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

NO RED TAPE TO STAND IN THE WAY.

Washington, Sept. 14—General Spaulding, Acting Secretary of the Treasury, took further measures to-day for the relief of the distressed citizens of Galveston by arranging for their transportation by foreign vessels to New Orleans or other gulf ports. The law provides that American vessels only can carry passengers between American ports, but during the present conditions the Treasury Department will remit the penalties to which foreign vessels would be liable, for the relief of Galveston.

The Rev. J. F. McCarthy, of Newark, N. J., assistant pastor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, to-day received a special despatch from Galveston to the effect that all of the twenty-four Newark nuns at the Catholic Convent of the Sacred Heart at that place had been saved from the general destruction of life and property by the terrible cyclone of Saturday. Father McCarthy at once despatched a special message to the homes of the nuns’ relatives with this information. They were reported lost in an account contained in a preceding chapter of this volume.

A prominent newspaper called attention to the necessities of the situation as follows:

“As later news is received from Texas the full extent of the destruction of life and property is revealed. No such visitation of nature’s force has ever before descended upon a community in this country. There is no longer any doubt that the death list will run into the thousands. It will probably never be known accurately how many perished in the track of last Sunday’s storm. Many bodies have been washed out to sea, and of the hundreds of corpses that lay exposed in the streets and buried under fallen buildings only a fraction will be identified.

“For the sanitary protection of the living it has been found necessary to deny the dead an ordinary burial. A great city full of prosperous people has been suddenly left without food, water, clothing and all the daily necessaries of life. Worst of all, the survivors are absolutely without means of recuperation from the awful disaster that has overtaken them. They are totally dependent upon the outside world for assistance.