The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 61

CHAPTER IV.
The Cry of Distress in the Wrecked City-Negro Vandals
Shot Down-Progress of the Relief Work
-Strict Military Rule.
HE situation on the third day after the flood was vividly
described by a visitor to the city as follows: It is plainly
apparent that as a result of the Galveston disaster, a task
confronts the public authorities such as neither Texas nor any
other State has ever before had to grapple with.
Human nature at its worst has had opportunity for the display
of its meanest passions, and relentless measures have been
rendered necessary. Looters and vandals have ignored all moral
restraints, and gunpowder has had to be used unsparingly to subdue
the savagery being practiced. It is learned on unquestionable
authority that the soldiers under Adjutant General Scurry have
to-day (Wednesday the I2th) slain no less than seventy-five men,
mostly negroes, guilty of robbing the dead.
POCKET FULL OF HUMAN FINGERS.
One of these had in his pocket twenty-three human fingers
with costly rings on them. The fingers had been cut from the
victims of the storm found on the beach or floating in the waters of
Galveston Bay.
W. McGrath, Manager of the Dallas Electric Company, and
representing large Boston interests in Texas, returned from
Galveston direct. He says: " The only way to prevent an epidemic
that will practically depopulate the island is to burn the?
bodies of the dead. The Governor of Texas should call an extra
session of the Legislature and appropriate a million or half a million
dollars, or whatever amount is needed. The situation must
be taken intelligently in hand to save the State from a possible
epidemic. Before I left Galveston about 4,000 bodies had been
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