The climate is perfect, very little labor produces good results, and I think that without going more into detail you will all admit that the Sea Islanders were a happy, contented, very comfortably fixed set of people. So it was at the going down of the sun on the twenty-seventh day of August, 1893. When the sun rose the next morning, hundreds of those cabins had been swept from the earth, with all they contained. Over thirty thousand of those people were homeless, clotheless, foodless, with no resources. Over eight hundred were dead (the figures are from actual census). A hurricane on its way from the Gulf of Mexico to the north had swerved somewhat from the usual course of these storms, its centre, instead of following the Gulf Stream, had come in over the land, and the great uprising of the surface of the sea, which always occurs at the calm centre of these storms, caused by the low atmospheric pressure, as shown by low barometer, had, instead of dissipating itself on the surrounding ocean, inundated our islands to depths varying from one to ten feet according to the height of the land, the average height of the tidal wave, above high water, being about seven feet. Thus the surface of each island was a sea, and driven by the tremendous force of the wind over a hundred miles per hour, as recorded at Charleston, north of us, and at Savannah, south, into death-dealing waves. The houses, all built on posts two to four feet above ground, came down like card houses. Some collapsed and crushed their inmates on the spot; others went drifting off with men, women and children clinging to them, until falling to pieces they dropped their living freight into eternity. Some escaped by seeking shelter amid the branches of the giant pines and oaks; some were so saved, but others had but found death traps, for yielding to the force of the wind, many were thrashed to death by the whipping branches, or knocked off into the raging sea below. And among the thousands of these trees which were uprooted, or twisted off, were many on whose branches people were clinging. I knew nothing of what was occurring on other islands than the one we were dwelling on, Paris Island, where I am in command of the naval station; for, deprived of every means of communication with the outer world by the destruction of all railroads and steamers that connected with us, telegraph and telephone lines down, and all of my boats either sunk or wrecked, our own affairs had my entire time and attention. A WORK OF RESCUE.