“The conditions here are as much as you will gather from what you have read. Like some other fields that we have visited, it does not admit of exaggeration. One can scarcely imagine how it could have been worse, and yet one sees the city full of people left alive; but when we think of the hundreds, and it may be even thousands, lying buried and decaying in great heaps of debris stretched for miles along the edge of what was once a town, it is hard to conjecture anything worse.
“Supplies are coming in from all sides. Of course, disinfectants were the first thought, to protect the living against the dead. All that can be done by the purification of fire is being done, the pyres of human sacrifice are burning day and night. I have never had any fears of an epidemic. We have in all our experience, you will remember, never known an epidemic to follow a flood. There will, I believe, be no pestilence here.
“There is a portion of the town containing business houses, which, while being terribly damaged, stood upright, and stores with their valuable contents were entirely submerged. The streets are filled with elegant goods, drying off, and it will be most reasonable charity to buy these of the merchants at the prices put on them—which are scarcely half—in preference to using first those that are sent, until these dealers are relieved in a measure.
“Every accommodation which the city can afford was placed at our disposal. A large warehouse is being fitted to-day ready to receive the carloads of goods on the way. Every official, from the highest to the least, calls to know what the Red Cross needs, and how it can be served. The grateful confidence with which they approach us, or even speak the name, makes one humble, filled with the fear that we will fail to justify the fullness of the confidence and hope that is offered.
“There seems to be an unusually large number of children with no one to care for them or who knows them. There are five or six hundred of these, it is stated, gathered in the houses of the poor, overburdened with their own wants, and yet cannot see another child suffer. We will help them as far as possible, gather them in, and the world will give them homes. It requires great calamities to show how generous and great are the hearts of the people of the land.
GUARDING AGAINST FUTURE DESTRUCTION.
“This city will be built up again, probably finer than before—and it was a fine city always—but I hope never without a protection from the storms. It is criminal to allow people perfectly unsuspecting to settle themselves and live on territory, however beautiful, that is morally certain at some evil moment of destruction. If Galveston is worth the possession that it is and has been to our country, it is worth its protection; therefore we shall see that it shall not fail to implore of the government that it give work to its men and security to its inhabitants by a sea wall, which shall render it almost safe.”
On September 20th we find this tragic recital:
“The storm has claimed another victim, and another soul that passed through that night of nights has gone to its reward. In chronicling the death of Miss Clara Olsen, another pathetic chapter is added to the thrilling tale of horrors which will never be told in its entirety. Miss Olsen, who was a graduate of the Ursuline Academy, and a most estimable young lady, lived with her aged mother on Twenty-seventh street, near the Ursuline Convent. When the storm rose to its height, and their humble home succumbed to the destructive elements, mother and daughter were thrown out into the surging waters.
“With one hand firmly grasping her mother, the young lady bravely struggled against the wind and sea. At last the branches of a large tree were sighted above the raging torrent, and mother and daughter exerted their fast failing energies to reach the luring tree top. As the two weary creatures neared the haven, the daughter reached with one hand to grab a swaying branch. She missed it and was carried backward by the wind. Another attempt and she secured a hold, but her mother had been torn from her embrace by the sea, and was swept to her death beneath the waters.