GALVESTON AFTER THE CYCLONE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11520, 3 November 1900, Page 5 (Supplement)

GALVESTON AFTER THE CYCLONE.

THE LIST OF THE DEAD AT SIX THOUSAND. ROBBING THE DEAD. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE MISCREANTS KILLED. TONS OF DISINFECTANTS NEEDED. A SUMMARY OF THE CATASTROPHE. Galveston, September 15.—0f Galveston's population, 38,000, at least 6000 were killed. The area of total destruction was 1300 acres. There were 5000 dwellings, hotels, Churches, and convents utterly destroyed. More than 1500 bodies have been burned. The property loss is not less than £3,000,000. One hundred and twenty-five men, most of them negroes, were shot to death for robing the dead. Out of this disaster, unparalleled in the history of the nation, Galveston is rising to reclaim her place among the most prosperous of our cities. Her railroads have pledged themselves to aid in rebuilding the city. Her merchants are resolute to resume business. Her banks are ready to assist in tho re-establishment of commerce, and outside capital is flowing in. The one urgent need of the hour is not mone y_but disinfectants by the ton, so that the workmen may bear to work among the ruins. SWIFT DEATH FOR 125 ROBBERS OF THE DEAR. There are all told perhaps 125 in the list of dead who did not die in the storm. They died at the hands of their fellow-men. Some are white ; more are black. Many of them lived here and survived that awful Saturday night of hurricane and horror. The others came from near-by places. They are the men caught robbing the dead— ghouls of this week of woo and despair. >. ot a tithe of the story has yet reached the outside world. There were more executions here in two days than in all the United: States in a year. Some few have enjoyed their constitutional privilege of a drumhead court-mar-tial, with an army officer as dispenser cf life or death. The most have been .shot down as they robbed. Soldiers and citizens alike have been clothed with this authority —to kill anyone caught stealing from the dead, or even from the piles of wreckage. One artillery' sergeant killed! five men within the minute with his Krag-Jorgensen —a bullet for each from the five cartridges :n his rifle's magazine. One citizen killed two negroes in the twinkling of an eye—a barrel of his shotgun for each. There has not been a day that a dozen have not died in this way. In one batch of guilty ones were 43 men. Every man of them was shot to his death after due court-martial. That is_ the biggest execution ever known in the United States. A PICTURE OF SUNDAY MORNING. Picture this place on Sunday morning when the sun arose hot and glaring over 1300 acres of desolated waste that a dozen hours before had been the richest city of its size in the world. There were beaches cf fresh, new sand where once houses stood and where streets ran. A breastwork of wreckage 40ft high formed the seawall for this township of misery. Within it were 6000 bodies of the dead. Then came the ghouls on Sunday morning. They flocked from the sections where the damage had been the least; they swarmed in from other towns. This was before the soldiers camein fact it was then believed that Batterv O, First. Artillery, U.S.A., Captain Rafferty. was gone, But what could 120 tired regulars do—wet, exhausted, hungry they got here from Fort San Jacinto, with several square miles of wreck to guard and a dozen looters to every block'' General Chambers McKibben, who fought bo well at Santiago, took command. He proclaimed martial law at once, on Monday. " Arrest the despoilers of the dead if you can," ho said, grimly, "and if you can't, shoot them!" This was in the morning. The same day Mayor Jones clothed all citizens with the same authority. " Shoot all ghouls," said he, turning away to more important business. These orders have been followed to the letter. General McKibben has since added more. He ordered that not a soul be admitted to the stricken city except for good and sufficient reasons. He proclaimed even against cameras. One private on guard caught a camera fiend intent upon snapping a mutilated corpse of a woman. " Stop!" yelled the soldier. For an answer the shutter snapped. But the fingers that pressed the button will never develop the plate. The soldier fired, and the would-be photographer fell dead. No one knows who he was. Half an hour later his bleeding body was cast upon one of the funeral pyres of tho storm victims. DEAD FOR WnOil NOBODY CARES. The exact number of those who have been shot down will never be known. Nobody cares. Their friends are ashamed and make no criticism. The whites got the courtmartial. The negroes were shot down and their bodies at once burned. Since Sunday morning perhaps one hundred and twenty-five have been executed or shot summarily, The first batch to suffer court-martial were fourteen negroes and two white men. They had beer, gathered in by the soldiers. Captain Rafferty ordered thun taken to the Tremont Hotel, acting under instruction from Genera! McKibben. There had been no court-martial on Sunday—just nummary shooting then and there. Their captors told their stories. Some of the prisoners confessed, never guessing their fate; others tried to lie. But from their very pockets were taken the evidences of their frightful crimes—human fingers with rings, ears in which ear-rings still gleamed, the soft arm of a young girl encircled by a diamond bracelet imbedded in the swollen flesh. " Guilty was the verdict for all the 16. In another moment a sergeant and his section of men were marching down Thir-teenth-street to the beach, and between the open ranks were the guilty, with ropes upon their wrists. And so they were shot, one after the other, by the grim privates, each at the sergeant's word of command, while an officer looked on. And not one of the privates pleaded the soldier's right to have one blank cartridge among the firing squad, so that each might think himself perhaps not the cause of his fellow-man's death. ANOTHER WHOLESALE EXECUTION. Adjutant-General Thomas Scurry, of Texas, has taken charge of the citizen-sol-diery, and is acting in conjunction with the regulars, who have taken the place of Battery O. He has arrested nearly two hundred men for looting and robbing the dead, nearly all of whom are negroes. These men had the privilege of a court-martial on Wednesday, and forty-three of them were found guilty. In one negro's pocket were twentythree human fingers, bearing rings. So once again tho grim soldiers marched down to the beach and snot the forty-three, one after the other, while no one of the great crowd that looked on shed a single tear. " It must be done," says General Scurry, " or there would not be a person safe in Galveston or a dollar's worth of property secure. My men have orders to shoot down anyone they catch robbing tho dead or pillaging property, ana we shall keep it up.'

One of those who saw the executions was Samuel Lewis, of New Orleans, a wealthy tobacco merchant. Said he : — " To-day manv men were shot andl killed. Thev were pilfering the dead, tearing the jewellery from the ringers and ears of dead women. Not a warning was given them; like dogs they were shot down. Others were arrested and drumhead court-martials sealed their doom. Conviction and shooting followed, "The city is really under martial law. The remnant of a once proud military company stalks along the beach, their members armed with various weapons, which they do not-hesitate, to use."

This was on Wednesday, and the victims were not those who were regularly tried and shot, but those who were killed at their fiendish work. ,< ;

"When the guard was changed! on Thursday morning one private reported to Captain Rafferty that he had been forced to kill five negroes. "I saw them stealing jewellery from a woman's body," said the soldier. "When I ordered them to stop one pulled out a revolver and fired. He missed), and I killed him with my rifle. The rest closed in and with the four bullets I had left I killed the other four." , •• ,k

That same night four negroes, caught robbing bodies, were killed by enraged citizens. Their bodies were on funeral pyres an hour later without so much as a thought as to their identity. All day Thursday the looting and robbing of the dead continued. The soldiers by this time were completely exhausted under the strain. They were so tired that they never talked back when they caught a ghoul. During Thursday, besides many negroes, three white men were shot. Orib was a bar-room lounger, known as " Kid" Barriett, the other two were brothers of the name of Bernard! They had their' court-martial at the Tremont Hotel. It only took ten minutes. A correspondent of the Dallas Times tells me the story. The accused, ho says, were allowed to listen to the testimony against them, but the ghastly evidence taken from their pockets was the best proof. One finger found in Barnett's pocket bore a plain gold ring, a diamond solitaire, and a large amethyst ring surrounded by diamonds So the regulars marched the 'three off, as they had the others before them, to the foot of Thirteenthstreet.

Here they were stood at a distance of ten paces. Five soldiers were detailed for each man. The officer in command was perfectly cool—he bad fought in San Juan and was a regular. " Ready!" said he. in a low tone. Fifteen Krags clicked in unison as the triggers were raised. Aim in a little louder voice, while the men got their Buffinton sights in line with their victims' hearts. Then a short pause.

"Fire!" Fifteen rifles belched forth lead and three men fell face forward on the beach without a groan. Ten minutes more and they were in shallow trenches in the sand. Another sergeant in Battery O killed three men within an hour, He was sent with six privates down to the West End to prevent looting, and he carried out his orders to the letter. " One woman," said he, in his report to Captain Rafferty, "told me that a negro had just entered her house, had stolen all her rings and jewellery, and had forced her to open her trunks. She pointed in the direction he had gone and I caught up to him after a run of two blocks. I called on him to halt, and when he didn't I fired with my revolver. Ho fell dead. I called upon some citizens to search the body, and they found the woman's jewellery, which I took back to her. "I caught another negro on the beach pulling bodies out or the water and chopping oft' tne fincers for the rings. I shot him dead. On his body I found ten rings and 73 dollars, which I turned over to the Citizens' Committee. I killed my third man a few minutes later. He was robbing the dead." THE FUTURE. The manner in which the country responded when the magnitude of tho tragedy was realised has lifted Galveston from the depths of depression to the heights of hope. To-day 3000 men were at work cleaning up. Leaders have come from all ranks. Huges. a longshoreman, proved to be one of the most valuable men at a time when such a man was most needed. He was the first to volunteer to gather bodies, and, taking charge ot a squad of men, he collected 500. This was on Sunday. Hughes was also first to suggest burial at sea. Whisky by the bucketful was carried to the gang "of workers and they were drenched with it. The stimulant was kept at hand and applied continually. Only in this way was it possible for the stoutest-hearted to labour in such surroundings.. Under the direction of Hughes the hundreds of bodies already collected and others brought from the central part of the city were loaded on an ocean barge, taken far out, and cast into the sea. DISINFECTANTS. The Governor of Texas has ordered from New York five hundred barrels of copperas and one hundred barrels of carbolic acid A SHIP CARRIED INLAND. The Norwegian steamer Gyller was picked up by the tornado from her wharf on the east end of the city, carried around the bay side, through two bridges, and landed six miles away, high and dry. between Virginia Point and Texas City. She is intact, but mav never float again. The captain says that the ship was driven with such force that when it tore through strong railroad bridges broadside on there was no shock appreciable. He did not realise that the ship was striking anything at all until after he was able to see and found where ho was. Ho supposed that he was being earned out to sea, whereas his ship was flying inland across what is usually dry land. The tornado played similar freaks with the British ship Kendall Castle, the Red Cross, and the Mallory liner Alamo, driving one in one way and another in the opposite direction.