From the sheet music in the Levy Collection, Johns Hopkins University:


THE AVALANCHE OF DEATH or THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR
Words by D. F. Hunton, music by John T Hiler, ©1889.

1. When that lake at Conemaugh
Burst its banks of mud and straw
And came thund’ring down the valley in its wrath,
How the people held their breath
When that avalanche of death
Crush’d out ev’ry town and hamlet in its path!
O, what sorrow and despair
Fill’d the hearts of thousands there,
When they saw their homes swept down the mountain side!
How they trembled when they saw
In the maelstrom’s deadly maw
Men and women struggling vainly in the tide!

CHORUS: Oh, those strain’d and tearful eyes!
O, those frenzied, pleading cries!
How they battled there in vain to reach the shore!
O, the faces pale with fright
That were sinking out of sight!
O, the pray’rs from lips that never pray’d before!

2. When that juggernaut of death
Leapt with unabated breath
Down the valley of that rapid mountain stream,
How it toss’d and tore in shreds
Blocks of buildings, stores and sheds,
And o’er all that desolation reigned supreme!
How those mills and churches grand
Crash’d like eggshells in the hand,
And were thrown like chaff and straw into the flow,
Till the gath’ring shades of night
O’er that weird and ghastly sight
Close in slowly on that awful scene of woe!

3. Oh! that carnival of flame,
When those helpless victims came
Clinging fast to floating wrecks upon the wave!
O, the thousands that were lost
In that midnight holocaust
Where no human had could rescue, none could save!
O, that mother’s wild despair
On the burning wreckage there!
How she strove to save her darling at the breast;
But the red flames at the piers
All unmoved by woman’s tears
Caught and flung them down to perish with the rest.

4. Yet that desolated town
By the deluge trampled down
Will not stop to brood in silence o’er her woe;
For beneath her mud and dust
There are seeds of hope and trust
Which were planted there a hundred years ago.
There are signs in yonder skies
That this mountain queen will rise
Phoenix-like above the ashes of defeat;
That her desolate domain
Will yet bud and bloom again
And her triumph will be certain and complete.