The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 360
xiv, 17-536 p. : front., plates ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
An Island of Desolation-Crumbling Walls-Faces White
With Agony-Tales of Dismay and
Death-Curious Sights.
NE of the most graphic and thrilling accounts of the overwhelming
calamity is contained in the following pages. It
is from the brilliant pen of a visitor to the city and eye-witness
of the awful ruin:
The story of Galveston's tragedy can never be written as it
is. Since the cataclysm of Saturday night, a force of faithful
men have been struggling to convey to humanity from time to
time some of the particulars of the tragedy. They have told
much, but it was impossible for them to tell all, and the world, at
best, can never know all, for the thousands of tragedies written by
the storm must forever remain mysteries until eternity shall
reveal all. Perhaps it were best that it should be so, for the horror
and anguish of those fatal and fateful hours were mercifully
lost in the screaming tempest and buried forever beneath the raging
billows. Only God knows, and for the rest let it remain forever
in the boundlessness of His omniscience. But in the realni
of finity, the weak and staggered senses of mankind may gather
fragments of the disaster, and may strive with inevitable incompleteness
to convey the merest impression of the saddest story
which ever engaged the efforts of a reporter.
Galveston ! The mournful dirges of the breakers which lash
the beach can not in the remaining centuries of the world give
expression 'to the sorrow and woe which throbs here to-day; and
if the sobbing waves and sighing winds, God's great funeral
choir, fail, how can the weak pen and appalled imaginations of
men perform the task ? The human heart can merely feel what
language will never be able to express. And in the case of Galveston,
the heart must break before it can begin to feel.
I struggled all r.ay Tuesday to reach this isle of desolation.
860
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The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times (Book)
This book covers the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the United States' deadliest natural disaster. It includes accounts from survivors and eyewitnesses, and photos of the devastation.
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Lester, Paul. The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times, book, 1900~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth26719/m1/418/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.