El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1900-10-09

a letter Just recei'eu Soi- DaSioi
SAYS: Il have received many letters
from old friends who ave heard of me
through The Herald, and all ask me
to publish my stories in book form,
but / will have to wait However, my
Galveston oyster beds won't be hurt,
and people will eat oysters just as
though no storm had occurred.
Il have long dreaded this terrible
tragedy since Last Island was destroy
ed. An old Mexican who was in San
Antonio and ICE belonged to the no.
torious LATTE pirates, said he saw
such a storm about 1911 that covered
| the entire island. So the people must
rebuild keeping this fact in view, and
have places of refuge scattered through
the city. Galveston is too important
a place to the west. and in fact to
the commercial world, to be abandon
ed, and will be rebuilt better than it
ever would have been but for this dis
aster.
There are in the stricken city
many brave old veterans. both of the
| blue and the gray. who faced death on
a many DlOOuy dtti hChu aho hCNCi
faltered. but-as he bravest are the
tenderest-the cry of a woman's voice
in distress or the wall of a drowning
child would unman them. But after
the battle. and after the friends are
aid to rest, they will be ready to
answer the call of duty as of yore, and
rebuild their beautiful city.
..xIr;th l-;rIaet ra1ardc IN oil NV
old friends, I am
Yours truly,
Geo. Wythe Baylor"
Col. Baylor's reference to the Last
Island disaster and to the LATTE pir-
ates makes all the more interesting
the following account of the history of
the Gulf islands. which appears in a
recent issue of the New York Sun. The
history is we'll worth preserving, as it
represents a large mount of research
and reminiscence that is often hard to
secure a second time.1
The destruction of Galveston by the
storm of September s n 3 supplies
further evidence that the low-lying
sand lands ringing the shores of
Mississippi. Louisiana and Texas. for a
distance of nearly one thousand miles
were never intended for human habi-
tation. The evidence has been secured
at a frightful sacrifice of life and prop
erty, for il is estimated that more than
20. 900 lives have been lost and nearly
500, 900 900 of property has been de-
stroyed on these islands by hurricanes.
Island after island has been the scene
of destruction, its population either
wiped out or the island itself washed
away. Galveston was frequently threat
ened before. and warned of the fate.
but the people believed that their
breakwater and substantial buildings
would be. able to defy the storm. The
Galveston horror is the twelfth of its
kind in the san islands of the Gulf.
1t is the worst in loss of life and o
erty because a city had been built on
Galveston Island: but. the other dis
asters were equally bad, or at least
proportionately bad, n in most cases
the percentage of saved was even small
er than at Galveston.
Two Centuries Ago.
The record of the loss of life goes
back to a time before the white man |
landed on these shores When Bien-
Vile and Iberville. two centuries ago, |
occupied this country they found upon
the island where they landed opposite
where Mobile now stands the bones of
hundreds of the aborigines. The
French thought that the unburied
bodies indicated a massacre, and so
called the island Massacre Island; it is
Dauphine Island today. 1t was a mas
sacre, not by human hands but by
some mighty storm, which overwhelm-
ed the Indian population and wiped
it out of existence. 1t left a memory
behind which the natives lever forgot,
and the Gulf islands were to them a
haunted place never to be visited. in
spite of the fact that they teemed with
game. When the F'rench settled there
they found the islands wholly uninhab-
tied; the Indians had learned what
the white man has learned since, how
unsafe they are for human settlement.
Nor were the French long in learning
this lesson. for within two years of
their settlement on the Gulf coast, in
the very beginning of the eighteenth
century. their fleet went down in a
hurricane in the magnificent harbor of
Isle des VarsseauX, now translated in
to Ship Island. Ship Island is almost
in most particulars with Gal
weston Island, and IL has been the aim
of the people of Mississippi to build
a great port there. like the Texas city.
which would handle the and
free them from the control of New Or
The project has been popular
for half a century and a great deal of
money has been expended on it.
There is a splendid harbor on Ship
Island, and by connecting it with the
mainland, as Galveston was connected
in Texas. a deep-water port could be
obtained. A railroad has been built
from the mainland into the interior
of Mississippi. and all that is now
is to connec the island with
the shore by means of a pier or bridge.