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Show A TERRIBLE VISITATION. The work of the tornado demon in Iowa was peculiar in its horrible mutilation of the bodies of its victims. A fierce battle with cannonading and shells could not have inflicted such wounds or mangled the human anatomy in so singularly frightful a fashion. In some cases the clothing was torn off and the shreds left clinging to the body had to be cut away from the flesh. Dirt, sand, plaster and cinders were ground into the flesh, and could not be washed or scraped away, as if the body had been mashed and rolled about under tremendous pressure in sand and ashes. The bodies were beaten into shapeless masses, spines were driven into skulls and through the top of the head, backs were broken, eyes torn out of the sockets and left hanging down the cheeks, the entrails and organs of the body were scooped out of the body's cavities and limbs pulled asunder. The head of one beautiful girl was so crushed down into her body that it had to be cut out. Even hens and prairie chickens were plucked as clean of their feathers as if they had been made ready for market. Mud, dirt and gravel were not simply splashed on to the sides of buildings, but driven into the fibre, as if discharged from a cannon. In one case a stable was lifted, carried over the tops of the tallest trees and deposited on a hill six or seven hundred feet away, the three horses in it being unharmed. Indeed, the catalogue of ruin wrought by the tornado, and the miraculous escapes from its violence, fatigue credulity and defy the imagination. Almost without an exception, however, those who were warned by the ominous rush and crash of the storm long enough to run to the cellars, escaped death, and, with few exceptions, all injuries also. |