORNADO.

THE DEAD AND WOUNDED. I was glad when the negro porter made up the beds for the night, as I anticipated being up early next morning to change trains at St. Paul. However, when the sun rose; arid I blinked out sleepily at a huge expanse of water, the negro poked his head through my f curtains. "Guess yo' needn't get a hustle on,"" he drawled. "There's washouts all 'lon' line. We don't make St. Paul on time." . Then T realised that the train was picking its way very cautiously, and that the Mississippi had a swollen body, for she was bulging with water over and above her wide limits, and the railway lines seemed to be learning to swim. Presently the porter reappeared., "Guess you'll be wantin' all yo* time," he said. '"We're.at the breakfastin' station in twenty minutes. It'll, be yo' only chance for a meal. We've to go right 'lon' through lowa to make St. Paul." The whole accent is placed on the St. in the local lingo of these parts. The breakfasting station was quite unprepared to breakfast an unexpected trainloacl of people. There was a tremendous • clattering of knives and fork?,, but a depressing scarcity of edibles. It was disappointing to have to return' to the train as,hungry as when one had left it, and spend a, long wearisome morning.

At different stations we received fragments of news as 'to a catastrophe of the'previous night. A terrific tornado had made havoc in the neighbourhood. The banks of the Mississippi had been washed away in many places, and endless bridges had b/fim destroyed.

At last, hours and hours late, our train crept into St; Paul. At the same moment a luggage train drew up at the opposite platform.

It would take a lifetime to forget the sight 0 f its gruesome freight. The trucks were laden with stretchers • and as the wind blew aside their white coverings one saw faces blanched in death, rigid in agony, or absolutely battered out of all shape. Beside these ° half-hidden remains clustered men women and children, many only half-dressed, and all more or less maimed and. disfigured l . Nurses'and doctors hurried up, and."a crowd' ,of agonised inquirers rushed through the station,,, some h'niling living friends, with happy . tears, others bursting, into wild grief as ttiey found their worst fears realised. All the pent-up; misery of life confronted one; in grim horror. It was 1 a moment when- terror entered the soul and pne; quailed before dread' existence in „an inexplicable universe. ■ 'What has happened ?" I asked a porter. "Where do these poor creatures come ' from ?"

?'From New Richmond. They heard a noise like a dozen" express trains coming slick upon them, and in five minutes the entire town lay flat like a pack of cards. Hundreds were killed and injui«d—l guess pretty near all the inhabitants, except a small few who got down to their cellars. In these tornado parts the houses are made with cellars under them, but a tornado don't allow much time for getting anywhere, "—• " The Globular Jottings of Griselda."