“In twenty-five years the city of Galveston and the coast line of Texas have had three visitations of tropical hurricanes, bearing death and destruction in their blasts. Every year about the equinoctial season storms of greater or less fury occur and never, on account of the fragile materials and loose methods of building, have they failed of doing damage, but these three occupy thrones of mark above all others. In September, 1875, the coast of Texas, from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the Sabine Pass, was swept by a cyclone that followed with its central zone the curve of the coast, the wind varying at different times in its journey to southeast to southwest.
“The town of Indianola was blotted out of the world in an hour. Not half a dozen of its 1,200 inhabitants escaped, and the sea swept away the island on which it stood, and its site has no other mark than that which the waves rolling over it can offer. There were not enough of people to ask for help. And as there was no longer a place to rebuild, the little remnant moved elsewhere. The storm swept over Galveston, raising a tidal wave that changed in its impetuous flow the whole shape of the island. From the western end nearly two miles of land was cut off and carried around to the north side. The city was unroofed, houses toppled and fell, the water flowed in resistless currents along the levees, floating off to sea thousands of bales of cotton and destroying in its wild swirls the contents of stores and houses and many lives. The number never will be known but estimates place it at 800. For a week telegraphic communication was cut off.
SPILES WRENCHED FROM THEIR PLACES.
“It was my fortune to be in Texas as a correspondent at the time and on the day of the storm at Houston, some sixty miles away, built at the head of Buffalo Bayou, and I was ordered to the wrecked city. At that time there was only one railroad, the Houston and Galveston, and it was utterly destroyed for over thirty miles of its length. The top structure on the spiling across Galveston Bay was, of course, swept away, but it was a remarkable fact as showing the violence of the storm that about one of every three of the great spiles, 50 to 55 feet long and driven down 25 to 30 feet in the sand, was wrenched from its place and swept away.
“Others had resisted, but were twisted and split by the fury of wind and waves. Two small boats, stern wheelers, drawing from 28 to 30 inches of water, built on the Mississippi steamboat model of ancient times, with a cabin over the cargo and engine deck, a Texas or officers’ cabin on top of that, and a glass wheel house on top of that—more fragile things you could not imagine—were moored at the mouth of the bayou, where the sluggish stream enters the bay.
“Strange to say these escaped with the loss of their smokestacks, and were available to send aid, which was not lacking, to the desolate city. It was impossible to transport the quantities of food and clothing that poured in from the North, and more rotted and was lost on the levee at Houston than reached the distressed inhabitants of Galveston.
“That part of the city which was not blown down was imbedded in sand. The Strand, a street in Galveston, whose name is now familiar to the world by reason of the awful scenes that so recently have been witnessed there, was four feet deep in sand, and the Tremont, Cosmopolitan and Great Southern Hotels were filled with sand and hotel was kept on their second floors.
AROSE LIKE A PHOENIX.
“But the city, although cast down, was not discouraged. It began to rebuild itself, and by Christmas of that year almost every trace of the awful calamity had disappeared. The question naturally arises why a population which had received such an awful warning of its exposed condition should not abandon what in a military term would be called an untenable position. The answer is obvious. They had something left there. Even the island, although distorted and out of shape, was still there and theirs, and they had nothing elsewhere, nor means to go to another place.
“So, with hopeful philosophy they rebuilt their city, restored its commerce and, encouraged with such empty precepts as ‘Better luck next time,’ ‘Lightning never strikes twice in the same place,’ went forward to meet their next blow, in 1893, when another hurricane visited them. It was not so terrible in its effect, but differed only in degree. The late severe storm gives further emphatic warning, more terrible and heart-breaking in its losses of life and vaster in its destruction of property. But they will, of course, rebuild their city and seek to establish protective barriers of breakwaters and seawalls to maintain it in existence. In all likelihood they will succeed, for the history of these efforts is of final security after trial and loss, and the firm resolution of man rises over every obstacle.