SOLDIERS HAVE MIRACULOUS ESCAPE.
The loss of life among the soldiers of the regular army stationed in the barracks on the beach proves to have been largely overestimated. The original report was that but fifteen out of the total number in the barracks on the beach had been saved. Last night and to-day they turned up singly and in squads, and at present there are but twenty-seven missing, whereas the first estimate of casualties in this direction alone was nearly two hundred. It is probable that some of the twenty-seven will answer roll call later in the week.
One soldier reached the city this afternoon who had been blown around in the Gulf of Mexico and had floated nearly fifty miles going and coming, on a door. Another one who showed up to-day declared that he owed his life to a cow. It swam with him nearly three miles. The cow then sunk and the soldier swam the balance of the way to the mainland himself.
Efforts were made this afternoon to pick up the dead bodies that have floated in with the tide, after having been once cast into the sea. This is awful work, and few men are found with sufficiently strong nerves to last it more than thirty minutes at a time. All of the bodies are badly decomposed, swollen to enormous proportions and of so dark a hue that it is possible to tell only by the hair, when any hair is visible, whether the corpses are those of white people or negroes.
Gen. McKibben U. S. A., and Adjt. Gen. Scurry arrived last night and have assumed entire charge of the city, with the result that conditions have very much improved as far as order and method in the distribution of supplies and the direction of the work is concerned. Gen. McKibben represents the government in a general way, but has not assumed direct charge of the city, which is under the command of Adjutant Gen. Scurry.
Several of the very young soldiers have been a trifle over-zealous in the matter of guarding the property, carrying their energy to a point which made it somewhat uncomfortable for the people whose property and person they came to guard. Gen. Scurry repressed them promptly and several of them have been disarmed. The service of the militia, on the whole, however, has so far been of a most excellent character.
SIGHT-SEERS BARRED OUT.
Every effort is being made to induce people to leave Galveston, and it is extremely difficult for anyone, no matter what his business, unless he is in direct charge of a relief train, to gain admittance to the place. Hundreds of people left Houston to-day for Galveston, but could get no further than Texas City, which is on the north side of Galveston Bay, and there they were compelled to remain until the train brought them back to Houston. No persuasion, no sum of money, would induce the guard to pass them into the stricken city.
Orders had been issued that no sightseers were to be allowed, and the order was obeyed with the utmost rigidity. It will be at least a week before there is full and free communication with Galveston, but matters are now steadily progressing toward a solution of the problems that confront the relief committee. Every effort is being made to induce people to leave, and one train, which arrived in Houston at 5 o’clock this evening, carried 350 women and children; another at 10 o’clock carried twice as many more, and it is expected that fully 2,000 of the women and children will be out of the place by to-morrow night. Mayor Jones estimates that there are at least 10,000 of these helpless ones who should be taken from Galveston at the earliest possible moment. They are all apparently anxious to get away and will be handled as rapidly as possible.
Another trainload of provisions and clothing, making the third within the last twenty-four hours, came here from Houston to-night.