The Great Galveston Disaster / Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

ASLEEP OVER A VOLCANO.

“Perhaps the persistency of the people who dwell on the slopes at the foot of Mount Vesuvius offers the most striking illustration of disregard of danger against which no human provision can be made. With a volcano boiling on the verge of eruptions that are forever imminent they pasture their flocks and press their grapes, careless of the menace which familiarity has taught them to despise. The whole kingdom of Naples is marked by the same disregard of natural and uncontrollable danger. The statement is accepted by the encyclopedias that in seventy-five years—from 1783 to 1857—the kingdom lost 111,000 inhabitants by the effects of earthquakes. About 1,500 a year in a population of less than 5,000,000.

“The city of Lisbon sits smiling and prosperous on the north bank of the Tagus, and its inhabitants still point with pride to scarred earth dating from the earthquake in which 40,000 lives were lost. Charleston, S. C., is rebuilt. Johnstown, Pa., is restored to its prosperous industry. The Japanese still go their flowery way in Jeddo, where in one great shock 200,000 lives are said to have been lost—which figure is even approximately the greatest disaster the world has ever known. St. Thomas, in the West Indies; Port Royal, Jamaica; Cape Haytien, in Santo Domingo, with a tribute of 45,000 lives within the memory of men yet living, and the spice island of Krakatoa, are still peopled despite the black danger signal of the death which constantly waves over them.

MYRIAD LIVES LOST IN GREAT DISASTERS.

“If you will refer to the statistical sources of information you will find that in one hundred and fifty years, a mere moment in the life of this world and its races, and add up the round thousands only and leave out the hundreds of lives which are charged to lesser lists the sum will reach 1,563,000 souls in the thirty-seven most important earthquake, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and inundations that have visited the earth. It is, of course, impossible to give any sort of guess as to the accuracy of the estimates of the loss of life.

“Even in Johnstown it is not certainly known to this day within 2,000 persons how many were lost. The identified dead numbered 2,228. The best informed and conservative estimates place the figure at 3,500, and others reach 5,000, while published reports, which ought to be authoritative, calmly name the death list at 9,000. It is the same at Galveston, where the number is so variously stated that no reliance can be placed upon any numerical report beyond the fact that anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000 lives have been lost. If this, then, is the waywardness of figures in cases where not only the population is known, but in communities where the associations of commerce and social life has been such that the survivors can count the missing and recognize such of the dead as may be found, how wild must be the estimate placed upon such cataclysms as that in Southeastern Bengal and the Niegen Islands, where on October 31, 1876, in a cyclone, 215,000 people are said to have perished.

CARELESS ABOUT ALL DANGER.

“But even there, where such a loss would imply the sacrifice of one in every four persons inhabiting the territory so awfully stricken, the people still pursue their daily avocations, toil and rest, love, hate, mourn and die with the composure and ease of mind that prevail in Philadelphia or New York, where no shadow of storm is known to hover and where no devastating earthquake or fiery volcano lurks for victims. But, of course, these awful figures have very little relation to the actual losses. In the storm in Bengal Sir Richard Temple, who had charge of the crown relief, did not find that 20,000 lives were lost and that probably not more than 10,000 died of the famine which the loss of the crops insured. In the potato famine in Ireland, in 1846 and 1847, the loss of life was named at 120,000 by those who charged the whole business to English misrule and was named at from 8,000 to 20,000 by the royal commissioners entrusted with the distribution of the £10,000,000 of Parliamentary grant for the relief of the famished land.

LAWS REGULATING STORMS.

“So the loss in battles always begins to be told in numbers that occasionally would require more than the combined forces of the two armies to supply. The first reports of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, in the early days of the Civil War, is a case in point. Had we fought on at the rate given then the country would not have had a male person in its population a year before the date of Appomattox. So that we can hope every day will reduce the number, although it cannot lessen the horror otherwise, of the visitation the death angel has made in the Lone Star State.