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

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.