The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 376
xiv, 17-536 p. : front., plates ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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376 DIED IN EFFORTS TO SAVE ()OTERS.
of matter.became heavy. It must have dragged upon the ground
as the water here could have only been five to seven feet deep.
But this would not have stopped it, had the last street to be
assaulted, Q street or Q2 street, not interposed. The houses here
were rather large and strong. This battering ram made by the
winds and worked both by the winds and the water, met with
resistance from the houses and was impeded by its own weight,
which dragged it on the bottom. Its efforts at destruction became
more and more feeble. The houses stood, though wrecked. The
debris climbed to the very eaves.
But the more that came, the heavier the mass became. And
lo ! the very assailant became the defender! For, piling higher
and higher-piling higher and higher by the addition of houses
lately splintered, by the addition df everything from a piano to a
child's whistle, there was a wall built against the great waves
which rolled in from the Gulf, and thereby the territory lying
between the bulwark and the bay, was protected to some extent.
True, the casual observer will think as he looks even upand down
the main streets of the town, that very little protection was given.
A BULWARK OF DEAD PEOPLE.
But few lives were lost, in comparison, in this district, and
while the stores were flooded and houses toppled over by the winds
anAd undermined by the water, yet that bulwark made of dead
people and all they had struggled for and owned in this life, kept
back the savage waves from the Gulf and saved the rest of the
town. Looking at this wall, from which, as I write, come the
odors of decomposition, climbing it, as this correspondent has
done, he is sure in his mind that if it had not been formed not as
many people of Galveston Island would have escaped as on
that day when Pompeii was shut out from the eyes of the world
by the veil of ashes.
These are speculations. In years to come men may be able
to talk of this greatest of catastrophes in the cool, deliberate way
which will admit of reasonable hypotheses as to the causes of the
results, but they cannot do it lnow. The wind blew from the cast.
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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/m1/434/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.