“A bulletin received at the Houston and Texas Central headquarters from the headquarters of the company in Houston stated that a courier from the relief force had just arrived. He stated that signal reports from men sent forward to Galveston Island to the relief parties on the main land read:
“‘Sixty dead bodies in one block. Six hundred corpses recovered and 400 more reported. People dying from injuries and sickness and for want of fresh water. Survivors threatened with starvation and disease. Doctors, nurses and fresh water needed at once.’
“The telegraph offices at Dallas have been besieged all day with men and women anxious to hear from friends who were in Galveston when the hurricane came on. Messages of inquiry have poured in from all parts of the United States. More than 10,000 messages were piled up in the Dallas offices to-day from local and outside parties, and every telegraph operator has been kept busy as long as he could work. The offices have uniformly had to inform the customers: ‘We can’t reach Galveston; can only promise to forward from Houston by boat as early as possible.’ Notwithstanding discouragements of this kind, the customers have almost invariably insisted on having their messages sent. Some of the scenes at the local telegraph offices have been very pathetic.
“A telegram was received from E. H. R. Green, son of Hetty Green, dated at Rockport, stating that Rockport had not been damaged by the storm, and that the visitors at the Tarpon Club House, on St. Joseph’s Island, were safe. This news lessens the fear felt for the safety of the people living along the coast in the vicinity of Rockport and Corpus Christi.
“Houston and Texas Central Railroad officials at noon received bulletins from their general offices in Houston that the loss of life will reach 3000 in Galveston. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas relief forces near Galveston and along the coast telegraphed at noon that the loss of life will not be less than 5000 and may reach 10,000.”
THE CITY IN RUINS.
Richard Spillane, a well-known Galveston newspaper man and day correspondent of the Associated Press in that city, who reached Houston September 10th, after a terrible experience, gives the following account of the disaster at Galveston:
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, GALVESTON, AFTER THE STORM
