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 Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

A BULWARK OF DEAD PEOPLE.

But few lives were lost, in comparison, in this district, and while the stores were flooded and houses toppled over by the winds and undermined by the water, yet that bulwark made of dead people and all they had struggled for and owned in this life, kept back the savage waves from the Gulf and saved the rest of the town. Looking at this wall, from which, as I write, come the odors of decomposition, climbing it, as this correspondent has done, he is sure in his mind that if it had not been formed not as many people of Galveston Island would have escaped as on that day when Pompeii was shut out from the eyes of the world by the veil of ashes.

These are speculations. In years to come men may be able in talk of this greatest of catastrophes in the cool, deliberate way which will admit of reasonable hypotheses as to the causes of the results, but they cannot do it now. The wind blew from the east. The currents were criss-cross. My God, it was awful. And that is as far as you can get with any of those left. For they know no more. They know that the wind blew. They know the waves rolled. They know, or most of them do, that they lost dear ones, and that is all. The hydrographer of the future may tell us all.

But as far as such people of North Texas, as I am, they will leave it to him. He may know the currents and the winds, and tell to the satisfaction. But he will never tell of these horrors. I cannot in the present. I may not be able to do it in the future. When the story of the funeral pyres and the burials at sea, and the reasons for both, are explained—when the pictures are given of the rescued, hunting for the dead—then indeed if all are drawn as they are—natural and unstained—another monstrosity in news paper life will have arisen.