THE GALVESTON HORROR.
CHAPTER I.
West Indian Hurricane Descends Upon Galveston, Causing Immense Losses of Life and Property—Catastrophe Unparalleled in the History of the World—A Night of Horrors and Suffering.
The frightful West Indian hurricane which descended upon the beautiful, prosperous and progressive, but ill-fated, city of Galveston, on Saturday, September 8, 1900, causing the loss of many thousands of lives and the destruction of millions of dollars’ worth of property, and then ravaged Central and Western Texas, killing several hundred people and inflicting damage which cost millions to repair, has had no parallel in history.
When the gale approached the island upon which Galveston it situated, it lashed the waves of the Gulf of Mexico into a tremendous fury, causing them to rise to all but mountain height, and then it was that, combining their forces, the wind and water pounced upon their prey.
In the short space of four hours the entire site of the city was covered by angry waters, while the gale blew at the rate of one hundred miles an hour; business houses, public buildings, churches, residences, charitable institutions, and all other structures gave way before the pressure of the wind and the fierce onslaught of the raging flood, and those which did not crumble altogether were so injured, in the majority of cases, that they were torn down.
Such a night of horror as the unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to pass has fallen to the lot of few since the records of history were first opened. In the early evening, when the water first began to invade Galveston Island, the people residing along the beach and near it fled in fear from their homes and sought the highest points in the city as places of refuge, taking nothing but the smaller articles in their houses with them. On and on crawled the flood, until darkness had set in, and then, as though possessed of a fiendish vindictiveness, hastened its speed and poured over the surface of the town, completely submerging it—covering the most elevated ground to a depth of five feet and the lower portions ten and twelve feet.
The hurricane was equally malignant, if not more fiendish and cruel, and tore great buildings and beautiful homes to pieces with evident delight, scattering the debris far and wide; telegraph and telephone lines were thrown down, railway tracks and bridges—the latter connecting the island and city with the mainland—torn up, and the mighty, tangled mass of wires, bricks, sections of roofs, sidewalks, fences and other things hurled into the main thoroughfares and cross streets, rendering it impossible for pedestrians to make their way along for many days after the waters and gale had subsided.
Forty thousand people—men, women and children—cowered in terror for eight long hours, the intense blackness of the night, the swishing and lapping of the waves, the demoniac howling and shrieking of the wind and the indescribable and awful crashing, tearing and rending as the houses, hundreds at a time, were wrecked and shattered, ever sounding in their ears. Often, too, the friendly shelter where families had taken refuge would be swept away, plunging scores and scores of helpless ones into the mad current which flowed through every street of the town, and fathers and mothers were compelled to undergo the agony of seeing their children drown, with no possibility of rescue; husbands lost their wives and wives their husbands, and the elements were only merciful when they destroyed an entire family at once.