The roof of the elevator is gone and the wheat there is exposed, but if fresh water can be obtained soon it is expected the wheat can be saved by drying. The sheds on the wharves are practically all gone, but the wharves are supposed to be in such shape that they can be repaired at a nominal expense and can be resumed.
The following letter was received at Fort Worth from C. H. Fewell, who is night yardmaster of the Santa Fe Railway Company, at Galveston:
“The only means of sending mail or anything is by water to Houston. All bridges and wires are gone, and it will be weeks before they can possibly get a train out of here. The city is a complete wreck. Very few buildings are standing that have not in some way been wrecked by the storm. The loss of life will never be known; it will run into thousands. You can’t imagine what a terrible shape this place is in. We are thankful to be alive, but cannot help but feel sad when we think of the many friends we have lost, and the hundreds that are left without homes and without a mouthful of anything to eat. Relief must come soon or many will starve to death.
“Our rooming house stood the storm well, with the exception of a corner blown off and part of the roof. I got up about 4 o’clock Saturday. It was then raining and blowing hard. I left the house and started for the Tremont hotel and came near not making it. We stayed there all night. For four hours I thought every minute that the building would certainly go with the many that were going to pieces around it. We would have been as well off had we stayed at home, but was afraid our house would not stand the storm.
HORRIBLE BEYOND DESCRIPTION.
“Wagons have been passing all day piled full of dead bodies. Many of them will never be identified, and they are now taking them right to the Gulf for burial. This seems terrible, but it must be done, as it is impossible to bury them on the island. Hundreds of bodies are floating in the bay and outskirts of what was once the city. I cannot describe how horrible it is. I have been over most of the city since Sunday morning and know exactly how everything is situated. From the beach for at least four blocks in there is not a sign of anything left to show for what was once fine residences.
“Not one thing is left to show that there ever was anything at the beach. Everything is piled up; all rubbish for about four blocks from the beach beyond which it looks as clear as the prairie. The east and west end of the town is entirely gone. At the east end not a thing remains standing to Twelfth street. Dead bodies can be seen every place except in the business part of the city, to-day, two days after the storm. They are bringing them in by the wagon loads every hour. Nearly every one you meet has lost some friend and is looking for them. I visited three places where they have been taking the bodies to-day with a friend looking for relatives, and I know there could not have been less than 200 bodies in each place, lying cold in death. The general offices are a complete wreck; the wharves, elevators and everything connected with the railroads are more or less racked and many of them a total loss. Not a splinter is left of our yard office. You might say hundreds of cars are turned over and can be found nearly a block from where they were left before the storm.”
CHAPTER XII.
Thrilling Narratives by Eye-witnesses—Path of the Storm’s Fury Through Galveston—Massive Heaps of Rubbish—Huge Buildings Swept into the Gulf.
At Galveston on that fatal Saturday night there were deaths far more horrible than any of which even a Sienkiewicz could conceive. Mothers and babes, fathers and husbands, were hurled headlong into the world beyond without a chance to make peace with their Maker, with a farewell kiss or a last fond embrace. Upon every hand the dead were piled up like driftwood cast up by the sea, even as they were at Waterloo and Gettysburg and behind Kitchener in the Soudan. The bodies of men that the day before were perfect specimens of physical development were swollen and discolored by the fierce rays of the autumn sun, and were food for flies and maggots which buzzed or crawled hither and thither unceasingly. In the bay the sharks were overfed, and on the prairies the buzzards could no longer be tempted.
If those who live far from the awful scene of woe, believe that this is over-drawn, let them ask the pale-faced nerve-racked refugees, from that terrible place, and they will be told that it is impossible for either pen or brush to give the picture as it is. The photographer, with all his art, stands baffled. The artist, with all his talent, is incompetent. The newspaper man, accustomed to the dark side of life, shudders and turns from description to the work of reciting details, horrible enough in themselves, but far more pleasant.