CHAPTER VI.

Cremating Bodies by the Hundred in the Streets of Galveston--Negroes Faint While Handling the Decomposed Corpses--How Some of Those Rescued Escaped with Their Lives.

Fully 1,500 bodies were cremated at Galveston after it became apparent that the time necessary to bury them or cast them into the sea could not be taken, owing to their advanced state of decomposition.

Many of the negroes who handled the bodies fell from fright and nausea. White volunteers took their places and the work went on. The volunteers bandaged their mouths and noses with cotton cloths saturated with disinfectants and were relieved by other volunteers every hour.

Fires could not be started every place where bodies were found. The usual plan was to collect all bodies within two blocks in one spot and then build the funeral pyre. On the remains of many women were valuable rings and jewelry, but the men did not attempt to remove the jewelry. It was burned with the owners.

Officers Mass and Woodward reported that their two gangs burned 100 bodies, the majority women and children. The percentage of deaths among children was frightful. Sheriff Thomas and his negroes burned forty bodies on the beach near Tremont street.

Catholic priests in charge of gangs reported 120 bodies burned. The sanitary experts pushed the work of burning the dead. No other disposition was considered. People who had lost relatives and friends made no objection and looked on the plan with favor.

Disinfectants were used as never before in the world. The smell of the charnel house was driven away and the whole city was filled with the fumes of carbolic acid and lime in solution.

This is general order No. 9, issued by Brigadier General Thomas Scurry, commanding the city forces:

"Guards, foreman of gangs, and working parties or others acting under the authorities of this department will use diligence toward preventing any hardships on private individuals or impressing men for service. The conditions, however, are so critical, and it is so necessary that sanitary precautions be taken to preserve the lives and health of the people of this stricken city, that individual interests must give way to the general good of all. If it is found feasible to secure volunteers, general impressment will be avoided, but, the medical fraternity being a unit in the opinion that further delay or procrastination will bring pestilence to finish the dire work of the hurricane, the interests of no individual, firm, or corporation will for one instant be spared to secure volunteers for work, but, failing this, every able-bodied man is to be put to work to clear the wreckage, burn the hundreds of bodies under it, and save, if possible, the lives of those who yet remain. I trust this position may be thoroughly appreciated and understood, so that all people will govern themselves accordingly."

BOY FLOATS MILES ON A TRUNK.

The miracles of Galveston were many. Some of them will not be received with full credit by readers. In the infirmary at Houston was a boy whose name is Rutter. He was found on Monday morning lying behind a trunk on the land near the town of Hitchcock, which is twenty miles to the northward of Galveston. The boy was only 12 years old. His story was that his father, mother, and two children remained in the house. There was a crash. The house went to pieces. The boy said he caught hold of a trunk when he found himself in the water and floated off with it. He was sure the others were drowned. He had no idea of where it took him, but when daylight came he was across the bay and out upon the still partially submerged mainland.

ESCAPED IN BATHING SUITS.

The wife of Manager Bergman of the Houston Opera House saw more of the storm than fell to the lot of most women who live to tell of it. She had been spending the heated term at a Rosenberg avenue cottage only a short distance from the beach.

On Saturday morning the water had risen there three feet. Putting on a bathing suit, Mrs. Bergman went to the Olympia to talk over the long distance telephone with her husband in Houston. This was about 10 a. m. At the Olympia she had to wade waist deep in the water. At 2 o'clock Mrs. Bergman became alarmed, and with her sister she left the summer cottage and started toward the more thickly settled part of the city. Neighbors laughed at the fear of the women. Out of a family of fifteen in the next house only three were saved.

Mrs. Bergman and her sister waded and swam alternately several blocks until they reached the higher streets. Then they hired a negro with a dray and told him to take them to the telephone exchange. Within two blocks from where the start was made in this way the mule got into deep water and was drowned. The women reached the telephone building, but when the firemen began to bring in the dead bodies they left and went to Balton's livery stable. This was only 600 yards away, but Mrs. Bergman says it was the hardest part of the trip, with the air full of flying bits of glass, slate, and wood. In the stable they remained until morning.

When the sun had risen the water had so far receded that they went out to the site of their cottage. A hitching post was all that served to locate the place. No houses were left standing for many blocks around. A dead baby lay in the yard. The two women returned down-town. Passing a store with plate glass windows and doors blown out, they went in and helped themselves to the black cloth from which they made the gowns they still wore when they reached Houston three days later. During the storm they wore their bathing suits.

STRANGE INCIDENTS OF THE FLOOD.

Many instances of devotion of husband to wife, of wife to husband, of child to parent and parent to child could be mentioned. One poor woman with her child and her father was cast out into the raging waters. They were separated. Both were in drift and both believed they went out in the gulf and returned. The mother was finally cast upon the drift and there she was pounded by the waves and debris until she was pulled into a house against which the drift had lodged, and during all that frightful ride she held to her eight months' old boy and when she was on the drift pile she lay upon the infant and covered it with her body that it might escape the blows of the planks. She came out of the ordeal cut and maimed, but the infant had not a scratch.

STATUES ON ALTAR NOT HARMED.

St. Joseph's Catholic Church presents a strange contrast, with the roof and rear wall back of the altar being carried away. The wall collapsed, but the altar was not damaged and the frail lifesize statues of St. Joseph and the Virgin on the altar were not harmed or moved.

When their home went to pieces the members of the Stubbs family--husband, wife, and two children--climbed upon the roof of a house floating by. They felt tolerably secure. Without warning the roof parted in two pieces. Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs were separated. Each had a child. The parts of the raft went different ways in the darkness. One of the children fell off and disappeared. Not until some time Sunday was the family reunited. Even the child was saved, having caught a table and clung to it until it reached a place of safety.

Another man took his wife from one house to another by swimming until he had occupied three. Each fell in its turn and then he took to the waves and they were separated and each, as the persons above mentioned, believed they were carried to sea. After three hours in the water he heard her call and finally rescued her.

THREW $10,000 WORTH OF DIAMONDS INTO THE WATER.

Edward Zeigler, Thomas Farley and Alexander McCarthy arrived at Mobile, Ala., Thursday evening from Galveston. They left Galveston that morning on the tug Robinson with 130 other refugees and were taken to Houston. Until they arrived at New Orleans they were clad in undergarments and were coatless.

They escaped at 10:30 on Sunday morning from a house on the exposed beach by clinging to a log and floating to high ground. Zeigler was struck by floating wreckage, but was assisted by his companions to safety. An old negress, who gave the sleeping men warning, was drowned.

Zeigler was naked and the other men were in their night garments when they reached the crowd gathered near the Tremont house, but their appearance was similar to that of hundreds, many women being rescued for whom clothing had to be at once obtained. At noon Sunday they had sufficient space to move around with comfort, although filled with anxiety and penned in on all sides by the rapidly rising water. Four hours later the few thoroughfares above water were congested with crowds of hysterical women, crying children and frantic men.

The separation of families produced pathetic scenes when mothers mourned their offspring and men lamented the loss of all dear to them. There was no confusion, only a clinging closer together without discrimination of class or sex as the waters advanced foot by foot.

At dark the misery deepened and the women occupied the hotel and approaches, the highest point in the city, and the water continuing to advance, buildings and stores were thrown wide open to provide refuge in the upper stories. The men gave the better positions to the women.

As midnight approached conditions became worse; several women became demented and one woman, a member of the demi-monde, threw $10,000 worth of diamonds into the flood.

In the hotel the women kissed each other and said good-by. They prayed and sang hymns in turn. With each announcement that the waters were rising many men and women gave up to the terrible mental strain and fainted.

The survivors paid a high tribute to the bravery in the face of death of the women of Galveston, and stated that, although abject melancholy had fallen over all, that the spirit of fortitude displayed by the women nerved the men. The horrors of that night were equaled on the succeeding days as the water receded.

DARED EVERYTHING FOR WIFE AND SON.

Of all the heroism and dogged tenacity of purpose noted in connection with the Galveston storm none was greater than that of W. L. Love of Houston. Mr. Love was a compositor on the Houston Post, and his wife and little son were visiting Mrs. Love's mother in Galveston when the storm struck the city.

Early Sunday morning when the first news of the Galveston disaster began to drift in, Mr. Love announced to the foreman of the composing-room, under whom he was working, that he intended starting immediately for Galveston.

He went to one of the depots and fortunately found a train leaving toward Galveston. He boarded it, but the train was forced to stop eight miles before it reached Galveston Bay. He walked eight miles, arriving at the bay in about two hours. There was no boat in sight, not even a skiff or canoe.

He found a large cypress railroad-tie near the water's edge and, procuring a coal hook from a locomotive that had blown from the track, he got astride the tie after having placed it in the water, and set out on a difficult and perilous journey across the three miles of salt water. Thus he labored for six trying hours, the sun beating down on him and with his body half submerged in the brine of the bay.

At last the goal was reached and he pulled himself out of the water and stepped on the once fair island.

After having passed on his way more than a hundred decaying bodies of the storm victims, the heroic young man set about finding his wife and little boy. This he did after a lengthy search. His wife had lost her mother, father, brothers and sisters, numbering eight in all.

The little boy had been utterly stripped of his clothing by the wind and both he and his mother had an experience that rarely comes to a mother and son.

PITIFUL TALES OF SOME OF THE SURVIVORS.

The story of Thomas Klee was indeed most pitiful. Klee lived near Eleventh and N streets. When the storm burst he was alone in his home with his two infant children. He seized one under each arm and rushed from the frail structure in time to cheat death among the falling timbers of his home.

Once in the open, with his babies under his arms, he was swept into the bay among hundreds of others. He held to his precious burden and by skillful maneuvering managed to get close to a tree which was sweeping along with the tide. He saw a haven in the branches of the tree and raised his two-year-old daughter to place her in the branches. As he did so the little one was torn from his arm and carried away to her death.

The awful blow stunned but did not render him senseless. Klee retained his hold on the other child, aged four years, and was whirled along among the dying and dead victims of the storm's fury, hoping to effect a landing somewhere.

An hour in the water brought the desired end. He was thrown ashore, with wreckage and corpses, and, stumbling to a footing, lifted his son to a level with his face. The boy was dead.

Klee remembered nothing until Thursday night, when he was put ashore in Texas City. He had a slight recollection of helping to bury dead, clear away debris and obey the command of soldiers. His brain, however, did not execute its functions until Friday morning.

George Boyer's experience was a sad one. He was thrown into the rushing waters, and while being carried with frightful velocity down the bay saw the dead face of his wife in the branches of a tree. The woman had been wedged firmly between two branches.

Margaret Lees' life was saved at the expense of her brother's. The woman was in her Twelfth street home when the hurricane struck. Her brother seized her and guided her to St. Mary's University, a short distance away. He returned to search for his son, and was killed by a falling house.

HORRIBLE CONDITION OF THE CITY AFTER THE FLOOD.

I. J. Jones, sent to Galveston by Governor Sayers, of Texas, the day after the storm to investigate the condition of the Texas State quarantine there, reported to the Governor at Austin on September 14, said, among other things, in his report:

"The sanitary condition of the city is very bad. Large quantities of lime have been ordered to the place, but I doubt if any one will be found to unload it from the vessels and attend its systematic distribution when it arrives. The stench is almost unbearable. It arises from piles of debris containing the carcasses of human beings and animals. These carcasses are being burned whenever it can be done with safety, but little of the wreckage can be destroyed. There is no water protection, and should a fire break out the destruction of the city would soon be complete. When searching parties come across a human body it is taken into an open space and wreckage piled over it. This is set on fire and the body slowly consumed. The odor of the burning bodies is horrible.

"The chairman of the finance relief committee at Galveston wanted me to make the announcement that the city wants all the skilled mechanics and contractors with their tools that can be brought to Galveston. There is some repair work now going on, but it is impossible to find men who will work at that kind of business. Those now in Galveston not engaged in the relief work have their own private business to look after and mechanics are not to be had. All mechanics will be paid regular wages and will be given employment by private parties who desire to get their wrecked homes in a habitable condition as rapidly as possible. There are many houses which have only the roof gone. These residences are finely furnished, and it is desired that the necessary repairs be made quickly.

"The relief work is fairly well organized. Nothing has been accomplished except the distribution of food among the needy. About one-half of the city is totally wrecked and many people are living in houses that are badly wrecked. The destitute are being removed from the city as rapidly as possible. It will take three or four days yet before all who want to go have been removed from the island and city. A remarkably large number of horses survived the storm, but there is no feed for them and many of them will soon die of starvation.

"I am thoroughly satisfied after spending two days in Galveston that the estimate of 5,000 dead is too conservative. It will exceed that number. Nobody can ever estimate or will ever know within 1,000 of how many lives were lost. In the city the dead bodies are being got rid of in whatever manner possible. They are burying the dead found on mainland. At one place 250 were found and buried on Wednesday. There must be hundreds of dead bodies back on the prairies that have not been found. It is impracticable to make a search. Bodies have been found as far back as seven miles from the mainland shore. It would take an army to search that territory on the mainland.

"The waters of the gulf and bay are still full of dead bodies and they are being constantly cast upon the beach. On my trip to and from the quarantine I passed a procession of bodies going seaward. I counted fourteen of them on my trip in from the station, and this procession is kept up day and night. The captain of a ship who had just reached quarantine informed me that he began to meet floating bodies fifty miles from port.

"As an illustration of how high the water got in the gulf, a vessel which was in port tried to get into the open sea when the storm came on. It got out some distance and had to put back. It was dark and all the landmarks had been obliterated. The course of the vessel could not be determined and she was being furiously driven in toward the island by the wind. Before her course could be established she had actually run over the top of the north jetty. As the vessel draws twenty-five feet of water, some idea can be obtained as to the height of the water in the gulf."

THRILLING EXPERIENCE OF A DALLAS GIRL.

One of the most thrilling descriptions of personal experience with the fearful flood ever written was that of Miss Maud Hall, of Dallas, Tex., who was spending her school vacation with friends at Galveston. She wrote an account of her adventures to her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Emory Hall:

"Dear Papa and Mamma: I suppose before this you will have received my telegram and know I am safe. This has been a terrible experience. I hope I will be spared any more such. I am just a nervous wreck--fever blisters over my mouth, eyes with hollows under them, and shaking all over. When I close my eyes I can't see anything but piles of naked dead and wild-eyed men and women. I suppose I had better begin at the beginning, but I don't know if I can write with any sense. Saturday at about 11 o'clock it began raining, and the wind rose a little. Sidney Spann and two young lady boarders could not get home to dinner. After the dinner the men left and we sat around in dressing sacks watching the storm. All at once Birdie Duff (Mrs. Spann's married daughter) said: 'Look at the water in the street; it must be the gulf.'

"There was water from curb to curb. It rose rapidly as we watched it, and Mrs. Spann sent us all to dress. It rose to the sidewalk, and the men began to come home. The wind and rain rose to a furious whirlwind and all the time the water crept higher and higher. We all crowded into the hall of the house--a big, two-story one--and it rocked like a cradle. About 6 o'clock the roof was gone, all the blinds torn off, and all the windows blown in. Glass was flying in all directions and the water had risen to a level with the gallery.

"Then the men told us we would have to leave and go to a house across the street at the end of the block, a big one. Mrs. Spann was wild about her daughter Sidney, who had not been home, and the telephone wires were down. The men told us we must not wear heavy skirts, and could only take a few things in a little bundle. I took my watch and ticket and what money I had and pinned them in my corset; took off everything from my waist down but an underskirt and my linen skirt; no shoes and stockings. I put what clothes I could find in my trunk and locked it. Tell mamma the last thing I put in was her gray skirt, for I thought it might be injured.

"It took two men to each woman to get her across the street and down to the end of the block. Trees thicker than any in our yard were whirled down the street; pine logs, boxes and driftwood of all sorts swept past, and the water looked like a whirlpool. Birdie and I went across on the second trip. The wind and rain cut like a knife and the water was icy cold. It was like going down into the grave, and I was never so near death, unless it was once before, since I have been here. I came near drowning with another girl. It was dark by this time, and the men put their arms around us and down into the water we went. Birdie was crying about her baby that she had to leave behind until the next trip, and I was begging Mr. Mitchell and the other man not to turn me loose.

"Mrs. Spann came last. The water was over her chin. It was up to my shoulders when I went over. One man brought a bundle of clothing, such as he could find for us to put on, wrapped up in his mackintosh. He had to swim over. I spent the night, such a horrible one, wet from shoulder to my waist and from my knees down, and barefoot. Nobody had any shoes and stockings. Mrs. Spann did not have anything but a thin lawn dress and blanket wrapped around her from her waist down. Nellie had a lawn wrapper and blanket, and Fannie had a skirt and winter jacket. Mr. Mitchell had a pair of trousers and a light shirt and was barefooted. The house was packed with people just like us.

"The house had a basement and was of stone. The windows were blown out, and it rocked from top to bottom, and the water came into the first floor. Of course no one slept. About 3 o'clock in the morning the wind had changed and blew the water back to the gulf, and as we stood at the windows watching it fall we saw two men and two girls wading the street and heard Sidney calling for her mother. She and the young lady with her spent the night crowded into an office with nine men in total darkness, sitting on boxes, with their feet up off the floor. It was an immense brick building four stories high. They were on the second floor. The roof and one story was blown away and the water came up to the second floor. It was down toward the wharf.

"As soon as we could we waded home. Such a home! The water had risen three feet in the house and the roof being gone the rain poured in. I had not a dry rag but a dirty skirt which was hanging in the wardrobe and an underskirt with it. My trunk had floated and everything in it was stained except the gray skirt. We had not had anything to eat since noon the day before, and we lived on whisky. Every time the men would see us they would poke a bottle of whisky at us, and make us drink some. All we had all day Sunday was crackers at 50 cents a small box and whisky.

"We were all so weak we knew we could not get any more, so Miss Decker and I went down about 10 o'clock. It was awful. Dead animals everywhere, and the streets filled with fallen telegraph poles and brick stores blown over. Hundreds of women and children and men sitting on steps crying for lost ones, and half of them, nearly, injured. Wild-eyed, ghastly-looking men hurried by and told of whole families killed.

"I could not stand any more and made them bring me home, and fell on the bed with hysterics. They poured whisky down me, but the only effect it had was to make my head ache worse. I had about got straightened out when a girl and a woman came to the house--relatives of Mrs. Spann--who had lost their mother and friends and house, and all they had. They had hysterics, and everybody cried, and I had another spell. All day wagon after wagon passed filled with dead--most of them without a thing on them--and men with stretchers with dead bodies with just a sheet thrown over them, some of them little children.

"We waited, every minute expecting to have the two bodies brought here. But they had not been found up to now, and all hope is lost. There is a little boy in the house that spent the night in the water clinging to a log, and his father and mother and four sisters were drowned. He is all alone. Last night Mr. Mitchell took Miss Decker and I to another boarding house to find a dry bed. We slept on a folding bed, with nothing under us but a rug and sheet, and I had to borrow something dry to sleep in. The husband of the lady who lost her mother has just come from Houston. He walked and swam all the way. He is nearly wild, and she is just screaming. I cannot write any more. Am coming home soon as I can."

SAVED AS BY A MIRACLE.

The Stubbs family, consisting of father, mother and two children, was in its home when it collapsed. They found refuge on a floating roof. This parted and father and one child were swept in one direction, while the mother and the other child drifted in another. One of the children was washed off, but Sunday evening all four were reunited.

Mrs. P. Watkins became a raving maniac as the result of her experiences. With her two children and her mother she was drifting on a roof, when her mother and one child were swept away. Mrs. Watkins mistakes attendants in the hospital for her lost relatives and clutches wildly for them.

Harry Steele, a cotton man, and his wife sought safety in three successive houses which were demolished. They eventually climbed on a floating door and were saved.

W. R. Jones, with fifteen other men, finding the building they were in about to fall, made their way to the water tower and, clapping hands, encircled the standpipe to keep from being washed or blown away.

Mrs. Chapman Bailey, wife of the southern manager of the Galveston Wharf Company, and Miss Blanche Kennedy floated in the waters ten to twenty feet deep all night and day by catching wreckage. Finally they got into a wooden bath tub and were driven into the gulf overnight. The incoming tide drove them back to Galveston and they were rescued the next day. They were fearfully bruised. All their relatives were drowned.

A pathetic incident in the search for the dead occurred Friday. A squad of men discovered in a wrecked building five bodies. Among these bodies was one which a member of the burial party recognized as his own brother. The bodies were all in an advanced state of decomposition. They were removed and a funeral pyre was built, at which the brother assisted and, with Spartan-like firmness, stood by and saw the bodies of the dead reduced to ashes.

On Monday a brakeman of the Galveston, Houston and Northern left Virginia Point and started to walk toward Texas City. He found a little child, which he picked up and carried for miles. On his way he discovered the bodies of nine women. These he covered with grass to protect them from the vultures until some arrangements could be made for their interment.