CHAPTER XXIII Heroic Incidents--Arrival of Relief Trains--Hospitals for the Injured--Loud Call for Skilled Labor.

A lady correspondent who went from Houston to view the wreck of Galveston reported as follows:

“We are only just beginning to find out what this awful calamity has been to the people in this vicinity. The first shock is wearing off, the long lists of dead and missing are getting to be an old story now, and the sick and suffering are crawling into our places of refuge. Some of them have been sleeping on the open prairies ever since the storm, most of them, in fact, men with broken arms and legs, sick women and ailing children.

“They crawl out of the wreck of their homes and lie down on the bare ground to die. Our relief corps are finding them and bringing them in as fast as they can. Dr. Johnson and his party came in from the Galveston district and reported that they found over 5,000 people and attended medically about 200 patients.

“While we were standing at the door of the hospital talking things over a man rode up on horseback. He threw his arms up to attract our attention.

“‘Is this the relief hospital?’ he said.

“Dr. Johnson told him that it was.”

“‘I’ve come in from the Brazos bottoms,’ he said. ‘The folks there are starving. There is not a pound of flour left and the children are crying for milk. There are so many sick people there that we don’t know what to do. Can you send some one down?’

“Dr. Johnson had not slept for twenty-four hours. He had not had time to get a full meal for thirty-six hours. He was worn out and travel stained, but he heard what the man told him.

“‘All right,’ he said. He picked up his coat, put on his hat and turned to his assistants. ‘Come on, boys,’ he said. ‘Let us go down and get the cars into shape. We’ll get down to your place, my man, just as fast as the Lord will let us.’

“The man on horseback leaned over his saddle and tried to speak. Something in his face frightened me, I called to two doctors. They ran out and caught him. He was in a dead faint. When we had brought him to he laughed sheepishly. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ he said. ‘Ain’t never been taken this way before.’ The doctors looked at each other and smiled, but the nurses’ eyes were full of tears. The man had not tasted food for thirty-six hours, and he had ridden fifty miles in the broiling sun of Texas. Dr. Crossway and his men are down the island relieving the sick and burying the dead.

HOSPITAL OVERCROWDED.

“‘Alkali Ike,’ they call Dr. Crossway, that is because he is tall and rawboned and comes from Texas himself. If a man gets a nickname in this part of the world you know that he is loved. The women and children who came from the district where ‘Alkali Ike’ is working know his name and their eyes fill with grateful tears at the mention of it. The hospital at Galveston is well named. The corps is effectively organized and we hear from there that they are doing splendid work. Our own hospital here in Houston is in ship-shape condition.

“We have built a partition or two, put up temporary quarters for a dressing room for the nurses and doctors. The great ice boxes are filled and the range, which burned wood, has been replaced with a gas range to keep the heat down as much as possible.

“There is a little railing just back of the great wide door of the hospital where the entrance to the theater used to be and there the relieving nurse sits with her assistants. The bookkeeper has her desk there and the man who answers inquirers is standing there.

“This is no ordinary hospital work. People come crowding to the doors, and nearly all night they come. Some of them are hungry, some of them are sick, some of them are hunting for missing friends, and some are merely curious. Some are neighbors who come to offer help, some are women bringing delicacies to offer to the sick. It takes the entire time of three persons to attend to this crowd of visitors intelligently.

“We are keeping records of every case entered at the hospital. The name and age and final disposition of the case. These names and the facts concerning them are kept on the books for reference, so that people are easily identified, and so that any one who has contributed to the fund can investigate and find out just exactly what became of the money he gave. It is hard to pick out a case in the hospital which does not deserve special attention. A man was brought in with three broken ribs. They were broken the night of the storm, he having been working ever since burying the dead.

“A young man was carried to the hospital on a stretcher late last night who was wandering up and down the island for the past three days trying to find the body of his young wife. He found and buried over forty bodies which had been overlooked by the burying committee, but he did not find his wife. He is lying out at the hospital now in a stupor.

SUFFERING UNTOLD AGONY.

“A boy of twelve was brought in who has been suffering untold agony from an injury to his eye for four days. He has not had a soul to help or to speak to him, and all he has had to eat in that time was a handful of crackers. A woman came in at 11 o’clock last night. She had a baby in her arms and three children hanging to her skirts. None of them had tasted food for nearly three days.

“A young girl was brought in by one of the outside corps at 9 o’clock last night. The relief corps found her huddled up in an empty freight car, laughing and singing to amuse herself. The doctors say food and care is all she needs to restore her to reason. Three-fourths of the people who come in are mentally dull. The physicians say with proper care that most of them can be cured.”

One of the many touching incidents of the storm occurred at Houston on the 18th. Mrs. R. Qualtrough and Mrs. Will Glass were at the International and Great Northern depot Monday intent on the relief of any who needed, when they saw a little woman with a baby of about eight months in her arms. The mother was weeping bitterly, so the two kind-hearted friends went up to see what was the matter. The stranger said she had just arrived from New Orleans to find Galveston shut off from the world, and her husband, mother and sister were there, and she feared they were all lost. Mrs. Glass finally prevailed over the little woman to go home with her, where she could care for her.

Tuesday Mrs. Qualtrough was busy at the market house helping to distribute the clothing and food to the sufferers, when her son came to her and told her there was a man from Galveston in the room, and he wished she would go to him. The man, who was bruised and beaten in his fight with waves, was in great distress. He wanted to get to New Orleans, but had no money, his wife and child were there, and he had to tell her that her mother and sisters were drowned.

WOMAN DRIFTED NEARLY THREE DAYS.

An instinct told Mrs. Qualtrough the truth. She asked what was the size and complexion of his wife, and how old was the baby. Looking at her strangely, the man described exactly the woman and child found at the International and Great Northern station. “I believe your wife is here,” was the extraordinary comment on his story. Calling to Mrs. Ward, the fish merchant, Mrs. Qualtrough asked her to take the man to Mrs. Glass’ home, and the husband and wife met. It was a pitiful scene, for while she had got her husband back, the poor woman learned of the loss of mother and sisters.

A woman was brought into Houston who was two days and a night drifting about in Galveston bay, bringing with her a parrot which she had held above the waters all that time. The parrot and a bag of money was all she had left.

Mr. A. C. Fonda, a patient at the Houston infirmary, was a clerk in the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe freight office at Galveston, and lived on Broadway. He tells a tale of his experience which is miraculous. He remained in his house until it was blown down, and then, in some miraculous manner, he was blown into a large cypress cistern which was about half full of water. After being in the cistern for about an hour a kind of twister struck it and blew all the water out, but left him. When the cistern was relieved of the water it rose and was finally washed out on the Gulf, where it remained until Monday morning, when the wind and tide brought it back to Galveston and its occupant was rescued in a thoroughly exhausted condition.

Beaumont, Texas, September 14.—Mr. A. Zwirn, one of the Beaumonters who left for Galveston on a freight train Monday afternoon, returned yesterday after having spent fourteen hours in the stricken city. Mr. Zwirn reached Galveston Tuesday evening, having succeeded in getting across the bay on a small sailboat. He went to the Island City to search for friends and found a greater portion of them alive.

FIRST CITY TO GIVE ASSISTANCE.

Mr. Zwirn says Beaumont was the first city to get assistance into Galveston. He was present at a meeting of Galveston citizens when it was announced that a boat with ice and water from Beaumont had arrived, and he says the fervent thanks which went up from the gathering and the tribute one of the men paid to the Queen of the Neches made him feel proud of his residence here.

“It was, however, not the fault of Houston,” said Mr. Zwirn, “that the Bayou City did not get supplies to the Island City quicker. The train on which I came to the end of the railroad track had several cars of provisions, ice, etc., and many more were standing on the tracks when we arrived. The trouble was the absence of transportation across the bay to Galveston. There were many boats, but the owners found it more profitable to carry passengers from $1 per head up than to transport supplies. I can not describe the joy with which the boat from Beaumont was received. It not only contained that which the sufferers needed badly, but it was evidence that there was communication with the outside world, and revived the spirits of many who bad become despondent.”

Under the rules and regulations prescribed by the military laws governing the city, the work of clearing the streets, disposing of the dead and cleaning the city in general have progressed very favorably. The plans mapped out by the military department brought the operations down to a system. Where there is order and system much can be accomplished, and this was most clearly demonstrated by the reports of one day’s labors in this field. Nearly three thousand men were organized in gangs and squads of from ten to twenty-five, working under the direction of foremen, supervised by ward superintendents, started out early in the morning and worked faithfully until dark. The detailed results of their labors were not to be had, but enough was shown by the reports to demonstrate the value of organization.

THE ARMY OF WORKERS.

All foremen were ordered to report daily at military headquarters, where a large force of clerks were kept busy chronicling the amount of debris removed, the number of dead bodies disposed of, etc. Another force under command of Adjutant-General McCaleb was kept busy printing orders issued for the guidance of the work, laws governing the protection of property and the lives of citizens, etc.

The militia was placed on guard duty in all parts of the city and the city police and sheriff’s department are co-operating with the military authorities, which is supreme in control of the city.

While the power is invested in the military authorities, Brigadier-General Scurry, commanding, Adjutant-General Hunt McCaleb directs that men may be impressed into service in cleaning the streets and performing other labors incumbent upon the department, it is gratifying to know that very few men had to be impressed into service. Some few held back under one pretense and another, but when given to understand that they would be compelled to work they invariably joined the army of laborers.

The beach and the western part of the city presented the picture of about one hundred or more pyres where human bodies and the carcasses of dead animals were disposed of by fire. Separate pyres were designated for human bodies and animal carcasses and the work progressed rapidly. The gruesome task was heartrending and many able-bodied men succumbed to the terrible ordeal. The bodies recovered yesterday and those still buried beneath the debris are in an advanced state of decomposition and utterly beyond recognition or identification unless by the clothing or some ornament worn by the dead. Ninety-five per cent. of the bodies recovered are naked.

The hurricane, aided materially by the action of the raging torrents, invariably stripped the victims of all vestige of clothing or other articles that might lead to identification. Another remarkable fact, which shows the force of the storm in packing the wreckage and debris in high mounds, is seen in the amount of water held by the wreckage.

MILES OF WRECKAGE.

Six days of sunshine and seven nights of cool Gulf breezes have failed to draw the water held by the wreckage which, jammed into water-tight ridges, formed tanks to hold the salt water which inundated the city. While the ground all around these ridges is dry and hard, the removal of the top ridge disclosed several feet of water. At least 20 per cent. of the bodies recovered yesterday from the wreckage were taken out of water.

A reporter who attempted to make a circuit of the rescuing parties working on the beach and throughout the western part of the city, noted the finding of 123 and the discovery of at least twenty more bodies, which were so hemmed in by wreckage that it was impossible to get them out. It is impossible to estimate the number of dead buried beneath the miles of wreckage.

When the forces started out yesterday morning it was thought by many that the greater number of dead had been removed from the prisons built by the storm. The work had not progressed far before the workmen began to dig into ruins where bodies were found. During the hasty tour of the reporter he witnessed the finding of ten bodies between Tremont and Thirty-first streets along the ridge of wreckage which marks the path of the storm from the east to the west on the beach and extending inland from three to seven blocks.

The most important journal in Texas, the “Galveston News,” commented as follows:

“The ‘News’ desires to repeat what it has already said to its now unhappy people on Galveston Island. The sorrows of the past few days are overwhelming, and we all feel them and will continue to feel them so long as we live. It could not be expected that our friends and relatives and loved ones should be so suddenly torn from us without leaving scars from which those in the ranks of maturity can never recover.

FORTITUDE OF SURVIVORS.

“But it is all in the past now. We cannot recall our dead thousands. Wherever they sleep, beneath the tireless waves or under the arching skies, we will love their memories and recall as long as we live the unspeakable and mysterious tragedy which destroyed them. But it must be remembered that we have more than 30,000 living, and many of these are children too young to have their lives and energies paralyzed by the disaster which has overtaken us.

“Our homes must be rebuilt, our schools repaired, and the natural advantages of the port must sooner or later receive our earnest attention. We have loved Galveston too long and too well to desert her in the hour of misfortune. Our distress and destitution are going to be relieved, for a sympathizing country is already providing for temporary needs. This people are too proud and self-reliant, however, to lose spirit and fail of duty. In the very darkness of the moment there is light ahead, and we must look to the light ahead. Even in the midst of our dead and our ruins light appears.

“The railroads are bending every effort to repair the bridges and place us once more in commercial communication with the mainland; the telegraph companies, putting their heavy losses behind them, are restoring their wires as fast as men can do it; the telephone company is doing likewise, and the wharf companies are similarly engaged. As the ‘News’ understands it, the Southern Pacific Company proposes to double its force to complete the improvement which was so damaged by the storm.

“The waterworks will soon be restored, the street railway repaired, and all the other elements of a metropolitan life placed in working order. The ships will come into the harbor for traffic and get it, and that traffic will afford employment to thousands. If the people will take heart, they will soon find that all has not been lost, and, moreover, much is to be saved. If we lost 5000 people, there are more than 30,000 to be provided for; if we have lost $15,000,000 in property, we still have that much to save and restore.

REBUILDING GALVESTON.

“There is much to hope for and to strive for, and we must hope and strive to save ourselves and meet the expectations of the world. The ‘News’ received a telegram last night from a great New York paper inquiring if Galveston would rebuild. The answer was sent back that Galveston did not intend to succumb to her crushing misfortune, but would again resume her place as the great port of the Gulf. This is the duty of the people here, and the ‘News’ expects in good time to see all the energies of the people concentrated upon the great work of recuperation and restoration. Will this expectation meet disappointment? Knowing this people for nearly sixty years, the ‘News’ answers, No.”

Colonel John D. Rogers was at Toronto, Ont., when the big storm swept Galveston. He and Colonel D. C. Giddings, of Brenham, have gone North together for a vacation every summer for several years past, and this year they picked Toronto as the place of recreation. As soon as the news of the storm reached them they started for Texas, and Colonel Rogers arrived on Friday, the 14th.

To a gentleman who called on him and asked for an expression of his views as to the future, and his intentions as to the various properties he is interested in, Colonel Rogers talked most hopefully and confidently:

“So far as property losses are concerned,” said he, “I suspect I have lost about as heavily as any men in Galveston in proportion to the property I own here. But this constitutes no reason why I should be discouraged. I felt that way even before I reached Galveston. Colonel Giddings, from the newspaper accounts of the storm, doubted somewhat that Galveston would come again. But I told him Galveston was bound to be restored. I told him I didn’t believe the wharves were gone; no man who knows anything of the construction of wharves could have believed that story. I told him that the maintenance of Galveston as a port for the west was imperatively necessary, and that if the people of Galveston laid down and got off the island, other people would come here and build up a city.

RESUMING BUSINESS.

“A week in Galveston has made me still more confident that I was right in my conclusion. The work done during the past week has been wonderful, and within another week, I believe, every kind of business will be going on as before. We are again ready to receive cotton, and I have instructed our shippers to send it in. Before this business season is over we will be doing as much business as ever before, and before twelve months have passed our buildings will be restored.

“I know that croakers will say that this cannot be done, but the croaker will never rise in any country. I don’t believe in croakers. I believe with ‘The News,’ that this storm has indisputably proven that the island will not wash away. If that storm, the severest in the history of the world, did not wash the island away, nothing ever will eliminate it from the map. And it is not conceivable that another storm of that severity will ever strike again in this spot. The flood of the Brazos river, in last July, was unprecedented.

“There had never been such a flood before, and there had never been an overflow of that river in the month of July in all the history of the State. Again, the previous rises of the river had been gradual, but in July, 1899, the river rose two and a half feet in one night. All of that was very unusual, and it is improbable that it will ever be repeated. The storm at Galveston was likewise very unusual. The waters came from the bay and Gulf simultaneously, and met on the island. They did not go up Buffalo bayou, as they did in 1875, when lives were lost at Lynchburg.

“A great deal of the loss of life has been due to flimsiness of many houses put up here in recent years for rent. The lesson which Galveston has received is a terrible one, but it will lead to safer and better buildings. It is true that some good buildings were wrecked by the jamming of wreckage from flimsy buildings, but the fact that we have many buildings standing unharmed, proves that we can build enduring structures.

GREAT DETERMINATION.

“I have given my attention since coming home to the restoration of the Gulf City compress and other property in which I am interested. We are going right ahead, with greater determination, to increase our business and to build up the city.”

“I am glad to see you alive” is the greeting with which a Galvestonian now meets his fellow-citizen on the rubbish blocked streets of the once proud city by the Texas coast. Those who have not been here can not realize what it is to a man to meet a friend alive, or to find a relative who since Saturday has been missing from the huddled few remaining who are gathered in some desolated, wrecked and wind torn building, which but a week ago was a happy home of happy people.

When a drama has finished, the curtain falls, and as the orchestra plays some popular air the audience makes its way to the street, talking for a few moments of the characters and the scenes, but shutting out from mind, with the falling of the curtain, the happiness and the pain which was depicted by moving characters who but represented a story of man’s imaginative mind. Not so with this.

No curtain can be drawn and the stage remains ever before them. They have it now as a desolate picture to gaze upon, and they will have it forever, wander where they will upon this earth’s surface. No curtain can force it from the mind, and no effort can efface it from the tablets of memory. Many of the actors in this great drama are not here. Some of them yet remain, and their stories are stranger than fiction which Jules Verne or Dumas have written.

Amid the smoke of battle, when men meet men in armed conflict, and thousands fall beneath the leaden hail, there is time taken to make a trench and consign to a resting place the bodies of the fallen thousands, and the chaplain has his moment to ask a merciful God to receive His own. Not so with this. No trench can be made for those people who have been found where the angry waters threw them up, where the falling timbers caught them, or where they are floating on the waters of a waved lashed shore.

QUICK WORK NEEDED.

They are disposed of, not as humanity would direct, or as sentiment dictates, but as necessity demands, and it is not with the accompaniment of a clergyman’s prayer, or the simple words of the man of the cloth, that “God has given and God has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord; earth to earth, dust to dust and ashes to ashes.” Bodies have been consigned to that element which destroyed the vitality of the material—the water and the waves which came from the storm tossed Gulf of Mexico to invade the portion of land which nature set aside for the habitation of man.

This could not be continued for long. The conception of man’s mind, which first suggested this disposition, proved to be wise judgment in the first emergency, but nature’s laws prevented a continuance of the plan, and it became necessary to turn to a quicker and more convenient method, as the decomposition which fast began a destruction of the mortal, rendered handling impossible. Cremation was then resorted to, and without the facilities of science to assist, the destruction of the remains was affected by using burning debris, upon the places where the corpses were found.

Humanity may think this is terrible and sentiment may revolt at this story, but that humanity and that sentiment is not to be found in Galveston. Here the people have thrown aside custom and formalities, all men are equal and that equality extends throughout the whole city. No custom of dress, no formality of appearance and no false modesty enters into one’s mind. Men and women cover their nakedness with what they can procure from neighbors, from friends or from the relief committee or what perchance was saved from the wreckage of their own homes, and they proceed with the work of looking after their own, their friends and their neighbors, as necessity demands. All people are neighbors here and all have a common interest.

NEW CHART OF BAY NEEDED.

A phenomenal thing has occurred in the bay. There are now bars there which have never before been seen. They are across from the Twenty-fifth street wharf and from the Twentieth street wharf. There may be others, but these two long ridges of sand have been noticed by the observing men who know the bay front as well as they know anything, and it is possible that when the water is sounded quite a number of these will be found in various places. It may require a new chart of the bay to determine the damage, and until this is done the greatest care must be exercised in moving about the harbor.

Those who live away from here will have an idea of the wreckage when it is stated that within an area bounded by Thirteenth street on the west, the end of the island on the east, the Gulf on the south and Broadway on the north, there is not a standing house. Between Broadway and Postoffice street and between Thirteenth street and the end of the island there is not a house standing. In the territory south of avenue K and east Tremont street all the way to the Denver resurvey there is not a house standing. There are other portions of the city which are in a similar condition, but it is impossible to tell them now.

The Sealy hospital was first reported as having been blown away, but it survived the storm in a most remarkable manner, notwithstanding the fact that it is situated where the raging waters were the highest. With the exception of broken window panes, a damaged ceiling and a good drenching of a number of the rooms, with their contents, it is virtually unharmed. The nurses’ home, which stood opposite the infirmary and was used in conjunction with it, was completely demolished, but with no loss of life.

There was no loss of life among the regular inmates of the hospitals. A number died during the storm, but they had been brought in in a dying condition.

CLOTHED ONE THOUSAND.

One thing developed by the storm that has not been commented upon is the manner in which the so-called “society men” have taken hold of things. They have worked like Trojans, every one of them, and have proven that the wearing of good and fashionably cut garments is no evidence of lack of manhood. Some of the first to go out in charge of gangs of men clearing away the debris and burying the bodies were the young fellows one meets at cotillions and fashionable functions. To-day their fair skins are cracked and burned with sun and wind, their hands blistered and burned, and their clothes covered with mud and slime. They glory in their young manhood, and are not one bit ashamed to go about with their collarless negligee shirt open at the neck, or their sleeves rolled up. Some of them have not shaved since the storm, and look more like subjects for charity than many who apply for relief.

One young man, who probably clothed one thousand people in two days, is going around in a very much soiled, borrowed shirt. His home was destroyed, and all the clothes he saved he had on his back at the time. He has not had time to buy new clothing, although he has probably clothed one thousand people. He would as soon have stolen as to have taken one of the nice clean shirts he was giving away. Besides, it never occurred to him.

Mr. J. Martin, one of the refugees at Houston, who passed through the storm at Galveston all right, save a gash in the head, a black eye, a mashed nose, and a sprained arm and leg, says that on the night of the storm he sought shelter in six different houses. As the last of these houses in turn succumbed to the force of the hurricane, Mr. Martin was plunged into the dark and angry waters, amid its splintering ruins. Numerous times, he said, falling timbers would knock him unconscious for a few moments, and after regaining his senses he would be so full of water, so exhausted and weak from his desperate exertions and loss of blood, that he felt like giving up all hope and allowing the water to draw him under and relieve him of his sufferings.

FOR A MOTHER’S LOVE.

He says he saw other men who were physically stronger than he do that very thing. Still he would not give up and he struggled on. He had no wife or child to live for—there was just one person in the world whom he fondly loved, and that was his mother. Every time, he says, that he decided to let himself go down beneath the water and drown his mother’s face would appear before his vision. Clearly and distinctly he could see the look of reproach in her eyes at his threatened weakness, and each time this vision would spur him to greater effort, and he would battle on until he reached another place of safety.

Finally, when the storm had spent its fury and he crawled into a place of safety, he drifted into unconsciousness and remained in that condition until late Sunday evening. Mr. Martin says that his mother lives in New York and he knew she was safe, but says had it not been for the image of her face which constantly appeared before him he certainly would never have lived to tell his experience.

There are no better hearted people in the world than the Americans. Not a case of genuine suffering or honest and unavoidable misfortune need ever go long without generous assistance in any part of the United States, if only the people know that it is a proper case for their sympathy. And this is true whether the misfortune be an individual and private or a public calamity.

The papers in all parts of the country, without exception, called the attention of their readers to the destructiveness of the hurricane in Texas, expressed their profound sympathy with the sufferers and urged instant relief measures. There never was a more general manifestation of popular solicitude, or a readier or more widespread response to an appeal for assistance.

And yet this is the American rule in such cases. The humblest and the highest give and give quickly. Nothing is too good for the unfortunate when it is known that their misfortune could not be warded off and that they are left utterly helpless.

It makes us love our country better when we find it has such a people within its borders. We regain the confidence in mankind which may have been shattered in sordid every day business. We feel that down in the heart, the good impulses remain, and that only something a little out of the ordinary is necessary to reveal (to slightly paraphrase Goldsmith) that