Daily Kennebec Journal

The Horrible Railroad Accident.

We yesterday saw a gentleman who had conversed with a person present at the rescue of the passengers from the wreck on the Stonington & Providence Railroad. He says that no one can begin to depict the horror of the dreadful scene. Men, women and children were crushed to death, burned to a crisp, or drowned in the stream swollen to a torrent. The conductor on the steamboat train had the presence of mind to signal the heavily laden express train that was thundering on behind him, and thus prevented an accident ten times more disastrous if possible than that which had occurred. The first reports put the number of killed outright at seven. There were at least twenty-five killed outright, or met their death by burning or drowning. Several bodies were picked up in the stream below. Two young men were wedged into a car, and were burned to a crisp, it being found impossible to rescue them. The body of a woman was found whose head and neck had been cut off close to the shoulders, and clothing all burnt off. She held a child in her arms, which was also dead. Men and women mangled and dead were lying about in an indiscriminate mass, forming a scene too dreadful to describe.