The Great Galveston Disaster: Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of De
John Stuart Mill · en
After surveying the dismantled business section of the city, a cabman
made his tortuous way through the residence sections. It was a slow
journey, for the streets were jammed with houses, furniture, cooking
utensils, bedding, clothing, carpets, window frames, and everything
imaginable, to say nothing of the numerous carcasses of the poor horses,
cows and other domestic animals.
HOUSES COMPLETELY CAPSIZED.
Some of the houses were completely capsized, some were flat upon the
ground with not one timber remaining upon another, others were unroofed,
some were twisted into the most fantastic shapes, and there were still
others with walls intact, but which had been stripped of everything in
the way of furniture. It is not an uncommon thing for the wind at high
velocity to perform miraculous things, but this blast, which came at the
rate of 120 miles an hour, repeated all the tricks the wind has ever
enacted, and gave countless new manifestations of its mysterious power.
It were idle to undertake to tell the curious things to be seen in the
desolate residence streets; how the trees were uprooted and driven
through houses; how telegraph poles were driven under car tracks; how
pianos were transferred from one house to another.
More ominous than all this were the vast piles of debris, from which
emanated odors which told of dead victims beneath, men, women and
children, whose silent lips will never reveal the agony from which death
alone released them.
More sorrowful still the tear-stained faces of the women, half-clad, who
looked listlessly from the windows, haunted by memories from which they
can never escape—the loss of babies torn from their breasts and hurled
into a maelstrom of destruction, to be seen no more forever.
What were those dismantled homes to the dismantled hearts within? How
can it be described? Will the world ever know the real dimensions of the
disaster which crushed Galveston and left her broken and disconsolate
like a wounded bird fluttering on the white sands of the ocean?
And the beach? That once beautiful beach, with its long stretches of
white sand—what has become of that? Misshapen, distorted, blotched and
drabbled and crimsoned, it spread away to the horizons of the east and
west, its ugly scars rendered more hideous by the glinting rays of the
sun. Part of it had disappeared under the purling waters. Far out here
and there could be seen the piling, where once rested the places of
amusement.
The waves were lashing the lawns which once stretched before palatial
homes. And the pools along the shore were stinking with the remains of
ill-fated dogs, cats, chickens, birds, horses, cows and fish. Shoreward,
as far as the eye could reach, were massive piles of houses and timbers,
all shattered and torn.
A cloud of smoke was noticed, and driving to the scene, we found a large
number of men feeding the flames with the timbers of the wrecked homes
which once gave such a charm to Galveston beach.