Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/70

 hung by a mass of fine splinters to their stumps. Others, green and full of life, had been entirely stripped of their bark even into the small limbs. Nothing could better show the irresistible rotary motion of the whirlwind. Beyond the grove we followed the fearful path thickly strewn with the shivered and splintered fragments of a neighbor’s house until we reached the cellar, all that remained of the family home of two hours before. Several of the inmates were terribly injured, while others had strangely escaped. We returned home dreading to hear the tidings that were sure to come from the east and west. At ten o’clock that night we were aroused by some emigrants who had been caught in a part of the tornado many miles to the east and were so terrified by the dreadful scenes they had witnessed that they fled form the horror, too dazed to realize that they were out of danger. We learned form them that twelve miles east, in Clinton County, houses and barns had been swept away, scores of people killed and mangled, animals killed and strewn over the farms and along the highway, and the roads obstructed by shattered trees. Day after day the news came of death and desolation until this was finally known to be the greatest tornado which has ever swept over any Northern State.

Investigation showed the storm to have gathered in eastern Nebraska as an ordinary thunder shower, about one o’clock p.m. An hour later it passed over Sioux City, where the rain was very heavy, with but little wind. In Hamilton County it was reinforced by other heavy clouds, which were driven toward it by air currents, and the hailstones increased in size. The clouds came together from different directions and the rotary motion developed. Column-like masses of cloud depended from time to time and the volume of wind increased as it bore southeastward into Hardin County. New Providence was a little country