Ye who know not the horror of those days, who took no part in the saddest spectacle that man ever witnessed, may well shed tears of sympathy for those whose human tenement blazed on the funeral pyre in street or avenue, or whose requiem was sung by the waves that had brought death—but shed tears, too, for the brave men who faced this most gruesome duty with a Spartan courage the world has never known before. The dead past has buried its dead. For a week Galveston was under martial law. There was no disorder. There was some robbing of the dead by ghouls. This was checked by a punishment swift and sure. The city rose from its ruins as if by magic. Street after street was cleared of debris. A small army of men worked from early morn until the shadows of night descended, to lift the city from its burden of wreckage. Then, when danger of epidemic seemed passed, attention was turned to commerce. The bay was strewn with stranded vessels. Monster ocean steamers weighing thousands of tons had been picked up like toys, driven across the lowlands, and thrown far from their moorings. One big steamship was hurled through three bridges, another, weighing 4,000 tons, was carried twenty-two miles from deep water, and dashed against a bayou bluff in another county. The great wharves and warehouses along the bay front were a mass of splintered, broken timbers. But the mighty energy of man worked wonders. Marvelous to say, under such conditions, a bridge 2⅛ miles long was built across the bay within seven days and Galveston, which had been cut off from the world, was once more in active touch with all the marts of trade and commerce. An undaunted people strove as only an indomitable people can strive, to rehabilitate the city. The signs of the cripple are still upon the city, but every hour brings nearer the day when the crutches will be thrown away and Galveston, which by nature and by man was chosen as the entrepot for the great West, will rise to a loftier destiny and a more enduring commercial prosperity than seemed possible before she was tried in the crucible of disaster. Longfellow says: Our lot is the common lot of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. The dark and dreary days were crowded into Galveston’s life with horror unspeakable. It is an inexorable law of nature that after the storm comes the radiance of a glorious sunshine. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE First News of the Great Calamity—Galveston Almost Totally Destroyed by Wind and Waves—Thousands Swept to Instant Death 17 CHAPTER II. The Tale of Destruction Grows—A Night of Horrors—Sufferings of the Survivors—Relief Measures by the National Government 29 CHAPTER III.