At twelve o’clock quietness had settled down upon the scene. The streets were deserted. All had formed the impression that the bodies were to be burned, and had gone to their homes, leaving the wreck still burning, and the dead to be consumed. The engines had been ordered to their houses. The lights glimmered from the homes where the wounded were lying. A few were at the wreck. The expressman guarding the treasures in the safe, sat solitary and alone through the long hours, while the flames which were burning precious bodies, crackled and threw their lurid light across the scene. The smell of burning flesh pervaded the air even half a mile away. A horrid sight was presented in the awful valley. The flames which had blazed so high had consumed the wood and furniture of the train. The gilded palaces were reduced to mere skeletons of iron. The bridge lay a mere network of blackened beams. The trucks and wheels and heavy rods were lying in every direction. But beneath these horrid ribs of death, lay the blackened bodies of men, women and children, burned, and still burning, amid the snow and ice. Blue tongues of fire shot here and there amid the blackened mass, as if some unseen monster were still licking up the life of its unburied victims. The white snow lay like a winding sheet along the valley, but the skeleton was in the midst with the tall abutments towering above and the precious bodies silent in death beneath the ruins.

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 Homoeopathic 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.

Ten surgeons were, at one time, crowded into one small house, where the worst cases were placed. By morning, however, the amputation was performed by Dr. J.C. Hubbard, assisted by Drs. Fricker and Case, and about twenty of the wounded, including the fireman and engineer, were removed to the hospital in Cleveland. This relieved many of those who were at the Eagle Hotel, as they found comfortable quarters at the hospital, and the rest were taken into rooms where a fire could be built, and where a carpet covered the floor; but through all the night the fire continued to burn. The haggard dawn drove the darkness out of the valley of the shadow of death. Seldom was revealed a ghastlier sight. On either side of the ravine, frowned the dark and bare arches from which the treacherous bridge had fallen, while, at their base, the great mass of ruins covered the men and women and children, who had so suddenly been called to death. The cherished bodies lay where they had fallen, or where they had been placed, in the hurry and confusion of the night.

Piles of iron lay on the thick ice or bedded in the shallow stream. The fires smouldered in great heaps where many of the helpless victims had been consumed; while men went about, in wild confusion, seeking some trace of their friends among the wounded or dead.