The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 500

500o CGREAT STORMS A4>D VAST DESTRUCTION.
prevail, and when the southerly winds bank up the waters of the
northern gulf, tlle streets of the city are flooded, the sewers deliver
themselves the wrong way and the uncertain foundations of the
city are weakened and prepared for the fall which follows close
upon the weather conditions when they are intensified.
THE CITY A PREY TO THE STORM.
" We have now the situation of Galveston fairly before us,
and can understand how it easily succumbed to the violence of
the late storm. It is true that the cyclone was of a potentiality
which might have razed a more firmly built city, but probably in
no other city in this country could it have caused such complete
devastation.
" In twenty-five years the city of Galveston and the coast line
of Texas have had three visitations of tropical hurricanes, bearing
death and destruction in their blasts. Every year about the equinoctial
season storms of greater or less fury occur and never, on
account of the fragile materials and loose methods of building,
have they failed of doing damage, but these three occupy thrones
of mark above all others. In September, 1875, the coast of Texas,
from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the Sabine Pass, was swept
by a cyclone that followed with its central zone the curve of the
the coast, the wind varying at different times in its journey to
southeast to southwest.
" The town of Indianola was blotted out of the world in an
hour. Not half a dozen of its 1,200 inhabitants escaped, and the
sea swept away the island on which it stood, and its site has no
other mark than that which the waves rolling over it can offer.
There were not enough of people to ask for help. And as there
was no longer a place to rebuild, the little remnant moved elsewhere.
The storm swept over Galveston, raising a tidal wave that
changed in its impetuous flow the whole shape of the island. From
the western end nearly two miles of land was cut off and carried
around to the north side. The city was unroofed, houses toppled
and fell, the water flowed in resistless currents along the levees,
floating off to sea thousands of bales of cotton and destroying in