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

CLARA BARTON’S LETTER.

“The conditions here are as much as you will gather from what you have read. Like some other fields that we have visited, it does not admit of exaggeration. One can scarcely imagine how it could have been worse, and yet one sees the city full of people left alive; but when we think of the hundreds, and it may be even thousands, lying buried and decaying in great heaps of debris stretched for miles along the edge of what was once a town, it is hard to conjecture anything worse.

“Supplies are coming in from all sides. Of course, disinfectants were the first thought, to protect the living against the dead. All that can be done by the purification of fire is being done, the pyres of human sacrifice are burning day and night. I have never had any fears of an epidemic. We have in all our experience, you will remember, never known an epidemic to follow a flood. There will, I believe, be no pestilence here.

“There is a portion of the town containing business houses, which, while being terribly damaged, stood upright, and stores with their valuable contents were entirely submerged. The streets are filled with elegant goods, drying off, and it will be most reasonable charity to buy these of the merchants at the prices put on them—which are scarcely half—in preference to using first those that are sent, until these dealers are relieved in a measure.

“Every accommodation which the city can afford was placed at our disposal. A large warehouse is being fitted to-day ready to receive the carloads of goods on the way. Every official, from the highest to the least, calls to know what the Red Cross needs, and how it can be served. The grateful confidence with which they approach us, or even speak the name, makes one humble, filled with the fear that we will fail to justify the fullness of the confidence and hope that is offered.

“There seems to be an unusually large number of children with no one to care for them or who knows them. There are five or six hundred of these, it is stated, gathered in the houses of the poor, overburdened with their own wants, and yet cannot see another child suffer. We will help them as far as possible, gather them in, and the world will give them homes. It requires great calamities to show how generous and great are the hearts of the people of the land.