DISTRESS AT ALVIN.
Houston, Texas, September 15.—The following statement and appeal came from R. W. King, of Alvin, Texas:
“I arrived in Alvin from Dallas, and was astonished and bewildered by the sight of devastation on every side. Ninety-five per cent. of the houses in this vicinity are in ruins, leaving 6,000 people absolutely destitute. Everything in the way of crops is destroyed, and unless there is speedy relief there will be exceedingly great suffering.
“The people need and must have assistance. Need money to rebuild their homes and buy stock and implements. They need food—flour, bacon, corn. They must have seeds for their gardens, so as to be able to do something for themselves very soon. Clothing is badly needed. Hundreds of women and children are without a change, and are already suffering. Some better idea may be had of the distress when it is known that boxcars are being improvised as houses and hay as bedding.
“Only fourteen houses in the town of Alvin are standing on their foundations, and they are badly damaged. While the great sympathetic heart of this grand Nation is responding so generously for the stricken city of Galveston, it should be remembered also that the smaller towns—where the same condition of total wreck exists, though miraculously with smaller loss of life—need immediate help from a liberal people.”
The situation on Saturday, the 15th, is told in the following graphic description:
“Under the firm rule of the military authorities, affairs in Galveston are rapidly assuming a more cheerful aspect. The forces of law and order are crystallizing every hour, and now that the people realize that there is definite authority to which they can appeal they are going to work systematically to renovate the city and prevent any possibility of epidemic. The force engaged in burying the dead and clearing up the city has increased steadily until now twenty-five hundred men are pushing the work.
“Adjutant-General Scurry holds the town fast with a strong grip. He is compelling all men whose services can be spared from public business to join the forces at the work in the streets.
“The burial of the dead goes steadily on. All the corpses in the open, along the shores or near the wreckage, have been sunk in the gulf or burned in the streets. The labor of clearing away the debris in search of bodies began at Thirtieth street and avenue O, one of the worst wrecked parts of the town. Two hundred men were put at work, and in thirty minutes fifty corpses were found within a space thirty yards square. Whole families lay dead piled in indescribable confusion.