A Train With Three Hundred Passengers Believed To Have Been Burned With All On Board.
Mora, Minn., Sept. 2. -- One hundred and forty-eight bodies have been taken out of Hinckley and places round about. The near town of Pokegama is wiped out. The Eastern Minnesota train, which left St. Paul at 1:05 yesterday afternoon, arrived at Hinckley at 6 o'clock last night and took 300 people on board, moving westward toward St. Cloud. The train has not been heard of since. It has not reached St. Cloud and has not gone back to Hinckley and is believed to have been burned with all on board. There is no chance that they are alive unless they have found a stream or slough into which they could go and evade the fire.
Every family in Pokegama is homeless and needs immediate relief.
Freight train 26 is in the ditch one and a half miles west of Pokegama. Twenty-five people are in the caboose and fire all around them. They mus have relief at once or perish. HANS NELSON, section foreman at Pokegama, started away yesterday afternoon with his family on a hand car to escape the fire, and nothing has since been seen or heard of them. It is certain they have perished.

Telegraphic Communication Restored.
Marquette, Mich., Sept. 2. -- Telegraphic communication has been established as far west as Marengo junction, on the Wisconsin Central and Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic railways. A trestle 1,000 feet long at Marengo was wholly destroyed, but trains from here to Duluth are ordered via Ashland.
Two bridges at Bibon, a station on the Duluth road, were burned. The Wisconsin Central has lost three bridges south of Marengo. The railroad officials are yet unable to state the approximate damage to railroad property.
Nothing is yet known of the whereabouts of Duluth passenger No. 8, due here this morning, but Supt. KETCHAM, expressed the hope of locating it before midnight.

Fears Felt For The Safety Of A Passenger Train.
Marquette, Mich., Sept. 2. -- Much apprehension exists here regarding the whereabouts of a passenger train which left Duluth yesterday afternoon and was due here at 1:45 a.m. today. Two hundred miles of its run lies through the fireswept district and is is feared bridges have been burned beyond Ewan both in front and behind the train, thus cutting off escape. The wires are working east of Ewan and up to that point little damage was done except to timber.

Wreck Of A Freight Train Caused By Forest Fires.
Marquette, Mich., Sept. 2. -- Specials from Nestoria and Ontonagon report the wreck of a freight train on the Milwaukee & Northern branch, twenty miles south of Ontonagon, near Pori station, yesterday noon. Engineer FRED ALMQUIST was killed and Brakeman STEPHEN ORTON had a leg broken. The wreck was caused by forest fires burning the ties and warping the rails. Five carloads of logs were piled on top of the engine and was soon a mass of flames in which poor ALMQUIST'S body was reduced to cinders. The hamlet of South Rubicon, on the same road, is reported burned.

A Country Strewn With Dead Bodies.
St. Paul, Minn., Sept. 2. -- A special to the St. Paul Morning Call from Pine City, Minn., says:
About fifty people are in hospitals here -- in the courthouse, rink and other places. The place is in a state of confusion. There has been so much terror that estimates are very vague. It may be stated, however, that the whole number of lives lost has been about 850. The names cannot be learned. Many of them are Swedes.
The whole amount of property is variously estimated at from $700,000 to $800,000. It is said the Brennan Lumber Co., lost $500,000.
The town of Sandstone, eight miles north of Hinckley has been completely wiped out with a loss of twenty-five people. Pine City has been but little injured in property, but some who left here to fight the fire at Hinckley and other places lost their lives.
Mission Creek lost no lives, the loss of life being confined to Hinckley and Sandstone, and those who went from this city.
At Hinckley the bodies are being piled up in the graveyard and other places. Many of them cannot be recognized. They will be buried as soon as possible. Boxes are coming from St. Paul for that purpose and men are at work here making more.
The relief train from St. Paul will remain here as it is no use going farther north, no one being there. All those who suffered and are alive are in this city and the people have acted in the most noble manner.
The stories told are horrifying. Fifteen dead bodies lie along the tracks of the railroad between Hinckley and Miller. In the marsh at Hinckley there are about 200 bodies waiting to be taken up. In addition to these forty-two are strewn along the track in different places, charred, blackened and sickening. There is not, perhaps, 1 percent of them can be identified.

Decatur Daily Republican Illinois 1894-09-03