Here again no description could adequately serve its purpose. The sea, with fury spent, had sullenly retired. The strongest buildings, half standing, roofless and tottering, told what once had been the make-up of a thriving city. But that cordon of wreckage skirting the shore for miles it seemed, often twenty feet in height, and against which the high tide still lapped and rolled! What did it tell? The tale is all too dreadful to recall—the funeral pyre of at least five thousand human beings. The uncoffined dead of the fifth part of a city lay there. The lifeless bodies festering in the glaring heat of a September sun told only too fatally what that meant to that portion of the city left alive. The streets were well-nigh impassable, the animals largely drowned, the working force of men diminished, dazed, and homeless. The men who had been the fathers of the city, its business and its wealth, looked on aghast at their overwhelmed possessions, ruined homes, and, worse than all, mourned their own dead.
Yet these men, to the number of thirty or more, had, as one may say, pulled themselves together, and were even at that early date a relief committee, holding their meetings at the wrecked and half-ruined hotel, almost the only public house left standing. To this hotel we also went and reported to the committee. To say that we were kindly and gratefully received by them says nothing that would satisfy either ourselves or them.
The conditions were so new to them that it was a relief to meet persons who had seen such things before. We were asked not only to act with them, but to assume charge of the administration of relief. This, of course, we would not do, but that we would meet with, counsel, and aid them in every way in our power, is needless to affirm. That we did do this, through every day of our stay of three months, not only our own conviction, but the unasked and unexpected testimony of both Galveston and the Legislature of the State of Texas, go to assure.
On the third day after our arrival we were joined by Mr. Stephen E. Barton, President of the former Central Cuban Relief Committee, and Mr. Fred L. Ward, its competent secretary, who became our secretary from the time of his arrival until the close of the field, continuing until after our return to headquarters and settling the last account. Not only the thanks of the Red Cross are due for his faithful, painstaking work, but his name is still a household word through the score of counties skirting the shore on the mainland of Texas.
It may be interesting to readers to know what is done first, or just how a relief party commence under circumstances like that. A few words will give an outline. First the ground must be overlooked and conditions learned. This is not easy when it is remembered that broken houses, cars, wagons, church steeples, and grand pianos were liable to be encountered in the middle of the leading streets, themselves buried three feet in the coarse black sand, brought in by the great tidal wave.
Nevertheless, a building must be found in which to store and distribute the supplies that would immediately come. How needful these supplies would be can be inferred when it is recalled that scores of persons came alive out of that wreck, with simply the band of a shirt or a night-dress held by its button about the neck as the only reminder that ever a cover of clothing had been theirs.
A little meeting of my assistants early held assigned each to his duty and his place. A warehouse, fortunately still intact, was generously supplied by Mr. John Sealy. Major James A. McDowell, with the experience of this branch of Red Cross work from Johnstown down, and the record of twenty-six battles in the old civil war, was placed in charge. Here is one of the scenes given by a casual eye-witness:
A poor feeble-looking man, with scant clothing, enters the warehouse and waits. "Hello there," calls the observant major—with his Grand Army button—overhauling clothes for the visitor. "But, major, I was a Confederate soldier." "Lord bless your poor suffering soul, what difference does that make? Here, this will suit you."
It was thought advisable by some of the party to establish an orphanage, which was done and carried through, regardless of the common-sense idea that few children would survive, when the parents were drowned. And so it proved, although the work was faithfully administered.
Homes must be made, lumber obtained, and houses built. The Red Cross sent out the appeal for lumber and aided in the work of shelter.