CHAPTER XVIII.
An Island of Desolation—Crumbling Walls—Faces White With Agony—Tales of Dismay and Death—Curious Sights.
One of the most graphic and thrilling accounts of the overwhelming calamity is contained in the following pages. It is from the brilliant pen of a visitor to the city and eye-witness of the awful ruin:
The story of Galveston’s tragedy can never be written as it is. Since the cataclysm of Saturday night, a force of faithful men have been struggling to convey to humanity from time to time some of the particulars of the tragedy. They have told much, but it was impossible for them to tell all, and the world, at best, can never know all, for the thousands of tragedies written by the storm must forever remain mysteries until eternity shall reveal all. Perhaps it were best that it should be so, for the horror and anguish of those fatal and fateful hours were mercifully lost in the screaming tempest and buried forever beneath the raging billows. Only God knows, and for the rest let it remain forever in the boundlessness of His omniscience. But in the realm of finity, the weak and staggered senses of mankind may gather fragments of the disaster, and may strive with inevitable incompleteness to convey the merest impression of the saddest story which ever engaged the efforts of a reporter.
Galveston! The mournful dirges of the breakers which lash the beach can not in the remaining centuries of the world give expression to the sorrow and woe which throbs here to-day; and if the sobbing waves and sighing winds, God’s great funeral choir, fail, how can the weak pen and appalled imaginations of men perform the task? The human heart can merely feel what language will never be able to express. And in the case of Galveston, the heart must break before it can begin to feel.
I struggled all day Tuesday to reach this isle of desolation. With Gen. McKibben, Gen. Scurry, Gen. Stoddard and several who had relatives here about whom they were anxious, I spent five hours on the bay in a row boat, kindly loaned by the captain of the “Kendel Castle,” a British steamship hopelessly stranded at Texas City, but finally we landed on the island just as the stars were coming out.
The very atmosphere smelt of death, and we walked through the quiet streets to the Tremont Hotel. Long before we landed we had seen the naked forms of men, women and children floating in the bay and were depressed until the entire party was heartsick.
Men were grouped about the streets talking in quiet tones. Sad and hopeless women could be seen in dismantled houses, destitute children were about the streets, and all about them was nothing but wreck and ruin. Night had drawn a gray pall over the city and for awhile the autumn moon covered her face with dark clouds to hide the place with shadows. The town was under martial law, every saloon was closed, and passers-by were required to give an account of themselves before being allowed to proceed. The fact, however, that the streets were almost impassable on account of the debris kept us reminded that we were in the midst of unprecedented desolation.
REVEALED A SCENE.
Wednesday the sun drew aside the curtains of darkness and revealed a scene that is impossible of description. I spent hours driving or riding about the city, and witnessed the saddest spectacles ever seen by human eyes. What were once Galveston’s splendid business thoroughfares were wrecked and crumbled. The Strand, known to every business man of the State, was lined on both sides with crumbling walls and wrenched buildings, and the street was a mass of debris, such as metal roofs rolled up like a scroll, splintered timbers, iron pillars, broken stone and bricks; the same was true of Mechanic, and Market, and Tremont, and Twenty-first and Twenty-second, and every other street of the great business heart of Galveston.
The stores were ruined and deserted, and the blight of destruction was visible as far as the eye could reach. As horrible as all this was, it was as nothing to the hopeless faces of the miserable men, women and children in the streets.