It is probable that there are few instances on record where a movement toward relief of such magnitude, commenced under circumstances so new, so unexpected, so unprepared, and so adverse, was ever carried on for such a length of time and closed with results so entirely satisfactory to both those served and those serving, as this disaster, which, if remembered at all at the present day, is designated as the “Hurricane and Tidal Wave of the Sea Islands off the Coast of South Carolina.” The descriptions of this fearful catastrophe I shall leave to the reports of those who saw, shared its dangers, and lived within its tide of death. They will tell how from three thousand to five thousand human beings (for no one knew the number) went down in a night; how in the blackness of despair they clung to the swaying tree-tops till the roots gave way, and together they were covered in the sands or washed out to the reckless billows of the great mad ocean that had sent for them; of the want, woe, and nothingness that the ensuing days revealed when the winds were hushed, the waters stilled, and the frightened survivors began to look for the lost home and the loved ones, and hunger presaged the gaunt figure of famine that silently drew near and stared them in the face; how, with all vegetable growth destroyed, all animals, even to fowls, swept away, all fresh water turned to salt--not even a sweet well remaining--not one little house in five hundred left upright, if left at all; the victims with the clothing torn and washed off them, till they were more nearly naked than clothed--how these thirty thousand people patiently stood and faced this silent second messenger of death threatening them hour by hour. Largely ignorant, knowing nothing of the world, with no real dependencies upon any section of its people, they could only wait its charity, its pity, its rescue, and its care--wait and pray--does any one who knows the negro characteristics and attributes doubt this latter? Surely, if angels do listen, they heard pleading enough in those hours of agony to save even the last man and woman and the helpless babe. Something saved them, for there is no record of one who died of starvation or perished through lack of care. About the 28th or 29th of August, 1893, the press commenced to give notice, such as it could get over wrecked roads and broken wires, of a fearful storm coming up from the West Indies that had struck our coast in the region of South Carolina, sweeping entirely over its adjacent range of islands, known as the Old Port Royal group, covering them from the sea to a depth of sixteen feet, with the wind at a rate of one hundred and twenty miles an hour--that its destructive power was so great that it had not only swept the islands, but had extended several miles on to the mainland of the State.