It is said by some, though I know nothing of it, that about it is the backbone, or high part of the island. The great mass of matter became heavy. It must have dragged upon the ground as the water here could have only been five to seven feet deep. But this would not have stopped it, had the last street to be assaulted, Q street or Q½ street, not interposed. The houses here were rather large and strong. This battering ram made by the winds and worked both by the winds and the water, met with resistance from the houses and was impeded by its own weight, which dragged it on the bottom. Its efforts at destruction became more and more feeble. The houses stood, though wrecked. The debris climbed to the very eaves.
But the more that came, the heavier the mass became. And lo! the very assailant became the defender! For, piling higher and higher—piling higher and higher by the addition of houses lately splintered, by the addition of everything from a piano to a child’s whistle, there was a wall built against the great waves which rolled in from the Gulf, and thereby the territory lying between the bulwark and the bay, was protected to some extent. True, the casual observer will think as he looks even up and down the main streets of the town, that very little protection was given.
A BULWARK OF DEAD PEOPLE.
But few lives were lost, in comparison, in this district, and while the stores were flooded and houses toppled over by the winds and undermined by the water, yet that bulwark made of dead people and all they had struggled for and owned in this life, kept back the savage waves from the Gulf and saved the rest of the town. Looking at this wall, from which, as I write, come the odors of decomposition, climbing it, as this correspondent has done, he is sure in his mind that if it had not been formed not as many people of Galveston Island would have escaped as on that day when Pompeii was shut out from the eyes of the world by the veil of ashes.
These are speculations. In years to come men may be able in talk of this greatest of catastrophes in the cool, deliberate way which will admit of reasonable hypotheses as to the causes of the results, but they cannot do it now. The wind blew from the east. The currents were criss-cross. My God, it was awful. And that is as far as you can get with any of those left. For they know no more. They know that the wind blew. They know the waves rolled. They know, or most of them do, that they lost dear ones, and that is all. The hydrographer of the future may tell us all.
But as far as such people of North Texas, as I am, they will leave it to him. He may know the currents and the winds, and tell to the satisfaction. But he will never tell of these horrors. I cannot in the present. I may not be able to do it in the future. When the story of the funeral pyres and the burials at sea, and the reasons for both, are explained—when the pictures are given of the rescued, hunting for the dead—then indeed if all are drawn as they are—natural and unstained—another monstrosity in news paper life will have arisen.
GALVESTON SAFE NOW.
No man—scientist or mere citizen—is authority upon the wondrous winds and ties that reduced the island of Galveston to an incomprehensible pot pourri of devastation. All is guess work, behind which there is neither science nor common sense. As far as a deliberate proposition evolved by a fair measure of judgment in which there enters as little of egotism as is possible with human beings, I would rather trust the guesser than the scientist.
As I begin the story at nightfall, the lightning is illuminating the bank of clouds massed over the Gulf horizon. For the past half hour I have looked upon the flashes, and those around me wondered if it were to come again. The “it,” of course, means the visitation of last Saturday night. They look anxiously around as the streaks of gold and silver illumine the sky at quick intervals.
My friends are those who went through the awful experience of the cataclysm. I know as well as mortal man can know any thing that this island is no longer a target for the elements. I know that a target like this devastated island could no longer invite the shafts of the elements, even if the elements were endowed with human or divine intelligence. And I know in the simple faith of humanity that the God who “plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm” would reach out with his omnipotent arm and throttle the agencies of nature if they should again aggravate wind and wave to vent their wrath upon these desolate shores.