“I went toward the heart of the city. I do not know what the names of the streets were or where I was going. I simply picked my way through masses of slime and rubbish, which scar the beautiful wide streets of the once beautiful city. They won’t bear looking at, those piles of rubbish. There are things there that gripe the heart to see—a baby’s shoe, for instance, a little red shoe, with a jaunty tasseled lace—a bit of a woman’s dress and letters. Oh, yes, I saw these things myself, and the letters were wet and grimed with the marks of the cruel sea, but there were a few lines legible in it. “‘Oh, my dear,’ it read, ‘the time seems so long. When can we expect you back?’ Whose hand had written, or who had received, no one will ever know. THE STENCH IS OVERPOWERING. “The stench from these piles of rubbish is almost over-powering. Down in the very heart of the city most of the dead bodies have been removed, but it will not do to walk far out. To-day I came upon a group of people in a by-street, a man and two women, colored. The man was big and muscular, one of the women was old and one was young. They were dipping in a heap of rubbish, and when they heard my footsteps the man turned an evil glowering face upon me and the young woman hid something in the folds of her dress. Human ghouls, these, prowling in search of prey. “A moment later there was noise and excitement in the little narrow street, and I looked back and saw the negro running, with a crowd at his heels. The crowd caught him and would have killed him but a policeman came up. They tied his hands and took him through the streets with a whooping rabble at his heels. It goes hard with a man in Galveston caught looting the dead in these days. “A young man well known in the city shot and killed a negro who was cutting the ears from a living woman’s head to get her earrings out. The negro lay in the streets like a dead dog, and not even the members of his own race would give him the tribute of a kindly look. DESOLATION ON EVERY SIDE. “The abomination of desolation reigns on every side. The big houses are dismantled, their roofs gone, windows broken, and the high water mark showing inconceivably high on the paint. The little houses are gone—either completely gone as if they were made of cards and a giant hand which was tired of playing with them had swept them all off the board and put them away, or they are lying in heaps of kindling wood covering no one knows what horrors beneath.