Most of the bodies found in and around the vicinity of Virginia Point were supposed to have been washed inland from Galveston.
CHAPTER XVII.
Galveston’s Storm Flies Over the United States and Does Great Damage—Many Lives Lost—It Finally Disappears in the Atlantic Ocean.
When the hurricane was through with Galveston and central and southern Texas it sped north through Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska—its path being 300 miles in width—and then turning toward the east, or slightly northeast, crossed northern Iowa, southern Minnesota, southern Wisconsin, southern Michigan, northern Illinois, northern Indiana, northern Ohio, northern New York and southern Canada, finally disappearing in the Atlantic ocean, creating wreck and havoc wherever it went. It caused great losses of life and property in Newfoundland and destroyed many vessels off the eastern coast of the United States.
The following dispatches show how widespread was its fury:
Buffalo, September 12.—Immense damage was done here and at other lake ports by the Texas storm which traveled with great violence down Lake Erie last night. Reports from Crystal Beach, a summer resort on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, say that every dock has been destroyed, and all the boats of the Buffalo Canoe Club, together with several large seagoing yachts anchored there, were completely wrecked.
In this city the wind attained a velocity of seventy-two miles an hour, and seemed to regain some of the power which it exhibited in wrecking Southern cities. Reports of property loss and fatalities have come in.
St. Joseph, Mich., September 12.—The steamer Lawrence arrived here at 1 o’clock this afternoon from Milwaukee. She left that place at 8 o’clock yesterday morning, and the captain reports a fearful voyage. The captain’s wife was here from Milwaukee and was on the dock waiting to meet her husband when the boat touched the dock. The meeting between the two was affecting. All this morning anxious watchers waited on the bluffs at the mouth of the river for a glimpse of the missing boat. Many people had friends among the passengers and crew, and as the morning hours wore on their anxiety became intense.