“We were five hours making the trip from the mainland, and it was not until 7 o’clock Monday evening that we reached the wharf. When within two miles of the city we discovered a number of human bodies floating in the bay, and as the boat passed each it caused a shudder of horror among the living. Soon after the sun went down the moon came up in a cloudless sky. The bay was as a large mirror, and the scene seemed so peaceful and serene that for a moment it was hard to realize that we were soon to gaze upon the saddest, darkest picture in the book of time. A gentle breeze wafted our boat lightly over the smooth waters, and as we entered the harbor and neared the wharves, formerly the scene of busiest life, a silence deep and awful prevailed. No one on board spoke a word and the silence was only broken by the sound of a rifle sending some robber of the dead into endless eternity. “After landing we made our way over huge heaps of wreckage that were piled almost mountain high and emerged into an open space only to be hailed by armed sentries who were guarding the town against ghouls, vandals and looters. After explaining who we were the sentries permitted us to pass, and directed us to the Tremont Hotel, the chief place of rendezvous for the stricken people. GHOSTLY SCENES OF NIGHT. “As we made our way to the hotel, a thing we did with difficulty, because of the wreckage that covered the streets, we saw only desolation and ruin on every hand. The pale of the moon added weirdness to the chaos and look where we might there was nothing to gladden the searching eye. We passed several small groups of men who spoke in whispers and those we addressed looked at us strangely and wondered what we came for. “At last the hotel was reached and here most of us found friends and acquaintances who inquired after those we left behind. The city being under martial law, most of our party, after doing all in their power to relieve the anxiety of anxious men and women, disposed themselves about the hotel until morning, it being unsafe to roam about the city at night for fear of being mistaken for vandals and ghouls that have infested the city ever since the storm. To some of us it seemed that morning would never come, but it did come at last, and it came bright and fair. “I then started out to view the stricken city by daylight and such a scene as I witnessed is beyond the power of words to tell. The wildest flight of imagination can never paint the picture that lay before my view, and if none can imagine it, then there is no way to give one even a faint conception of it in words. The horror of it is beyond the pale of exaggeration, and the worst that may be said cannot even approach it. Acres and acres of houses were scattered in ruins over the earth and beneath the broken and shivered timbers were the decaying bodies of human beings, who suffered tortures worse than death.