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 THE WIND OF DEATH, 
 
 BY- 
 
 <]ROSE C. FALLS. t> 
 
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rntercd accoidinp to the Ad of CorgrfSP, in the year 1893, by Rose C. Falls, in the 
 office of the Librarian of Corgress. at Washington. 
 
 CHENIERE^^CAMINADA 
 
 OR 
 
 THE WIND OF DEATH 
 
 THE STORY OF THE STORM IN 
 LOUISIANA. 
 
 By ROSE C. FALLS. 
 
 Hopkins' Peinting Ofuce, 20 & 22 Commebcial Place. 
 
 ises. 
 
 
 \' 
 
TO 
 
 ROBERT BLEAKLEY, 
 
 CHAIRMAN OF THE CITIZENS' RELIEF 
 COMMITTEE, 
 
 and his colleagues, members of that Committee, 
 
 whose prompt action, untiring energy 
 
 and generous humanity will ever 
 
 be blessed by the helpless and 
 
 homeless, 
 
 This Work is Respectfully Dedicated 
 
 BY- 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
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CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHENIERE CAMINADA. "^ 
 
 The gulf coast of Louisiana, that stretch of level sea marsh 
 and sluggish bayou, is rich in song and story. It lives in the pages 
 of both romance and history, and fact and fancy are so interwoven 
 there that they cannot be separated. The pitiful story of Evange- 
 line reads like fact, while the true tale of the whispering sands of 
 Pascagoula sounds like the wildest flight of fancy. It was on this 
 coast that was made one of the only two landings on our shores of 
 a foreign foe; and from its low-lyiug islands came the pirate Lafitte 
 to offer his services, in her hour of peril, to his country, which had 
 proscribed him for his crimes in the time of peace. But these 
 islands of the coast have changed since the days of Lafitte . The 
 "long, low, rakish schooner," has been replaced by the lugger of 
 the oysterman, and the inhabitants are hardy fisherman, "toilers of 
 the sea," instead of black bearded free-booters of the deep. Those 
 who peopled these islands and the adjacent coasts were of almost 
 every race and nation of the earth. The Anglo-Saxon, the Malay, 
 the Creole, the Negro, the Austrian, the Italian, the Chinaman, the 
 Spaniard, the German, were all to be found there . 
 
 There they reared their "camps," or fishing huts, on piles to 
 have them beyond the reach of the high spring tides; there they 
 brought their wives and reared their children and made that 
 "home," which evei'y man, no matter what his race, must have. 
 The blue waters of the gulf was the field of their labor, and the 
 city of New Orleans, a half a hundred miles away, and reached by 
 way of the tortuous bayous, was the market for their finny spoil . 
 
 A sturdy, happy people they were, strong in their affections, 
 proud in their self-reliance, open-hearted in their hospitality, 
 ready to share, with the needy, their substance, and asking 
 naught save a just return for their hard and often dangerous 
 labor. 
 
 As the population increased it naturally grouped itself into 
 communities, and Grand Isle, Cheniere Caminada, Grand Terra, 
 and the many other fishing settlements in what was collectively 
 known as "the Barataria Country," were the result. 
 
 Sunday, October 1st, 18'J3, dawned upon this section of 
 Louisiana, and the sun rose, 
 
 "Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, 
 But one unclouded blaze of living light," 
 
 and it ne'er shown on people happier or more peaceful. Fish- 
 ing tackle and all the implements of week day toil were put 
 aside, and the bronzed fishermen enjoyed the sweet association of 
 their wives and little ones . 
 
 The Gulf was uncommonly smooth — no breath raised a ripple 
 on its surface, but there was a ceaseless, gentle swell, as if, 
 
amid the coral beds beneath, some lonely water spirit slum- 
 bered, while the waters above rose and fell with its steady 
 breathing. From the swamps about the morning songs of 
 myriads of birds ascended, as they flitted to and fro among the 
 moss draped trees, and when the Sun rose higher in the Heav- 
 ens the waters of the currentless bayous were parted by the 
 heads of lazy alligators, that came to the surface to wink and 
 blink at the sunshine . 
 
 There was enrapturing consonance of sound and sight, of 
 woodland song and sea shore scenery. It was a morning to 
 kindle a poet's fancy — calm and unruffled as a martyr's mind, 
 and bright as the hope that animates his busom. But as the 
 day waned, the scene was changed. Clouds chased each other 
 across the blue of the Heavens and grew darker and more an- 
 gry looking as the evening approached. The shadows in the 
 swamps grew black and the murmiu'ing of the moss draped 
 limbs of the trees grew louder and louder. Sea birds skimmed 
 across the water and sent forth frightened cries. The alliga- 
 tors sank to tbe bottom of the bayous, and the birds sought 
 their nests with plaintive trills. The fishermen gathered their 
 loved ones into the shelter of their homes and said: "a storm 
 is brewing." 
 
 But little they knew the devastation that would be the re- 
 sult of that storm to which they so carelessly referred, and still 
 less they apprehended of the horrors of the night which was then 
 wrapping its mantle of darkness about the devoted islands . All 
 but one . 
 
 Among these fisher-folk of Cheniere Camimda who noted 
 the gathering storm was Andre Gilbeaux. Even while tbe sun 
 was shining in the cloudless sky Gilbeaux sent out and summon- 
 ed his relatives and friends to a banquet at sundown in his hum- 
 ble but happy home. They came, filled with anticipations 'of 
 innocent enjoyment and gathered at the festal board. 
 
 The banquet was over, and, just as the sun sank beneath the 
 waves the laughter and jest was stilled as the host rose to his 
 feet with a glass of wine in his hand. At the sight of the expres- 
 sion on his face the smiles which had come to greet his expected 
 toast died away, and a death-like silence fell upon all, leaving 
 the ripple of the waters on the shelving shore and the rustling 
 of the wind-waved marsh grass the only sounds. 
 
 Raising his glass, in a calm, collected voice he said: 
 
 "Gentlemen, this will be the last time we will be together, 
 for to-night I will drown. There will be confipanions with me 
 in my death. You may think that I am crazy, but I cannot help 
 that, for I am firmly convinced that a watery death will be mine. 
 I will now toast to all, and hope peace and rest will be mine. 
 May God bless all that remain behind, and peace to my compan- 
 ions' ashes that will die with me." 
 
Andre had always been a quiet, sober, self-contained man of 
 evenly balanced mind and warm affections, a fond husband and 
 a kind father. But now his friends thought his mind unbal- 
 anced, and his wife, the tears streaming from her eyes, implored 
 his friend Seikard Gaspard (who survived to tell the tale) to dis- 
 suade her husband from the sin of self-destruction. Gilbeaux 
 declared that suicide was far from his thoughts, but that others 
 as well as himself would meet death in the waves, and he indi- 
 cated who of those around the board would go with him into the 
 valley of the shadow of death; and, strange aa it may seem, he 
 foretold correctly. Even as he spoke the dark clouds began to 
 gather in the evening sky and moaning wind and heaving waters 
 began to tell of the coming storm . The party scattered to their 
 homes, and then the storm burst forth. Gilbeaux and his brother 
 endeavored to save themselves and Gilbeaux's wife and children 
 in a boat when the rising waters covered their island home. But 
 Gilbeaux's prophecy was destined to be fulfilled. The boat was 
 overturned and only Gilbeaux's brother lived to tell the tale. 
 
 Cheniere Caminada, often spoken of as an island, is really 
 a peninsular, jutting into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the 
 west of Grand Isle, and joined to the mainland by a marshy 
 isthmus which is often covered by water. It is all sand and sea 
 marsh and rises but a few feet above the gulf. There is no veg- 
 etation on it save a few stunted bushes, and its only inhabitants 
 are the fishermen and their families. 
 
 Although less than a mile wide and but about two miles and 
 a half long its population numbered on that fateful day 1471 
 soiib. 
 
 A TYPICAL. FISHERMAN'S H€T. 
 
 When the night came they retired to their homes, built, as 
 described, on piles or "pickets" as they called them, and prepared 
 for the day of toil they looked for on the morrow by seeking the 
 repose that comes to him who labors for his bread. Parents 
 
stilled the little ones who were terrified by the rising wind and 
 the waves, which were now dashing far beyond their accus- 
 tomed limits and were washing with ever increasing fury 
 around the slender supports of the houses. But minute by 
 minute the storm increased. The wind blew stronger and 
 stronger until it swept across devoted Cheniere a hundred and 
 fifteen miles an hour; and the water, churned to a foam by the 
 merciless storm king, rolled across the whole peninsular in 
 towering waves which beat on the frail homes of thin board 
 and fragile latania like hammers of destruction. At last the 
 assaults of the elements began to tell upon these frail habita- 
 tions, built only for such slight protection as was ordinarily 
 needed in that land of perennial summer. 
 
 A RVINKO HOnifi AT chenigre:. 
 
 Following the sweep of some wave mightier than its fellows, 
 or some blast which shrieked across the sedge grown morass 
 like a demon of destruction, would come a crash, which told of 
 the ruin of a happy home. Torn plank from plank by the wind 
 it was scattered in the inky darkness, or, beaten from its sup- 
 porting piles by the angry sea, it disappeared in the raging 
 waters, and its occupants were face to face with death. For a 
 while the husband and father would make an unequal strug- 
 gle with death for his loved ones, and then all would go 
 down in the storm lashed water. Again and again was this 
 scene repeated, and family after family, father, mother and 
 children, all, found eternal peace amid the warring of the ele- 
 ments, while their bodies were swept toward the marsh of the 
 mainland. Then came a lull and the inexperienced hoped 
 that the worst was over. But nature was but resting for a 
 mightier effort than she had yet put forth. Again came the 
 wind, this time from off the land; and again the waters swept 
 Cheniere. The debris of the homes previously wrecked, with 
 the huge trunks of trees torn from the earth on the shore 
 
— 8 -^ 
 
 north of the Cheniere, battered down the dwellings which had 
 withstood the first assault, while a ghastly procession of white 
 faced corpses drifted by out to sea. When morning broke and 
 the sun again looked down on the storm-swept strip of sand, 
 it shown upon but five houses, all that was left of the five 
 hundred that dotted the peninsular the evening before. 
 
 One of the few survivors was Pere Grimaux, the Roman 
 Catholic priest of Cheniere Caminada. The account he gave 
 a reporter of the destruction of his parish and the havoc in his 
 flock was graphic and terrible The good priest said: 
 
 "The population of Cheniere Caminada island was 1471. Of 
 these 696 only are now living; 779 are dead. Historic Cheniere 
 Caminada is no more. The first effects of the storm were felt 
 between 7 and 8 p. m. on Sunday. Everyone apprehended 
 that something terrible was about to happen. The fishermen 
 foreseeing that a serious storm was evident, hastened to beach 
 their craft near their houses. But those precautions availed 
 not, for the wind blew in fitful gusts, increasing in strength 
 and velocity every minute, coming from the south. At 7:30 p. 
 m. huge waves were madly lashing the shore, and in a few 
 minutes they had attained a height of six feet, and later on of 
 eight feet. There was one avenue of safety, and that was to 
 seek the upper stories of the houses, but even that chance for 
 escape was lost, when the wind and waves combined shook the 
 frail habitations, which rocked to and fro and creaked and 
 groaned under the repeated attacks of the furious elements. 
 Soon the houses were being demolished, wrecked and carried 
 away. The wind shifted to the southeast, and for hours shrieked 
 with redoubled fury. Above the thundering voice of the hur- 
 ricane could be heard the despairing cries, the groans and the 
 frantic appeals for help of the unfortunate victims. 
 
 "I was in the upper story of the presbytery, holding on to 
 the sill of an open window, powerless to do anything and 
 exposed to the terrific blasts and hearing the cries of agony of 
 my poor dying parishioners. A more furious attack of the 
 storm broke off one-half of the roof. Notwithstanding the 
 wind, I managed to light a lantern, which I displayed at the 
 window, to serve as a beacon for those who might be fortunate 
 enough to swim or to be cast towards the presbytery. Then I 
 leaned forward and holding up my hands over the waste of 
 waters, I offered a fervent prayer to the Father of all and beg- 
 ged of him to be merciful in his judgment on the souls of so 
 many of his children who were at that moment dying in such 
 a sudden and terrible manner. 
 
 "I gave them all the final absolution of the Roman Cath- 
 olic church. 
 
 "Then there was a sudden ominous lull in the storm. I 
 felt that the worst was yet to come. It was then about 11 
 
o'clock and I saw blacker and denser masses of clouds, swiftly 
 rolling from the southeast towards our doomed island. There 
 was something really appalling in that deceptive column. 
 However, those few minutes of rest were precious and saved 
 the lives of many people. 
 
 "Brave, sturdy men went out in skiffs and rowed from 
 house to house, taking in such of the inhabitants as had es- 
 caped the first onslaught of the tempest. Many of these peo- 
 ple sought shelter in two or three houses known to be solidlj' 
 built, and this proved eventually their salvation, and in that 
 way nearly 700 persons survived that fearful night. 
 
 FATHER GRIMEAUX. 
 
 "During the lull I looked out of the window and saw a 
 young boy about 11 years old, clinging to a piece of timber 
 and floating toward the presbytery. I called out to the men 
 in the skiffs and told them to save that young life. But fate 
 decreed otherwise. Just then the storm burst again with ter- 
 rific violence and carried off the little fellow, to be seen no 
 more. The wind had shifted and now blew from the west. 
 Whatever of life and property had been spared by the south 
 wind was destroyed by the gale from the west. Trees were 
 saapped like reedsj houses were wrecked in an instant, and 
 
6oon tte Cheniere ceased to exist. Out of 450 houses only 
 four remained, and these were filled with crowds of trembling, 
 despairing people, bewailing not only their own sad, pitiful 
 plight, but crying out the names of loved ones carried away 
 by the merciless floods. All around and about me I could 
 see desolation, death, ruin and wreck. Houses floated by and 
 were seen no more. The church soon followed, I remained 
 alone. 
 
 "As far as I could see there was not a vestige of any hu- 
 man habitation. Under my window the seething waters flowed 
 madly on and I could see amidst the wreckage and the sea- 
 weed a number of bodies floating on and on out of view. 1 
 could not count them. It seemed to me like an endless, 
 ghastly, horrible procession of spectres. Unable to bear that 
 terrible sight any more, I closed my eyes and leaning my fore- 
 head on my hand, realized that everything was inextricably 
 lost. I never dreamed that I would live through that horrible 
 ordeal. 
 
 "Again I heard those heart-rending cries. Looking on by 
 a strong effort of will power, I saw floating past women and 
 children, some of the women holding in their arms their in- 
 fants, while some of those unfortunate young ones were tightly 
 grasping the dresses of their mothers. Not a few were clutch- 
 ing even the arms and tresses of the women. Ever and anon 
 one of the little victims, apparently Worn out, would release 
 his hold and be quickly carried away by the raging waters 
 after a last frantic adieu. 
 
 "A large number of people were'saved by holding on to 
 floating debris, such as parts of roofs, timbers, etc. Some of 
 them were considerably bruised and injured, but their lives 
 were^spared, and when morning dawned and the storm had 
 somewhat abated, they painfully found their way to houses in 
 which their relatives and friends had found refuge during that 
 eventful night. 
 
 "A young boy named Cyriac Prosperi was found on these a 
 shore two days and one night after the storm. He was de- 
 prived of his clothing by the storm. His only sustenance was 
 an orange that had drifted in his way. 
 
 "On Monday about 3 a. m. the storm was over. My sister 
 and myself knelt down and thanked the sacred heart of Jesus 
 and Our Lady of Good Help for our safety. We had invoked 
 them in our hour of peril and to them we owed our deliver- 
 ance. At day break three men came to the presbytery and 
 gave us a ladder to enable us to descend . Then a weary walk 
 began . We waded in water waist deep, our feet sinking into 
 the soil, thus adding to our discomfort and thus impeding our 
 progress. We were on our way to succor the unfortunate 
 people. Not a word was spoken; we looked at each other; we 
 
understood what was to be done; tears welled up to our eyes 
 as we went along beholding new and untold miseries at every 
 step. 
 
 "Monday and Tuesday we hardly rested, being occupied in 
 burying the dead. Moi*e than 400 corpses wei-e unburied. 
 Many could not be found for they had been carried out to the 
 gulf. On Tuesday, more aflQiction. We began to feel the want 
 of fresh water: then we realized also that we had no provis- 
 ions. The exciteme'nt and the exertion in giving burial to the 
 hundreds of dead people had made us forgetful of our own 
 physical wants. Now we felt exhausted and at night we were 
 completely prostrated. The odor emanating from the dead 
 bodies, both of man and beast, made the situation all the more 
 unbearable . 
 
 "The arrival ot two boats laden with ice was hailed with 
 joy. We lost no time in melting the ice and mixing it with a 
 small proportion of salt water so as to increase the quantity. 
 Other boats came from the city with provisions donated by the 
 charitable people of New Orleans. 
 
 "This relief was timely, for we had saved nothing at all 
 from the destructive storm. 
 
 "Houses had been swept away, luggers, schooners, boats of 
 all description had been lost. We could only lay claim to a 
 few tattered bits of clothing. 
 
 "The people of Cheniere and Grand Isle fervently hope and 
 trust that the kind-hearted people of this State will hasten to 
 send them the relief that is so imperatively and immediately 
 needed. 
 
 "Most of the inhabitants of the Cheniere are very poor peo- 
 ple, fishermen, whose only worldly possessions were their huts 
 and their boats. These they have lost and how will they be 
 able to earn their living? Who will come to their aid and 
 help them to rebuild their humble abodes?" 
 
 This was no overdrawn picture, as was seen by the rescu- 
 ing parties which went from New Orleans when the tale of de- 
 struction reached that city two days later, and whose work 
 will be told later on. On Monday the few survivors, worn out 
 by their long and terrible battle for life, found and buried one 
 hundred and fifty bodies; and then exhausted nature gave out, 
 the efforts to render the last duty to the dead ceased, and they 
 threw themselves on the bare sands to wait the rescue they 
 hardly dared hope for, or the death which now stared them in 
 the face in another form. The salt waves which had covered 
 the Cheniere had swept to sea every mouthful of food and 
 every drop of fresh water; for these people had neither wells 
 nor springs, and drank only rain water caught and stored in 
 cask-like cisterns of staves and hoops, which stood above 
 ground. Six hundred human beings, men, women and chil- 
 
— 12 — 
 
 dren, on this strip of sand, cut off from the mainland by im- 
 passable marshes, with their boats destroyed and the nearest 
 help over fifty miles away as the crow flies, near a hundred by 
 the bayous, the only avenue of communication, and no means 
 of making their plight known ! Can the hum^in imagination 
 picture a condition more terrible ? For twenty-four awful 
 hours no help arrived. Thei* a lugger which had gone to New 
 Orleans before the storm for ice, with which these fishermen 
 preserved their catch, returned. This ice was the salvation of 
 the people who had escaped the fury of the tempest. It was 
 quickly melted, and mixed with sea water to increase 
 its quantity, it was nectar to the thirst-tormented sur- 
 vivors. Then came twenty-four hours more of suffer- 
 iug before help came from the city . Kevived by the water, 
 the living began again to bury the dead. This had to 
 be done in the most primitive manner. There was no lumber to 
 make cofiins, acd neither nails nor tools to use, had there been 
 lumber; there were not even implements with which to dig the 
 graves. 5 Long trenches were scooped in the sand with broken 
 boards and sticks and even with the bare hands of the 
 toilers, and ten, fifteen, twenty, even thirty bodies were laid in 
 the same grave, with only mother earth for their winding sheet 
 and the gently lapping waters of the gulf for their funeral 
 service . 
 
 One of the mostly ghastly scenes after the flood was the little 
 cemetery. The ruthless water had respected "God's Acre" no 
 more than it did the possessions of man, and the resting places 
 of the dead were shattered as were the dwellings of the living. 
 Tombs were rent asunder, graves were torn open, crosses and 
 monuments and headstones were destroyed. Even the crumb- 
 ling bones of the dead were torn from their resting places and 
 scattered over the sites of the ruined homes of their descend- 
 ants. Great trunks of trees, foul smelling seaweed, timbers torn 
 from the houses and the flotsom and jetsam of the surging waters 
 were strewn in tangled chaos "where the rude forefathers of the 
 hamlet slept." But the people of Cheniere, the few survivors, 
 were unable to bury the victims of the storm, much less to re- 
 pair the last resting places of their older dead; and when the 
 rescuing parties arrived from New Orleans they had all they could 
 do in caring for the famishing remnant, in binding up the 
 wounds of the injured, and in searching on the sands of the beach, 
 in the long giass of the marshes, among the slimy recesses of the 
 dismal swamps, under the torn and shattered cypress and oaks, 
 with their funeral drapery of sombre moss, for the bodies of the 
 newly dead. 
 
13 — 
 
— 14 — 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 GRAND ISLE, 
 
 When the present century was young there was one name 
 which was spoken in the lowlands of South Louisiana, along the 
 sun-kissed sands of its southern shore, on the waters of the Gulf 
 of Mexico, with bated breath. It was the name of Jean Marie 
 Lafitte, the pirate of the gulf. Originally a blacksmith in New 
 
 ^fe-^^^^ 1 \\^^ 
 
 «I AM THE ONLY ONE LEFT." 
 
 Orleans, he became the agent of the privateers commissioned by 
 the United States of Columbia in the struggle with Spain for in- 
 dependence. From agent to active participant was but a short 
 step for Lafitte, and the istep from privateer to pirate was 
 shorter still . Lafitte's knowledge of the country stood the band 
 in good stead. A short distance below New Orleans the country 
 through which the Mississippi river flows begins to contract, and 
 soon it becomes a narrow finger of firm land running out into 
 
— 15 — 
 
 the gulf, the river flowing on along its middle, while its outer 
 edges are at first bounded by flat sea marsh, soon giving place 
 to the waters of the gulf which sweep up on both sides to within 
 a few hundred yards of the river bank in two bold crescents 
 whose horns meet at the point where the father of waters pours 
 his mighty floods into the sea. 
 
 This marsh country is threaded by tortuous bayous which 
 have their sources near the river just below New Orleans, and 
 some of them debouche from the river itself. Gradually they 
 draw themselves away from the parent stream, and, striking 
 through the swamp, their sluggish currents seek the gulf to the 
 west of the mouth of the Mississippi . 
 
 For a time they flow along with current so sluggish and 
 between banks so even and so equidistant at different points that 
 they would be taken for artificial canals were it not for their 
 winding course. 
 
 Chief among these many waterways is Bayou Barataria. It 
 winds in and out, through fertile fields and dank swamps, now 
 glittering like a silver ribbon in the sun which strikes it over the 
 verdant billows of waving cane, now sullenly gleaming like a 
 river of ink in the shadows of the moss hung oaks a,nd cypress 
 whose branches arch its tortuous channel. For mile^ it runs a 
 narrow canal seeming scarce wide enough for the tijiy steamer 
 which beats its waters with its single wheel, or the sc^litary lug- 
 ger which is the ordinary carrier of its primitive commerce; then 
 it breaks into a lake resting like a hugh pearl on the bosom of a 
 prairie; then contracting again to its normal width it glides by 
 a "settlement" perched on its banks, again to become a lake 
 which glistens in the sunlight like an immense dew drop caught 
 in the dense undergrowth of an impenetral^le swamp. Now it 
 sweeps through a sea marsh over which comes the salt-laden 
 breeze fresh from its caressing of the ocean; now it gently 
 touches the edges of a "trembling prairie,'' (that queer forma- 
 tion of a shell of earth in the bosom of an unfathomable depth 
 of water, whose grassy surface undulates like the sea) as if it too 
 feared that treacherous land which has often given way beneath 
 the feet of the venturesome hunter and made its hidden waters 
 his unknown tomb. At last, weary of its wanderings, it meets 
 the salt water of the gulf in Barataria bay. Lying at the mouth 
 of Barataria bay where it joins the Gulf of Mexico are the twin 
 islands of Grand Isle and Grande Terre . Their oaks and under- 
 growth afforded a shelter for the freebooters of the deep, their 
 shallow waters, with channels known only to their constant fre- 
 quenters, gave a security to the pirate schooners from chase and 
 capture by the deep draft war vessels, and Bayou Barataria 
 afforded an easy means of conveying spoil to secret agents in 
 the City of New Orleans . All this was well known to Jean La- 
 fitte, and when put in command he selected Grand Isle as his 
 
— 16 ~ 
 
 headquarters. Here he built store-bouses and sheds, and her© 
 he erected what was known as "the pirate's house," until the 
 storm of October 1, 1893, swept the last vestige of it from the 
 earth. But years before that dnte it had been put to more 
 peaceful use, and sheltered there those who were content with 
 the spoils taken from the sea by honest toil, instead of that gar- 
 nered under the shadow of the black flag. 
 
 With the passing away of the pirate crew, the fame of Grand 
 Isle for balmy breezes, and tafe surf bathing spread abroad. 
 Soon a few summer cottages made their appearance among the 
 homes of the fishermen; then others followed; then bote's were 
 built, and, finally, when the busy weavers at the loom of com- 
 merce stretched one of their steel threads from the Crefecent 
 
 LAFITTE'S OLD HOUSE AT GRAND ISLE. 
 
 City toward Barataria Bay and began to hurl backward and for- 
 ward the iron shuttle which weaves the web of our prosperity, 
 the Ocean Club Hotel reared its pretentious form among its 
 humbler neighbors, with room for a thousand guests; and sum- 
 mer after summer the gilded butterflies of fashion flocked from 
 the city to spend the heated term in this romantic spot. 
 
 Fortunately most of the summer guests had left Grand Isle 
 before the great storm, and this alone is the reason why the 
 mortality there did not nearly approach that at ill-fated Che- 
 niere Caminada. ^ Had the storm occurred a month earlier, its 
 consequences would have been appalling; for when the large sum- 
 mer hotels were wrecked by the winds and their timbers tossed 
 about by the angry waters, had they been filled, as they were 
 
-17 — 
 
 during August and September, with women and children, those 
 who would have escaped could have been counted on the fingers. 
 Another thing in favor of Grand Isle is the difference be- 
 tween its formation and that of Cheniere. The last is a mere sand 
 spit, formed by the action of the waves, while Grand Isle rests 
 on a rock foundation and is formed of shell deposits, drift-wood, 
 sand and the washings from alluvial Louisiana. And while the 
 whole of Cheniere Caminada lay open to the sweep of the waves, 
 Grand Isle, on the south, is protected from the gulf by a range 
 of low sand hills, thrown up by the sea, which acted as a break- 
 water when the hurricane seemed to hurl the gulf on human be- 
 ings crouched in terror on its shore . 
 
 When the storm struck Grand Isle on that terrible Sunday 
 night there were about three hundred people on the island, most 
 of them permanent residents. Of these only some twenty-eight 
 or thirty were killed, but many were badlj' injured and all suf- 
 fered severely for food and water before the arrival of the relief 
 boats. They retire early at Grand Isle, and when the tempest 
 came nearly all the inhabitants were in bed and many were 
 asleep. Two sailors, Ertivez and Mergovich, who were up and 
 out of doors gave a graphic description of the scene. They 
 said the wind had been rather high in the afternoon and in- 
 creased to a gale when night fell. About ten o'clock they went 
 out of the house. The storm was then seemingly at its height 
 and they became afraid the island would be overwhelmed, and 
 they determined to try and escape in a boat to the mainland. 
 They ran to a cove where the boat was beached and worked 
 amid the roar of tempest, the crash of falling trees and shattered 
 houses and the thundering of the water on the shore, to launch 
 their frail craft . Then, said they, there came a lull. For an 
 instant that seemed like an age, there was perfect quiet, and then 
 the warring of the elements began again with redoubled force. 
 The wind had chopped around and now blew in almost a directly 
 opposite direction from its former course. The first blow had 
 forced the waters in from the gulf and had set a strong cur- 
 rent in shore. The second blow forced back this water and with 
 it that of the bay and the bayous behind the islands, and started 
 a counter current running out to sea. "When these two mighty 
 masses of water met in the gulf off shore a wave was created 
 whose foam decked crest towered thirty feet in the air, and 
 which rushed upon the devoted island. 
 
 By the flash of the lightning which illumined the inky dark- 
 ness these sailors saw this tidal wave sweeping down like the 
 besom of destruction. What could puny human might do ? The 
 sand hills which had been counted upon as a protection were no 
 more than so many straws in the path of this awful wave. It tore 
 them as the incoming tide destroys the- sand piles the child- 
 ren build in their play . It swept over them as if they had been 
 
— 18 
 
 M«7 
 J I -^ 
 
 ? Q o M 
 
— 19 — 
 
 but ripples in the sand left by a retiring tide and rushed to com- 
 plete the work of destructiou the wind had commenced. The 
 island was engulfed. Houses were washed away, cattle were 
 drowned, trees were torn from the ground and tossed like straws 
 in its boiling surface . The railroad track leading from one of 
 the hotels down to the beach was utterly destroyed: the ties 
 were torn from the ground and splintered as if -by axes in the 
 hands of a thousand woodmen; the rails were wrenched apart 
 and, borne like corks by the angry waters, and tossed hundreds 
 of yards away, some of them wrapped and twined around trees, 
 as if some mighty Vulcan had done it in sportive derision of his 
 human imitators. 
 
 Krantz's Hotel, a collection of cottages with a large assem- 
 bly hall and dining room at either end, was utterly destroyed, 
 and Captain Krantz, the proprietor, severely injured, his life be- 
 ing saved by the exertions of a servant. 
 
 The Ocean Club Hotel, a large three story structure, built 
 with a special view of resisting storms, with its planking doubled 
 and spiked on at right angles, and the whole building buttressed 
 with three large Ls, was wrecked. The upper story was swept 
 away and utterly destroyed, while the two lower ones were 
 twisted and torn out of all semblance of a house. Windows and 
 doors were beaten in, great gaps were torn in the walls and 
 wreckage and seaweed and dead bodies of animals were piled in 
 and over it. The house built by Jean Lafitte, a strong substan- 
 tial cottage on brick pillars, and occupied as a dwelling, was ut- 
 terly destroyed; not a stick of its timbers was left on its site; 
 even the foundation was torn to pieces, and only a few scattered 
 bricks were left to mark the spot where once it stood. The house 
 where he had lived and the shop where he had worked in New 
 Orleans had long before fallen before the march of improvement, 
 and now the storm had erased the last trace left in Louisiana of 
 the pirate of the gulf. 
 
 Captain Krantz gave to a reporter of the New Orleans Pica- 
 yune the following graphic account of the storm; 
 
 "I am 70 years old, and for many years have owned the Grand 
 Isle Hotel . I am a widower with four children. On the night 
 of the storm I was at home. I did not expect that anything 
 serious would happen. The wind rose about 9 o'clock and blew 
 hard. At 11 o'clock it changed and blew from the varying points 
 from northwest to southwest at intervals of fifteen minutes there- 
 after. In about half an hour the water on the grounds around 
 the hotel was fully five feet deep. A terrible gust of wind struck 
 the house and knocked it over. A portion of the building fell on 
 me, and for a time I thought our last hour had come.* Fortun- 
 ately the water continued to rise, and in about ten minutes I felt 
 the weight pressing heavily upon my body gradually removed. 
 I was lying on a beam. I was washed away from under the house, 
 
— 20 — 
 
 the water carrying me with it for a distance of twenty-five feet . 
 I was struck and became unconscious. For several hours I did 
 not know what had occurred to me. "When I regained conscious- 
 ness it was 5 o'clock on Sunday morning. I was still clinging 
 to the beam, which was firmly embedded in the ground opposite 
 my bathhouse. I received very serious injuries. In my feeble 
 condition I returned to what had been the hotel, but out of the 
 thirty-eight cottages which formerly stood there only twenty 
 were left. There was not a particle of food to be found, every- 
 thing having been washed away, including all the wearing ap- 
 parel. I estimate my loss at from $75,000 to $100,000." 
 
 The first boat which went to the relief of the sufferers carried 
 the son of the old captain to his father's rescue. The relief boat 
 met one of the few luggars left by the storm on its way to New 
 Orleans for help, and Captain Krantz was on board. The meet- 
 ing between father and son was most affecting. The injured 
 veteran was brought aboard the steamer and made as comforta- 
 ble as possible, and with careful nursing was finally restored to 
 health . f 
 
 One of the most thrilling experiences at Grand Isle on that 
 night of horrors was that of the crew of the little steamer Joe 
 Webre, the boat that has for many years travelled back and forth 
 between New Orleans and Grand Isle, carrying the crowds that 
 sought the beautiful island resort in winter and summer. Many a 
 storm^she safely weathered, but at last she went to pieces and 
 only her name remaius to remind many of happy trips down the 
 bayous and across the little lakes, that dot the course between 
 New Orleans and Grand Isle. When the wind became danger- 
 ously strong, extra ropes were put out, and eight inch and a 
 quarter cables were hove about the piles of Grand Isle pier 
 where the storm overtook the boat. To relieve the terrific strain 
 on the cables, a full head of steam was turned on, and everyone 
 on the boat stood ready for the worst when it came. The skies 
 grew blacker, and the waves rose higher and higher, their crests 
 lashed to white foam, and in the depths between, 'the phosphor- 
 escent gleaming of the churned water caused the boat to seem 
 about to plunge in an abyss of fire when she started down from 
 the top of a huge wave. The cables parted and the Webre 
 drifted out into the gulf at the mercy of the wind. Debris from 
 ruined Cheniere Caminada and Grand Isle drifted by her and 
 dashed against her sides. When the wind lulled for a few mo- 
 ments, the cries of wounded and dying came from the distant 
 islands and added to the horror of the night. Then the Webre 
 trembled from stanchion to keel, and the cabin was blown to 
 pieces. The crew, Captain McSweeney, George Rolf, engineer; 
 Pilot Pegreagan, Richard, pantryman; Albert Foster, cook; 
 Elizabeth Lyle, chambermaid, an"d Charley Green, deck hand, all 
 gathered on deck and together left the boat in a yawl when they 
 
|Q». J^i esSa 
 
 feaW siie Was stire to go to pieces. Just as they pulled Out IrOiH 
 the boat a lull came — a dead calm fell upon the waters and not 
 even the smallest zephyr ruffled the waves. But the quiet that 
 came so suddenly seemed ominous, and all expected what follow- 
 ed — a renewal of the storm with tenfold fury. But the wind had 
 shifted and now came from off the island. Each gust was fiercer 
 than the last and the crew saw the Webre go down, while their 
 skiff was overturned and dashed to pieces. Fortunately the crew 
 were beside a tree that had withstood the assault of wind and 
 waves, and they took refuge in its branches. 
 
 The chambermaid was a negro woman who weighed nearly 
 300, and it may be easier imagined than described how she was 
 hauled up in the tree and held there while the gale blew with 
 terrific force. George Rolfs, Jr., the brave engineei", tells the 
 following story: 
 
 THE WRKCK OP THE JOE WEBRE. 
 
 "I will never forget my experience. We were all on board 
 of the boat when the storm arose. Steam was up and we were 
 pi-eparing to go. The wind increased lo such an extent that we 
 were obliged in order to keep our feet to hold on to the hog 
 chains . The boat was striking the wharf with such power that 
 it became difficult for us to stir. The hogchain parted speedily 
 under the strain, and then we took refuge beside the ice box. 
 A. wave swept the deck and soon carried the latter protection 
 from us. The wind then suddenly calmed, and we took shelter 
 in the pilot house. Soon we had to leave that spot. Our next 
 attempt to find a place of safety caused us nearly to be washed 
 
overboard. The boat was becoming a wreck, slie having parted 
 from her moorings. We launched the yawlboat and rowed 
 through the darkness for the Grand Isle Hotel. After pulling 
 hard for some time, we reached the place where the buildings 
 were supposed to be located, and were surprised to find nothing 
 but a continuous sheet of turbulent water. The entire party 
 climbed an oak tree and remained there till daylight when we 
 descended. The water had then abated considerably, and was 
 not more than two feet deep . We walked to an old shanty, 
 where we found refuge for several hours. We finally left there 
 in search of Captain Krantz. In our search we visited a house in 
 which there was an old lady, a woman and a young girl, where 
 we remained until the water had entirely disappeared. Word 
 having reached us that Captain Krantz was alive and not very 
 seriously injured, we returned to the wharf. Here we found 
 that the Joe Webre had been blown back and was high and dry 
 on the ground. She was a total wreck. She had broken clean 
 in half." 
 
 The boat was lifted from her place in front of Grand Isle 
 by the wind when it veered, and she was carried 250 feet inland, 
 and now lies across the railroad track built by Captain Kranz to 
 carry guests from the hotel to the bay, high and dry, a complete 
 wreck. 
 
 ' Geo. Rolfs, Jr., the engineer of the wrecked steamer, Joe 
 Webre, has a memento of the storm in the shape of his gold 
 watch, which he wore until the beating rain drenched his cloth- 
 ing, and he took it off and placed it under his pillow in his 
 stateroom, where, a few moments later, the fireman also placed 
 his watch, both men supposing by so doing they would save 
 their time pieces from a soaking. But the vessel went to pieces, 
 and the cabin was blown away, and its remnants were scattered 
 far and wide over the waters, and in that hour of peril, when 
 the crew left the boat, expecting to find watery graves, neither 
 Mr. Rolfs nor the fireman gave a thought to their watches. 
 Afterward, when they were rescued, they exchanged mutual 
 condolence at the loss of their timepieces, never expecting to see 
 them again, as they knew the cabin of the Webre had been 
 blown to pieces and carried to sea. But when Mr. Geo. Rolfs, 
 father was sent to examine the hulk of the wrecked Webre, 
 ten days later, he saw something gleaming among the sand and 
 dirt in the hull, and to his amazement brought to light his son's 
 watch, when he dug up the shining metal from its bed of mud. 
 Where its companion, the fireman's timepiece is, cannot be con- 
 jectured, but Mr. Rolfs prizes his water-soaked watch far more 
 than he did when it ticked regularly and told him the time for 
 starting his boat on her trips. ^ 
 
 1 Just to the east of Grand Isle lies Grande Terre, also an 
 island. Here the storm was equally severe, but no lives were 
 
-23- 
 
 lost, owing, no doubt, to the fact that but few persons were 
 there, and these few took refuge in the fort built there by the 
 United States government on the west end of the island to guard 
 the channel which passes between Grande Terre and Grand Isle 
 into Barataria bay . But as solid as was this massive work it 
 could not withstand the furious assaults of the ocean . For a 
 while the sturdy fortification repulsed the attacks of the waves 
 as they thundered up the beach against its grassy sides . But 
 at last a breach was made; the works of man could not stand 
 forever before the irresistible assaults of nature in her might. 
 The angle of the fort next the gulf was torn off and the waves, 
 following each other like the successive lines of an assaulting 
 army, entered the works. They wrought still further destruc- 
 tion on slope and glacis, in casemate and on rampart; but those 
 who had entered the fort for safety retired to the part which the 
 waters spared, and all escaped. Here, as elsewhere, houses 
 were leveled, trees were torn from the earth, animals were 
 killed by the storm and drowned in the rising waters, property 
 was destroyed and men were beggared, but Grande Terre was 
 one of the few spots where was not heard the wailing of the 
 saved for the untimely dead. 
 
 CHAPTER III. o; 
 
 ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 The storm did not confine itself to the islands of Barataria 
 Bay alone, nor even to the coast line of the gulf. Its ravages 
 were felt far up the Mississippi river. Nor were those ravages 
 felt alone along the narrow tongue of land through which the 
 river flows for the last few miles of its length, as has been de- 
 scribed heretofore, but they were manifest far inland where the 
 wind and water from the gulf had to sweep over a wide stretch 
 of country to reach the banks of the father of waters. A few 
 miles below New Orleans the settled and cultivated country be- 
 gins to "contract" and it grows narrower and narrower until just 
 above forts Jackson and St. Philip it ceases altogether and the 
 river sweeps from there to sea between marshy banks, with only 
 here and there the hut of a fisherman, or other person who 
 draws his living from the water, to break the monotony of the 
 view. »There is one exception, and that is the group of build- 
 ings which compose the Louisiana Quarantine Station — the 
 post where stand the sentinels who guard the Mississippi Val- 
 ley from invasion by contagious and infectious diseases. These 
 buildings include the large fumigating house, the boat house and 
 telegraph station, the storehouse and the quarters for the phy- 
 sicians and employees who are always stationed there . And 
 laying at the wharf, or sheltered in the boat house are the fumi- 
 
— 3-i -«* 
 
 gating tug boat, tlie steam launch SlvA the Humei'ous to^ boats* 
 large and small, with which the station is equipped. 
 
 From the quarantine station to the gulf the river banks 
 are duplicates of what they are above, except where the hand of 
 man has changed them for his purposes. At the "head of the 
 passes," where the river spreads itself like the fingers of an 
 opened hand, and seeks the gulf by three different channels, 
 commence the Eads' Jetties, those mighty works which have 
 harnessed the theretofore wasted power of the resistless river 
 and made it dig its own bed and deepen its own channel. To 
 the one who sees them for the first time they are disappointing, 
 for there is little to show for the money which has been spent 
 and the results which have been accomplished. But these great 
 works are chiefly beneath the water, with only the heads of the 
 piles and a few stones showing above the surface. But as you ap- 
 proach the gulf the jetties show more and more until the "sea- 
 wall,"built of great blocks of granite, give evidence that man has 
 indeed been here at work. 
 
 <j.-^ At the very mouth of the river, perched between^the river 
 and the gulf, is Port Eads. Here is the first boarding station 
 of the quarantine, and here also are the homes of the pilots 
 who take in and out of the river the ocean carriers who make 
 New Orleans their port. How these places were served by the 
 storm will be told at the proper time in this story; the inten- 
 tion now is to try and give the reader some idea of the river, 
 or at least that part of it which suffei-ed on the night of Sun- 
 day, October 1, 1893. The first point below New Orleans where 
 the storm commenced to do its work of destruction was the 
 old "Poydras" plantation. From there down, Stella, Monse- 
 cour. Old Harlem, Myrtle Grove, Savoy, Belleview, Hebert's, 
 Livaudais, Sardelot's, in short, all of the plantations suffered 
 more or less from the storm. Houses were unroofed or blown 
 down, fences were leveled, the crops of cane and rice were 
 badly injured, animals were killed or drowned, and sugar 
 houses were badly damaged by the wind and water; but, for- 
 tunately no lives were lost. 
 
 At Point Celeste a large negro church was torn from its 
 foundations by the storm, carried over a quarter of a mile and 
 deposited squarely across the track of the New Orleans, Fort 
 Jackson and Grand Isle Railroad. 
 
 At Tropical Bend occurred the first loss of life on the 
 river. Here several colored people lost their lives, some from 
 drowning, but most from flying timbers. Near here occurred 
 the pathetic death of Mrs. Lafrance, which is related elsewhere. 
 
 The only town of any size on the Mississippi river below 
 New Orleans is Pointe-a-la-Hache, the seat of justice of Plaque- 
 mines parish. The ravages of the storm here were frightful. 
 Nearly every house in the little town was badly damaged; 
 
u 
 
^26- 
 
 inany of tliem were blown down. Its three churclies wer6 
 unroofed, their windows were destroyed, their doors blown in, 
 and they werfe deluged with water. The jail was unroofed, 
 and the courthouse, just finished at a cost of $16,000, was badly 
 injured; the slates were torn from the roof, the doors and win- 
 dows were smashed and the massive clock tower with its costly 
 clock, was thrown to the ground a mass of bi'oken bricks. As 
 the demon of the storm shrieked through the place, the air 
 was filled with flying debris; bricks and timbers were hurled 
 through the air as if they had been feathers and straw. The 
 terrified inhabitants knew not what to do; the crashing of 
 houses warned them that death lurked for them in the dwell- 
 ings that sheltered them, while the missies of destruction 
 which hurtled through the darkness of the night without were 
 almost certain death to anyone who sought to escape in the 
 open air. 
 
 The family of Mr. Mandots met with serious injuries. The 
 family was huddled up in the house when the tornado struck 
 it, and in less time than it takes to tell, the force of the wind 
 had splintered the rafters and blown the house down on top 
 of the unfortunates who had trusted to its security. 
 
 The ferry-boat at Pointe-a-la-Hache was caught by the 
 gale, and before a rope could be started or another line se- 
 cured, the ferry was smashed into kindling wood. Two lug- 
 gers, which were hugging the shore to avoid the fury of the 
 gale, were caught as the tornado swerved and they also shared 
 the general fate. 
 
 Throughout the time of the gale the rain fell in a perfect 
 sheet. The drops were large, and the violence of the wind 
 was so great as to give one subjected to the rain the sensation 
 of being assailed by a million peas hurled with mighty force. 
 
 A sample of the force and fury of the wind was seen in the 
 condition of two cars of the New Orleans, Fort Jackson and 
 Grand Isle road at this point. They had been standing on 
 the track at the station hitched to other cars of the train, and 
 the big wind that swept the town picked them up completely 
 from the earth, breaking the coupling pin that connected them 
 with the other cars of the train and turning them over. The 
 escape of the two men inside was nothing short of miraculous. 
 The cars were jammed into the soft mud alongside the rail- 
 road and the windows and cornice work were smashed to 
 pieces. The heavy iron truck work underneath was torn 
 asunder as though it had been so much thread. 
 
 ;A reporter of the New Orleans Picayune thus described 
 the scene in and around the newspaper ofSce in Pointea-la- 
 Hache next day: ^ 
 
 "The first place to attract attention was the little printing 
 office of the Plaquemines Protector, the newspaper of the par- 
 
-27- 
 
 isli, edited by Robert E. Hingle. Mr. Hingle is one example 
 of the indomitable spirit of the newspaper man. His office 
 and print shop is a small frame structure, standing out on the 
 road, and it bears the resemblance of having been on a pro- 
 tracted drunk. In shipping parlance, it is on its beam ends, 
 and is kept from collapsing by two or three braces. All the 
 type and everythiner else in the structure, was "pied" — heaped 
 about in indescribable confusion. He managed to save one 
 form with the type locked in it, partially intact, and this, with 
 with the aid of an assistant, he has distributed in a battered 
 case, set up in a room adjoining the store, and despite the 
 work of the elements he will issue his paper as usual, though 
 in a necessarily abbreviated form. 
 
 "The home of his nephew, a neat frame cottage was blown 
 to pieces, and some of the pieces of timber hurled about with 
 such force that they stuck in the ground 10 feet deep. The 
 escape of the family was miraculous. The high wind in the 
 early part of the night warned them to be on the lookout, and 
 as the storm grew in intensity their alarm increased, for the 
 creaking of the timbers in the house told them it was unsafe. 
 A falling cornice decided them to leave it, and no sooner had 
 they gone when it collapsed with a crash. Not a member of 
 his family or his nephew's family sustained the slightest injury, 
 other reports, to the contrary, notwithstanding, 
 
 "A short distance further on a sad sight was presented. 
 There stood what had but two days before been a handsome, 
 roomy house, with nothing but the gaunt, bare weather-beaten 
 walls standing and the roof and chimney scattered in all direc- 
 tions. In the rear the kitchen, evidently a more substantial 
 structure, stood comparatively intact, and here the family of 
 Maurice Maurin were huddled. The bedding and clothing of 
 the family were hanging on clothes lines, and the projecting 
 portions of the battered house, drying, for the rain had thor- 
 oughly wet everything in the house and kitchen. None of the 
 people were injured, as they left the tottering building just 
 before it fell. The stable in the rear dropped as if a heavy 
 weight had crushed it flat down; only the roof was perfectly 
 intact." 
 
 These scenes could be repeated over and over again, but 
 enough has been given to convey some idea of the destruction at 
 this point. 
 
 Bohemia is a little hamlet on the river below Poiute-a-la- 
 Hache, and is the temporary terminus of the railroad. This is 
 a little village comprising fifty or more negroes, who live in 
 small wooden cabins. This is Dr. Herbert's rice plantation, and 
 is about five miles below Pointe-a-la-Hache. The cabins, nuaa- 
 bering probably twenty, are in a double row, facing a roadway 
 which runs from the levee back to the rear. The greater vio« 
 
SU. *^§ CifA 
 
 iettce ot ttie storin seemed to have been exei'te(^ Oh tii6 l'6W 6tl 
 the north side of the road. The first cabin was apparently in- 
 tact, but its roof was damaged to such an extent that it is really 
 uninhabitable. The next was more than half demolished, and 
 bedding and cookiog utensils and other household goods were 
 scattered in utmost confusion over the debris. Of the third 
 cabin naught remained but the flooring and the founda- 
 tions, and the same may be said of all the rest in this part of 
 the village. 
 
 Bedding and clothing were scattered everywhere, and the 
 former residents seemed not to have made any efforts to secure 
 their property, or rather what was left of it. At the end of the 
 row there was a boarding-house, a structure of fair size, alto- 
 gether of wood. The bare floor is all that is left, and standing 
 up in the center, in seeming mockery of the work of the elements, 
 was a sewing machine, which seemed to be still in perfect con- 
 dition . 
 
 Of the houses on the south row, every one had rough board 
 porticoes. These porticoes had all been broken off at their junc- 
 tion with the body of the house and forced down like the cover 
 of a book over the doors and windows. At the end of the road- 
 way there had formerly been an old wooden sugarhouse. It 
 had been a commodious structure, but no longer served its ori- 
 ginal purpose, and had been for a long time used as a storehouse 
 for grain and threshing machines. It was piled up in a tangled 
 heap. The threshing machines were badly damaged, as well as 
 the other contents of the building. 
 
 On the north side of the roadway there had also been a large 
 structure used as a stable. This collapsed, and over twenty-five 
 head of cattle, which were in it, were killed. 
 
 Only one person was injured here, and she was a woman, 
 who was only slightly hurt. 
 
 The 80-foot carsheds at Bohemia were seen lying flat or 
 heaped on top of some freight cars. There is a wharf there, 
 where it was expected that steamers would land, but not many 
 ever stop there. Two freight cars were lying half over on their 
 sides, and beyond the wharf the water had run over the levee 
 and washed it badly. 
 
 Two hundred feet from this s^Dot was a heap of debris — the 
 remnant of the cabin occupied by Charlotte Koinkel, a negress. 
 She was a young woman, and had but recently rented the place 
 which fell upon her and crushed her life out in an instant. 
 
 The Grand Prairie extends for a great distance below Bohe- 
 mia, and also comprises what is known as the Union settlement. 
 This place contains about 100 inhabitants, not more, and but 
 three cabins were left standing Four casualties occurred here. 
 The names of the dead are- Wily Anderson, a son of John Per- 
 rot, a daughter of Henry Johnson, one unknown man. All these 
 were colored. 
 
— 29 — 
 
 From here on down to the Quarantine Station it was the 
 same story — destruction of life and property— over and over 
 again, and to repeat it would be but to barrow up the feelings 
 of the reader. 
 
 On Magnolia plantation (Gov. Warmoth's) the wreck was 
 tenible. Many buildings had been unroofed and some of 
 the bouses had been wholly wrecked. The sugarhouse had been 
 partially unroofed and while the orunge trees had weathered tbe 
 storm pretty well, the ground was literally covered with well 
 matured fruit. Tbe immense cane field which was one of the 
 finest in tbe State had been blown flat, a considerable portion 
 having been literally blown out of the ground. 
 
 A WRECKED INTERIOR. 
 
 This was one of the finest plantations in the State, and the 
 orange grove was the finest in the South. The damage here was 
 not less than |25,000, but the ex-governor bore his losses like a 
 stoic — the only remark he made being "Thank God, none of my 
 people were killed." 
 
 The magnificent quarantine station of the State of Louisi- 
 ana, described at the beginning of this chapter, suffered 8everel3^ 
 The medical staff at the station anticijoated a storm, but not a 
 destructive one like that which visited the place. Sunday night 
 the Quarantine tugboat Asp>inwall, with Captain John Eoig, En- 
 gineer James O'Neill, and a manly crew, was lying near the quar- 
 antine wharf. The boat had steam up, and was waiting for 
 
— 30 — 
 
 the heavy winds to abate some, so as to make a trip to one of 
 
 the steamers, for the purpose of disinfecting and fumigating it 
 She had been on the leeward shore, and was just moving out 
 when the storm began in all its fur}^ and the tug was blown on 
 the batture. The jar was a terrible one, and as the boat plowed on 
 the batture the greater portion of the upper works was torn ofl. 
 The crew were thrown forcibly on their faces, and they began at 
 once to try and escape from the almost wrecked boat. Then 
 began a struggle to get ashore, and after running the greatest of 
 risks of life and limb they reached there safely, but badly shaken 
 up and frightened from their terrible experience. There were 
 men in the messroora, and the wind blew with such velocity that 
 every moment the men thought their place of shelter would be 
 blown down and all lost. They tried to escape, and after a diffi- 
 cult struggle in the wind and blinding rain they reached the 
 shed where the iron heating cylinders are, and crawled in the 
 cylinders for safety. These cylinders are made of boiler iron, 
 and are about fifty feet loug and six feet in diameter. They are 
 three in number and Id to them all textile fabrics from suspected 
 vessels are put and are subjected to a treatment by dry heat and 
 moist heat, the cylinders being hermetically sealed. These 
 structures proved arks of safety for the men at the station while 
 the work of destruction was going on outside. 
 
 The plank walks were blown away, and it was at the 
 greatest risk for one to try and leave the place where he was 
 for safer quarters. The weather-boarding of the boathouse 
 was torn away, and the physician's launch was wrecked, with 
 a few big skiffs. The big roof over the disinfecting shed was 
 blown almost completely off, only a small portion remaining. 
 All along the course of the wind, trees and crops were des- 
 troyed, and a few small cabins were blown down, but there 
 was no one reported as being hurt or killed. 
 
 The Charles Chamberlin, a towboat belonging to the 
 Ocean Towboat Company, was lying along side a barkentine 
 when the storm came up, and to seek the harbor and tie up, the 
 boat left the barkentine and tried to make the dangerous trip. 
 The wind tossed her on the big swelling waves and with great 
 force sent her into a rice field, so that she could not get off. 
 No one was hurt and a portion of her crew was sent in a row- 
 boat to the Quarantine station and asked that the Aspinwall 
 be sent to the imperilled boat's assistance, but that tug was 
 also in need of assistance. The Aspinwall was damaged to 
 the extent of about $3500, while the Chamberlin was probably 
 damaged to the extent of a few hundred dollars. There were 
 other trifling damages done to a few smaller boats, but not to 
 any great extent. Fortunately here there was no loss of life. 
 
 At the Jetties, where the yellow flood of the mighty Mis- 
 sissippi plunges into the green waters of the gulf, the storns. 
 
— 31 — 
 
 raged furiously; the -wind shrieked across the narrow tongue 
 of land like a thousand demons. The gauge showed that its 
 velocity exceeded one hundred miles an hour. The driving 
 rain was hurled by the wind until it stung like red hot shot. 
 The veterans among the bar pilots, those old salts who have 
 spent their lives battling with the elements, declared that 
 nothing in their experience had ever equalled it. Everything 
 loose was picked up and hurled far out to sea; the jetties 
 were stripped bare of everything movable in the twinkling of 
 an eye. But things there were built for blows, and but little 
 damage was done. As the gale increased the long, steady 
 swell of the gulf increased until at last the towering waves 
 thundered against the sea wall and, making a clean breach 
 over wall and jetties and land, they rolled to join the salt 
 water on the other side of the delta. The people on the west 
 shore took refuge in the lighthouse, which stood like a rock, 
 its beacon light shining out over the raging waters like the 
 star of hope; the people on the east bank gathered in the 
 small hotel which rocked like a ship in the gale, but which 
 weathered the storm in safety. There was one death here. 
 James Casey, the watchman for the jetty company, went out 
 to see if he could do anything for the safety of the property 
 committed to his care. He was begged not to go, but he an- 
 swered "It's my duty,'' and out into the storm he went. He 
 had gone but a short distance along the narrow jetty when 
 the wind lifted him from his feet and hurled him far out into 
 the raging waters. He battled bravely for his life, and his 
 cries for help could be heard above the howling of the storm. 
 But no boat could live an instant in those seething waters, nor 
 was there a boat left, all had been swept away; and so brave 
 Jim Casey went down to death, a martyr to duty. *•■ 
 
 "While the storm was raging the worst, when the wind was 
 shrieking as if all the fiends of pandemonium were unchained, 
 and the rain drove in horizontal sheets, the people crouching 
 terrified in the lighthouse and hotel were dumbfounded to hear 
 the hoarse notes of a steamship's whistle . It did not seem pos- 
 sible that any ship made by mortal hands could live in that ter- 
 rific tempest, and a few of the hardiest spirits ventured to look 
 out, not knowing whether or not they would see some spectre 
 ship or demon steamer ploughing through the air. To their as- 
 tonishment, almost horror, they saw the dark form and flashing 
 lights of an ocean steamer steadily coming on as she held her 
 way, seemingly in contempt of the warring elements, straight 
 down the centre of the river on her way to sea. It was the great 
 Morgan Liner, El Cid, which put to sea in the teeth of the tem- 
 pest, her captain, with the grand confidence of the veteran 
 sailor in his trusty ship, preferring to risk the open water rather 
 than trust his vessel and cargo to the mercy of the angry waters 
 which were lashing the shore. 
 
— 32 — 
 
 All along the Mississippi, on both banks, from Pointe-a-la- 
 
 Hache to the Jetties, nearly a hundred miles, were strewn the 
 wrecks of boats and luggers, the debris of houses, the bodies of 
 animals, and the ghastly corpses of men and women and little 
 children; while over it all nature, as if in shame of her own 
 deeds, had spread a thick mantle of sea weed swept in from the 
 Gulf of Mexico and a pall of the long marsh grass torn from the 
 prairie which she had scourged in her fury. 
 
 On either side of the Mississippi river, in the marsh land 
 between the river and the gulf, is a stretch of country threaded 
 by numerous bayous, some known by names familiar to all, some 
 with only a local nomenclature, and others so small that they are 
 not deemed worthy of the dignity of a distinct appellation. 
 Along these bayous, great and small, were settlements, places 
 which the hardy fishermen called "home," where the smile of 
 the wife and the prattle of the babes greeted their home-coming 
 after the day of toil and often of danger. That section to the 
 east of the river is known as "the Louisiana Marsh," while that 
 to the west, comprising Bayou Cook, Bayou Shute, Grand Ba- 
 you, Grand Lake, Bayou Chato and many others whose names 
 would mean nothing to the reader, was known by the generic 
 name of "the Bayou Cook Country." 
 
 Here, the storm worked awful havoc on both life and i:)rop- 
 erty. While the loss of life was not so severe as at Cheniere Cam- 
 inada, nor as great in proportion as it was at Bayou Andre 
 (where none escaped), yet a death roll of over a hundred and 
 fifty sent mourning and desolation into every household, save 
 where there were no living left to mourn the dead. 
 
 Sunday is religiously observed by the Bayou Cook people. 
 The little landing in front of their houses was crowded with lug- 
 gers, smacks, small boats, skiffs and other craft used by them in 
 fishing. These little boats were moored along side of each other 
 and they were so numerous that they occupied a space of nearly 
 100 feet in the water. 
 
 The residences of the Bayou Cook people were not by any 
 means handsome structures. They were built more for solidity 
 than beauty. They were all one-story houses, strongly put to- 
 gether, for it was nothing extraordinary for a gale to sweep over 
 the settlement at any time, and a lightly constructed house would 
 never be able to stand these winds. Therefore, the Bayou Cook 
 people knew from experience jnst what was safe, and accord- 
 ingly they built their houses to stand an ordinary hurricane. 
 The storm of that Sunday night, however, was no ordinary one. 
 It was the worst blow that ever swept over that portion of the 
 country, and the little houses that lined the banks of the cur- 
 ving Bayou Cook were blown away like so much chaff. 
 
 Just at what hour the disaster occurred that swept the set- 
 tlement out of existence will probably never be known. It 
 
— 33 — 
 
 must have been in the neighborhood of midnight. The simple 
 fishermen, their wives and their children were not asleep when 
 the cyclone struck them in its full force. Experience had taught 
 them that it was safe on the outside than in the inside of a house 
 while a gale was in progress. This storm was such an unusual 
 one that everybody in the village huddled together in the down- 
 pour of rain, and sent up many a prayer to the Almighty. When 
 the storm broke in all its fury, house after house went down. 
 The bayou began to rise at an alarming rate, and soon was level 
 with the banks. Off in the distance could be heard the roar of 
 the rapidly encroaching waves from the Gulf. Pandemonium 
 reigned among the fisherman. Husbands forgot wives and 
 mothers forgot children. It was a trying moment for everyone, 
 and each and every individual felt that their lives were about to 
 be sacrificed. Already many had been caught up by the wind 
 and blown with terrific force against the wrecks of their homes, 
 where they lay stunned and bleeding. 
 
 As the water in the bayou began to run out of its banks, the 
 luggers, fishing smacks and other craft, which had been torn 
 loose from their moorings, were swept ashore and mowed down 
 the people by the dozens. Many of them were killed in this 
 manner. The water rose with alarming rapidity. It soon cov- 
 ered the land, and gradually rose until it was waist deep. Those 
 who had survived thus far clung to the debris from their homes, 
 which was floating around in a tangled mass. Some succeeded 
 in climbing on doors and windows, while others were satisfied to 
 catch hold of a single plank to keep them from sinking beneath 
 the foam-crested waves. In this manner they were swept back 
 into the swamps, many to perish from drowning, having become 
 exhausted and slid from their impromptu rafts, and sank be- 
 neath the dark waters. Others were dashed to pieces against 
 trees and shrubbery, but the majority were borne out of sight, 
 and many that were fortunate enough to survive the wind and 
 water died from exposure before they could be rescued from 
 their deplorable situation. 
 
 Among the men who escaped from Grand Lake were Cusue 
 Murno of the lugger Atlas, Martel Zebilitzh and Pierre Zeblitizh 
 of the lugger Bon Pere . Their lugger had gone to the city 
 and they had been left in charge of the fishing camp. The storm 
 had come upon them and they climbed to the roof of their cabin 
 to escape from the rising waters. There they heard the cries of 
 their terrified, drowning comrades, as the wrecked luggers went 
 drifting swiftly past them in the storm and darkness, with 
 their crews shrinking in mortal terror. Then their cabin was 
 dashed to pieces and they were struggling in the water amid 
 the storm and darkness. They kept together as they floated on 
 the waves until one of them was dashed against an old pile or 
 picket that was firmly fixed in the ground. He clung to it for 
 
hi-s life and called liis comrades. They all held to the picket 
 \mtil Monday evening, when the suT)sidence of the storm en- 
 abled them to swim to shoal water. They then wandered about 
 in the marshes until Tuesday morning, and, finally reaching 
 the railroad, boarded the train, barefooted, bareheaded and in 
 a half-famished condition. 
 
 Mr. Fred Ziblich, a resident of Bayou Co( k, sums up the 
 storm, in a letter written to his brother, in New Orleans, two 
 days af forwards, thus: 
 
 "The loss of life here is terrible, and it seems that there is 
 hardly anyone in the neighborhood of Bayou Cook left to tell 
 the tale of the storm and its destructive work. Only twenty 
 people altogether have escaped from the storm in the bayou 
 with their lives and they all till a tale of horror and death. 
 There is not a family but what has lost a member, or several 
 members. Some fan.ilies have be(n lest altogether, my wife is 
 among the dead, but I don't linow where they are and what has 
 become of them. I was aw-ay from the house and could not get 
 back in tiae to save them, if saving would have been possible. 
 It is terrible, and words will never describe the horror, the de- 
 strTOtion, the death and the great loss of property. There is 
 hardly a house left in the whole neighborhood, and a great 
 many of them have been carried away an dlost altogether. Boats 
 are washed upon the New Orleans and Fort Jackson Railroad 
 and loclged there." 
 
 Three days after the stoim Mr. Tony Anasawovich, another 
 of the survivors, said to a reporter of the New Orleans Picayune: 
 
 "The story of the storm at bayou Cook and Grand bayou 
 will never be truthfully told. It is impossible to paint a picture 
 of the scenes of desolation. The entire country has been laid 
 waste by the elements and there is scarcely ahoose left standing 
 where there once existed happy homes and a prosperous colony. 
 The camps have all been swept out of existence and the country 
 is covered with every describable manner of debris and with tlie 
 bodies of the dead, not all of which have yet been gathereel for 
 interment. It will probably be difficult to recover the bodies of 
 all who were lost. Many of them were swept into the marshes. 
 Families have been torn apart and many wiped entirely out of 
 existence. It is difficult, howevei', to attempt to furnish names. 
 Some of the missing may be still alive, and the confusion and 
 terror are so great that people are as yet unable to account for 
 their relatives and frieuds in view of the frightful experiences 
 they have passed through . " 
 
 The story of each and every bayou in the Bayou Cook coun- 
 try would be but a mournful re}jetition of the foregoing, changing 
 the names of the sufferers. Everywhere were parents wailing for 
 their children, and little ones crying the names of parents vi'hose 
 white faced corpses gazed with unseeing eyes to heaven from 
 the matted marsh grass of the trembling prairie. 
 
— 35 — 
 
 In the Louisiana marsh to the east of the Mississippi, the 
 same destruction vviis wron<;ht. There are but few ba.yous in 
 this section, their plao s beinf:>- taken by the chain of lakes which 
 commences with Lake Pontchartrain in the rear of New Orleans^ 
 and continue until they reach the gulf, the principal one of which 
 is Lake Borgne. From New Orleans south there runs into this 
 country, on the left descending bank of the river, the Shell 
 Beach railroad, which has its southern terminus at the little 
 settlement from which it takes its name. Like its companion 
 road on the west bank, the Shell Beach road suffered severely 
 from the storm. Its track was washed and torn, and where it re- 
 mained intact it was covered with debris and seaweed and the 
 bodies of animals. It, too, had its quota of boats and schooners 
 and luggers caught up out of the lakes and cast all along its 
 line. 
 
 Shell Beach was more of a fishing camp than a settlement, 
 and fortunately but few lived there. Some of the anglers of New 
 Orleans had erected there a handsome club house at a cost of 
 something li!\e $7000. This building was in charge of Mr. Heb- 
 ler who resided in it^with his family. Here most of the people 
 gathered when the storm broke, as it was the most substantial 
 structi:re in the place. Mr. Hebler gave the following account 
 of the storm there: 
 
 He Slid he had been there since 1884 and had seen no storm 
 which was worth considering in comparison with the one of Sun- 
 day night. 
 
 At 5 o'clock Sunday evening the wind began to blow hard 
 and probably reached the vekcity of 40 miles an hour. The 
 water rose about 12 inches and he took measures to secure the 
 boats. At 10 o'clock the wind shifted to the northwest and the 
 water came up to the floor. The sailboats went and the gallery 
 was pulled down. At 2 a. m . the wind shifted to the northwest 
 and there was 6 feet of water in the hall. The sewing machine, 
 lamp and everything washed away and the doors went down and 
 the floors were washed out in all the rooms but the kitchen. 
 Soon only the uprights were left. The cistern was washed three 
 miles from the house . 
 
 Two fishermen were in a willow tree from Sunday at 5 
 o'clock p. m. until between 2 and 3 Monday. 
 
 One Manilla man floated two or three miles and two others 
 floated away in a pirogue and have not been heard from since. 
 All the huts went, and there was only water and sky and rain 
 during the early hours of Monday morning. Shell Beach is a 
 desolate phice. 
 
 Capt. Tony Jnan, one of the residents of Shell Beach, who 
 was absent at the time of the storm, gave to a reporter of the 
 New Orleans Picayune a graphic description of the scene which 
 greeted him on his return home the next day: 
 
— 36 — 
 
 ""When I reached Shell Beach," said Capt. Tony, "a scene of 
 desolation greeted my eye. The magnificent clubhouse that 
 formerly stood on the beach was a mass of broken and twisted 
 timbers. Looking down the beach not one of the twenty camps 
 that were formerly there could be seen. There was nothiDg to 
 show that any buildings had ever stood there. My own camp, 
 which was built near the clubhouse, and which I left in good 
 order on Saturday, had disappeared. 
 
 Immediately upon my arrival I set about ascertaining 
 ■whether any of the fishermen had been drowned. After a dili- 
 gent search I managed to round up all those that were on the 
 beach, and after noses had been counted it was discovered that 
 seventeen persons were missing. Among this number was Mar- 
 tin Bonificiao and his family. The other twelve were men, and 
 the belief is that they had all been swept back into the swamp, 
 and it will require a thorough search to find their bodies. There 
 is not the slightest doubt but that they are all dead, for if any 
 of them had been alive they could have easily made their way 
 back to the beach, as immedately after the storm had subsided 
 the ten feet of water that covered the land flowed rapidly back 
 into the lake. The survivors are so wrought up over the terri- 
 ble ordeal they passed through that they had not the heart to 
 institute a search for the missing. 
 
 I took down with me a lot of provisions, and I found that it 
 was a Godsend to these people. They had not had one mouth- 
 ful to eat since Sunday evening,and were in actual want, as there 
 was not one bite to eat anywhere, the storm having swept away 
 all eatables with their houses . They did not even have a fishing 
 line; which would have enabled them to catch enough fish to 
 appease their appetites . These people are now quarted at the 
 house of C. H. Cyaley, which is six miles distant from the rail- 
 road terminus. The majority of them are nearly naked, their 
 clothes having been blown away. 
 
 At Terre Aux Boeuf, Pescadorosville, Keggio, in short at 
 every settlement or fishing camp or station, this sad scene was 
 repeated. 
 
 At Pescadorosville, or the Island, as it is sometimes called, 
 but two houses were left standin-g out of thirty. 
 
 At every point the personal effects of the people were 
 washed or blown away, their houses were blown down, their 
 fishing boats were staved and sunk, or carried so far inland by 
 the immense volume of water which poured over the country, 
 •^t they could not be returned to the water, and he who es- 
 "* with his life, even though with broken bones, esteemed 
 *-\ip ' ' vorite of fortune. In this country, too, each tuft 
 Tetation, half grass, half flag, might hide a man- 
 body, and at the bottom of every stagnant 
 ling waters in the scored marshes, perhaps 
 
m 
 
— 38 — 
 
 might rest a ghastly corpse whose soul had winged its flight to 
 the great beyond amid the howling tempest of that awful night. 
 For days after the storm the relief parties continually^ 
 found the bodies of the dead, some of them the inhabitants of 
 the region, others sailors whose vessels had been driven in from 
 Mississippi Sound and the Gulf of Mexico and wrecked on the 
 eastern shore of the "Marsh." Some were recognized and their 
 last resting places were reverently marked; but many, very 
 many, went to swell the list of the unknown and unclaimed dead. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TWIXT BIVEK AND LAKE. 
 
 While death was being dealt on the coast, the storm was 
 not idle in the city of New Orleans. New Orleans is situated 
 on the level land between the Mississippi river and Lake Pont- 
 chartrain; and, as the lake is joined to the gulf by waterway's 
 on the east, and the river in its sinuous winding as it nears the 
 city approaches so close to the lake, it is almost an island. 
 There are no bluffs or hills, not even the slightest elevation, to 
 break the force of the wind, and so the storm had full play 
 amid the houses of the Crescent City. Bat fortunately it was 
 but the edge of the tempest that touched the town, and the 
 blows that were struck there came from an arm already wearied 
 by dealing death in the coasts below. 
 
 All day Sunday the rain had been coming down, with now 
 and then a temporary cessation for a few moments; but the 
 falling rain did not seem to lighten the burden of the clouds 
 which hung low above the city as the day drew to a close, and 
 as the darkness of night began to steal through the gray of the 
 weeping day, the wind came moaning down across the waters of 
 Pontchartrain, driving before it great windrows of inky clouds 
 across a background of solid lead color, a phenomenon which 
 boded no good for aught in the track of the storm of which it 
 was the forerunner and prophet. As darkness fell upon the 
 city and its myriad lights blazed out, here an electric spark 
 that shone like a diamond on the bosom of the night, and, radi- 
 ating in the distance, the gas jets scintillated like strings of jew- 
 els, the storm broke over the town. The water poured in an 
 almost continuous sheet. In an instant, almost, it seemed, the 
 streets were flooded; ditches and drains ran bank full, i-oadways 
 were under water and sidewalks disappeared beneath the flood 
 which stretched from house to house across the streets, broken 
 only by the vehicles which cut through it hub deep, or the 
 street cars which carried ahead of them a wave as boats at sea. 
 
 And above all roared the wind. Blast after blast tore 
 through the streets, and the storm played the music of its weird 
 
— 39 — 
 
 fantasie on the Jiloleari harp of wires that swayed and swung 
 and rani? under the touch of the master musician, while at hun- 
 dreds of points the blus-white sparks and jets threatened death 
 to man who had dared to chain and harness the mysterious power 
 of which they were the visible manifestation. 
 
 A setious accident occurred at the corner of Carroll- 
 ton avenue and Second street. A telephone wire was blown 
 down and lay across the trolley wire. The current from the 
 trolley wire was transmitted to the telephone wire, and when a 
 double team owned by Betz, the livery stable man, came gallop- 
 ing along, at 12.55 a. m., the horses ran against the fallen wire. 
 Both horses were immediately killed and the driver had a nar- 
 row escape, being rendered insensible by the shock, from which 
 it took him days to recover. 
 
 Trees were thrown down into the streets all over the city 
 and travel w^as at first delayed and then interrupted altogether. 
 The street cars ran at irregular intervals farther and farther 
 apart, and then stopped. The charges of the cabmen rose high- 
 er and higher, until at last no offer of money could tempt them 
 to brave the fury of the storm. 
 
 The telegraph wires were thrown down and for a time it 
 seemed as if New Orleans would be cut off from the rest of the 
 world; but, two lines held out and served to carry to and from 
 the city the pulse-beats of the busy world. 
 
 The beautiful grove of oaks at the United States barracks 
 was almost destroyed, most of its largest trees being torn bodily 
 from the ground, and the immense pole from which floated the 
 garrison flag was snapped short off. 
 
 The church of the Messiah in the seventh district was de- 
 molished. The car sheds of the N. O. C. & L. road in 
 the third district were blown down and the rolling stock exten- 
 sively damaged. 
 
 The police telegraph was rendered useless and each pre- 
 cinct was a garrison cut off from all communication with 
 supports. 
 
 At an early hour the swaying wires were crossed and a high 
 tension current burnt out the switch board of the fire alarm ser- 
 vice, leaving the city at the mercy of the fire bug. 
 
 At midnight one of the public markets for which New Or- 
 leans is famous, situated on Sorapuru and Tchoupitoulas streets 
 went with a crash and was piled, a miss of tangled debris on its 
 former site. An hour later the brick wall which had been its 
 lower end followed the rest of the building; adding to the ter- 
 ror of the people in the vicinity. By this one incident the city 
 lost $22,000. 
 
 By some inexplicable good fortune there was but one fatal- 
 ity in the city. Ulrich Boyer, a Boylan police officer, was the 
 only victim of the storm. Boyer's beat was on the levee, in the 
 
— 40~~ 
 
 vicinity of the Texas and Pacific Railroad depot. At the head 
 of Henderson street, on the levee, the firm of A. K. Mitler & 
 Co., were having erected a small structure to be used as an office. 
 Between the hours of 11 and 12 o'clock Sunday night, when the 
 wind was blowing at a terrible rate, the frame of the building 
 was blown down and completely demolished. Boyer had been 
 standing near the place, so as to secure shelter from the rain, 
 which, at that time, was coming down in torrents. He was 
 knocked to the ground by the falling timber, and there he re- 
 mained for the remainder of the night beneath several heavy 
 planks, suffering intensely. 
 
 At 7:30 o'clock Monday morning he was discovered and 
 taken from his perilous position by Officer Roach. The officer 
 was passing on the levee on his way to the Harbor Precinct 
 Station, when a man's groans were heard by him. He traced 
 the cries to the fallen building, and after a few minutes search 
 he noticed Boyer. The man was barely able to speak. The 
 only thing he said was to tell the time the accident happened 
 and where he was injured. He complained of pains about the 
 body and legs. Officer Roach telej)honed for the ambulance. 
 The man appeared to be slowly passing away, and as that vehi- 
 cle was a little late in responding to the call, a wagon was se- 
 cured, and in it the wounded man was laid and taken post- 
 haste to the hospital. There it was found that his left thigh 
 and arm were broken, and he was injured internally. His in- 
 juries were attended to, and he was placed in a ward. He died 
 at 12:30 o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 In Algiers, or the fifth district, that portion of the city on 
 the west bank of the Mississippi, the damages were slighter. 
 
 The roof of the Woman's Benevolent Missionary Hall was 
 blown off; also blowing down a colored church in Jefferson par- 
 ish, with the fence and trees. This church was situated near 
 Freetown. 
 
 The belfry was blown off the negro Methodist Church, and 
 the slates off the Good Hope Baptist Church on Jackson street. 
 The wind blew the church eight inches back from where it 
 stood. 
 
 The walls of the old Planter's Oil Mills were blown down 
 and damaged to a considerable extent. 
 
 The Women's Benevolent Missionary Hall is a two-story 
 frame building, sitting back some distance in the yard. The 
 wind played havoc with it, blowing the roof in as if it had been 
 an eggshell. The house was a new building, and was still in 
 process of construction. 
 
 On the river itself in front of the city the night was a wild 
 one. The wind blew with terrific violence along the unprotected 
 levee, and the men watching the interests of the shipping com- 
 munity were kept constantly on the qui vive to guard against 
 loss of property. 
 
— 4i — 
 
 About 9 o'clock tlie first accident occurred, when the big 
 transfer steamer, Gouldsboro, of the Texas and Pacific road, 
 started to cross the river in the teeth of the gale. The boat was 
 loaded with passengers and freight cars for the Texas and Pacific 
 road on the other side. The boat runs into a slip on this side, 
 and no sooner had the vessel jutted her nose outside of the pro- 
 tection thus afforded than she was caught by the full force of 
 the gale. 
 
 The current and the wind combined blew the boat down the 
 river, and in less time than it takes to relate she was hurled 
 against the fruit wharf of the Illinois Central road, at the foot of 
 Thalia street. The mammoth engines of the big boat were in- 
 capable of stemming the fury of the wind and tide, and her star- 
 board wheelhouse was ground into bits against the wharf. Her 
 starboard bow was also battered in. The crew of the vessel 
 managed to secure the boat before any further injury could be 
 effected, and the passengers were safely housed. 
 
 The ferry boat, Edna, beat backward and forward in the 
 river for two hours with the New Iberia excursionists on board, 
 finally landing the passengers at a point above Louisiana avenue. 
 
 The ferryboat, Jerome Handley, plying between Race street 
 and McDonoughville, broke loose from her moorings and was 
 carried a short distance up the river, where she was blown 
 ashore. The Handley while lying in this position parted her 
 chains and settled into the river, where she now lies sunken, 
 The Handley was owned by Capt. Thos. Pickles, was valued at 
 about $IO,OOU, and was not insured. 
 
 The steam launch Harry Shannon, valued at $1000, was 
 lost while lying at the bank in Gretna. The boat lies sunk be- 
 neath the surface and cannot be raised . 
 
 The steamer Grace Pitt, owned by the New Orleans and 
 Southern Railroad, lying just below the Good Intent Dry Dock, 
 on the Algiers side, parted her lines during the gale and to- 
 gether with two barges, one lashed on each side of her, were 
 blown up the river, Both of the barges were torn to pieces and 
 the Pitt was carried ashore just below Morgan's depot at Gretna. 
 The Pitt was valued at $6000, and was insured for'$4000. 
 
 The big transfer W. S. Osborne, owned by the Illinois Cen- 
 tral road, which was lying in retirement just above Louisiana 
 avenue, was torn from her moorings during the storm of Sun- 
 day night and carried to the opposite side of the river. The 
 Osborne sustained but slight damage to herself, but in tearing 
 al^ay from her fastenings did considerable damage to the 
 steamer Ouachita, which was lying in retirement just above her. 
 
 There was trouble at the coal fleet moored at Willow Grove. 
 The barges were moored close together, and the continual jost- 
 ling caused the seams to start in all except the newest of the 
 fleet. The laborers employed on the boats were kept busy 
 
— 42 — 
 
 pumping, but tlie water gained headway rapidly, and a barge 
 belonging to T. J. Wood went down. 
 
 Joseph Walton's coal barge was the next to be lost; then 
 the Muuhall Bros, lost two coal laden barges. The total loss 
 will amount to $11,000 or $12,000. 
 
 On the shores of Lake Ponchartrain in the limits of New 
 Orleans are several pleasure resorts to which her people repair 
 in the summer for rest and relaxation, and the cool breezes 
 which blow in from the water. The principal ones are Milne- 
 burg, Little Woods, Spanish Fort and West End; the last being 
 the largest and the most generally patronized. Here the people 
 find music and bathing, fishing and boating; while numerous 
 restaurants provide' for the inner man. 
 
 The storm at these places was grand. At Little Woods the 
 waves rolled clear across the little lakeside resort. The con- 
 stant wash of the waves loosened the soil around the roots of the 
 giant water oaks, and one after another the}^ bent and fell from 
 the force of the hurricane. 
 
 The houses were principally light structures and many of 
 them were torn to pieces. 
 
 West End was a heavy sufferer. Trees were uprooted, plat- 
 forms destroyed, small boats sunk, bath houses damaged, por- 
 tions of the^wharf torn up and plants and shrubbery whipped 
 to ribbons. 
 
 The Southern Yacht Club was a considerable lossr by the 
 storm. About 300 feet of its walk from the end of the covered 
 walk out to the club entrance was washed away. Otherwise, the 
 club sutfered Uttle, if any. The rowing clubs on the east side 
 of the basin all suffered. The landings of the St. John and 
 West End clubs were washed away and the lumber piled about 
 promiscuously or else lost altogether. The walk along the 
 basin bank from one club to another is gone, and all that saved 
 the West End club from sustaining the same losses as the others 
 is the fact of the contractors for the revetment work having 
 already removed the landing to make a place for depositing 
 dredgings. 
 
 It was about 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon when the damage 
 began to be done . The summer house nearest the east end of 
 the levee blew away entirely and without warning. The summer 
 house at the big bronze statue acted very singularly. The floor 
 and posts were blown away so completely that no one has so far 
 found even the splinters, and yet the roof fell where the floor 
 had been, and seemed to be in almost as good condi- 
 tion as when new . 
 
 The many handsome yachts in "the pen" were jammed 
 against one another and were rubbed and bruised, and the yacht 
 Nepenthe, belonging to Mr. Richardson, the commodore of the 
 squadron, was torn from her moorings and blown a mile up the 
 canal. 
 
— 43 — 
 
 Spanish Fort sufifered less than any of the other places, but 
 overthrown trees, wrecked stands, torn shrubbery and washed 
 walks and roads showed that it had not escaped scatheless. 
 
 At Milueburg the dwellings were damaged to a considerable 
 extent, one of them being completely demolished, as well as a 
 bathhouse. 
 
 A number of skififs were wrenched from their moorings, and 
 were either foundered or dashed into bits against the numerous 
 sunken pilings with which the Lake at that point abounds. 
 
 It would be tiresome and uninleiesting to detail the num- 
 ber of craft thus destroyed. 
 
 The scene during the storm is thus described by an eje- 
 witness: "In the distance the lake, churned into a thick foam 
 by the f ary of the wind, rose and fell in mighty waves, whose 
 crests were cut off as with keen knives before they had at- 
 tained their fullest height. The waves dashed against the revet- 
 ment and railroad trestle with tremendous violence, and the 
 spray tlew full fifteen feet high in many parts of the long walk. 
 The billows rolled toward the shore, sweeping almost every- 
 thing with them, and hurling drift and wreckage inland. The 
 shore was lined with the rough fringe of pieces of battered 
 boats, houses and pilings, which ever and anon would be lifted 
 a triHe further inland by a wave more powerful than its prede- 
 cessors . " 
 
 One of the most thrilling experiences of the storm, bat one 
 fortunately unattended by any casualty, was that of the New 
 Camelia, the little steamer which plies on Lake Pontchartrain 
 between Milneburg and Mandeville. The last named jDlace is a 
 little town in the pine woods on the north side of the lake where 
 many citizens of New Orleans have their snmmer homes, the 
 New Camelia being the means of communication. This little 
 vessel is bailt like an ocean steamer, not like the ordinary steam- 
 boat of the southern waters; and to this, together with the 
 coolness of her captain, William Hanover, is due the fact that 
 another horror was not added to the already too long list of that 
 ■ fatal Sunday. Her story can be told no better than in the words 
 of her captain . He said : 
 
 "When we left New Orleans Sunday morning we had about 
 fifty passengers. The trip was made to the north shore without 
 the occurrence of anything of interest. The passengers had a 
 delightful time at the resorts, and we started on the homeward 
 voyage shortly after 4 o'clock in the afternoon. At Mandeville 
 it was blowing stiff then, but not much to speak of. No rain was 
 falling. We had been out but a short time when the wind 
 started to blow in earnest. The passengers began to feel the 
 effects of the blow, and the ladies retired to the cabin, where 
 everything was made as comfortable as possible for them . Rain 
 fell iu torrents after we had been out an hour, and the wind bad 
 
^ - 44 - 
 
 increased to a gale from the eastward. The New Camelia be- 
 haved wonderfully well in the gale, and though the vessel rolled 
 like a drunken man and pitched like a bucking broncho, no dam- 
 age was done either to the vesssl or her machinery. 
 
 "About G o'clock we were in a position to land at Milneburg. 
 The wind was blowing great guns and the water was running 
 very high. The rain was so terrific that we could not see the 
 wharf, and though I was anxious to land my passengers, I did 
 not want to risk an accident that might prove fatal to all on 
 board. The gale from the eastward made it impossible for a land- 
 ing to be made without carrying away the wharf or tearing the 
 boat to pieces, and finding things in that condition I determined 
 to steam out into the lake. I told those of the passengers who 
 asked me that I would again try by the light of the moon. We 
 dropped anchor near the Spanish Fort and rode the gale until 
 after 10 o'clock, when the moon began to shine. But its light 
 was too feeble for me to try the landing in the teeth of the gale, 
 and I gave over the attempt. 
 
 "The gale was a fierce one by this time, and the steamer 
 began dragging her anchor. I ordered that steam be kept up 
 all night, and kept the engines going, so as to take the strain 
 from the cable. We dragged a considerable distance all the 
 same, and toward morning steamed out about four miles from 
 the Milneburg wharf to the westward. We rode the gale all 
 night in safety and tried to land about 11 o'clock Monday fore- 
 noon, but owing to the presence of the wreckage to the east, 
 could not make the wharf on that side. The wind was then 
 from the northwest and too strong for us to land to windward. 
 
 "The passengers had been uneasy all night, and I thought 
 best to take them back to Mandeville. This I did,, and we ar- 
 rived there Monday afternoon." 
 
 The next day the steamer safely made her wharf at Milne- 
 burg, landing her passengers and easing many a heart on shore 
 that had ached with fear for loved ones tossed on the choppy 
 seas of the shallow lake. 
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 ALONO THE GULF. 
 
 Along the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico from New 
 Orleans to Mobile runs the line of the Louisville and Nashville 
 railroad, skirting the very edge of the waters, where the salt 
 spray from the crest of the incoming rollers is dashed over the 
 rails by every gale, running over the marsh on a bed built at an 
 enormous cost and maintained by untiring labor, crossing the 
 numerous outlets from the lakes to the gulf by bridges of steel 
 and iron. Scattered along the line from one end to the other 
 
— 45 — 
 
— 46 — 
 
 are little towns and hamlets, Lookout, Waveland, Bay St. Louis, 
 Pass Christian, Bi!oxi, Scruuton, Mif-sissippi City, Ocean Springs 
 and many otbers, foiming almobt a continuous sliGtcb ( f bousfs 
 fronting tbe lieacb, all popular summer resorts witb tbe people 
 of tbe Soutb and known colb ctively in tbe parlance of New Or- 
 leans as "over tbe lake." Here in tbe bot summer months go 
 the people of New Orleans to breathe tbe air redolent of the 
 balsam of tbe pine, to lave in Ibe waves that lipple on tbe shore 
 and to rtvel in tbe cool salt breeze which s^^eeps in from tbe 
 open gulf. This coast is protected in a measure by a chain of 
 low-lying islands-, mere bunks of sand raised b^^ the action of 
 the waves; La Breton, Grand Grozier, tbe Cbandeleurs, Cat Isl- 
 and, Ship Island, Horn Island aicl iiiany others. All along this 
 line, both on tbe islnnds and tbe maii.land, tbe storm vras felt iu 
 all its fury, and lives w^re lost by tbe score and thousands upon 
 thousands of dollars worth of property was destroyed. 
 
 Probably the worst damage and loss of property was at Cban- 
 deleur island. Here was located the United States marine hos- 
 pital quarantine buildings, in charge of Dr. G. M. Guitieras, 
 with Dr. Cbas. Pelaez, as assistant. At this point tbe fullest 
 strength of tbe stoim was developed, resulting not only in the 
 almost complete destruction of all buildings on tbeislund, but in 
 a fearful loss of life. The velocity of tbe wind reached 100 miles 
 an hour. Tbe building and } ier known as the disinfecting 
 plant, supplied with all tbe modern appliances for the thorough 
 disinfection of vessels from infected ports, was a complete loss, 
 everything being washed away. 
 
 While tbe other buildirgs on the island were more or less 
 damaged and uninhabitable, the largest house, coijnected with 
 tbe main station was carrie d awoy, and the following persons 
 drowned: Steward L. A. Duckert, of New Orleans; Nurs^ Mc- 
 Kenzie, of Mobile; Seaman Muller, of Amsterdam, and two pa- 
 tients, one named Lazen, of tbe steamship Eav^ersdnle and Geo. 
 B Salmis, boatman of the American bark Rebecca Goddard. 
 
 The buildings on tbe island were located so far apart that 
 there was no communication, and it was impopsiLle for the occu- 
 pants to render asssistance to one another. The lighthouse was 
 also wrecked to such an extent that the lighthouse keeper aban- 
 doned it. Miles of tbe island were completely washed away, 
 and what little remains is liable to be completely' submerged 
 with little more than an ordinary high tide. 
 
 The damage by wind to the quarantine service alone at 
 Chandeleur island will amount to nearly ?100,000. 
 
 The disinfecting plant, which had been erected during tbe 
 past year, together with tbe wharf and disinfecting apparatus, 
 cost $17,000. The other buildings and improvements between 
 $50,0(jO and $60,000, to which may be added about $o0,C00 for 
 the steam transfer boat W'm. H. Welsh, Captain Jas. Delmas, 
 
— 47- 
 
 wbich went aground at the norlli point of the island in 3 feet of 
 water at high tide, with a draft of 7 feet. About forty htad of 
 cattle were also lost on the island. 
 
 Tuesda}' a Manilla sailor made hie way to the Chandeleur 
 Station from the fishing sloop Laura B., of New Orleans, which 
 was wrecked in Grand pass. Out of a crew of seven men he 
 was the only survivor, and when found on the island was in an 
 unconscious and perfecth' nude condition having been in the 
 M'ater over ten hours- The oyster lugger Rosalie, of Biloxi, is 
 also known to have gone to the bottom with a crew of four men. 
 
 The American bark Rebecca Goddard, from St. Johns, lying 
 at Quarantine, dragged her anchors about five miles from the 
 station, and only saved the vessel from going ashore by cutting 
 away the masts and all the rigging, sustaining a loss of about 
 $.5U60 or $6000. The Henry T. Gregg had a similar txperitnce 
 and was completely dismasted, the loss footing up fully $6000. 
 The Austrian bark Nikita, which was in quarantine at Chan- 
 deleur, was lost with all on board. She had a crew of about 
 twelve men. The Norwegian bark Rogna was also dismasted. 
 
 Tuesday night the Heury T. Gregg took two Italian fisher- 
 men from a raft as they were drifting out to sea. Another raft 
 also pai^sed the vessel with three men on board, but the Gregg's 
 small boats were so badl}- wrecked that they could lend no assis- 
 tacce to the unfortunates, and nothing has been heard ficm 
 them since. 
 
 John Graham, who had charge of Dantzler's lumber barge 
 Remus, saiei that the barge went to pieces and he was picked 
 up b}' the master of the Simon. Before going to pieces the 
 the schooner New Union passed within 300 feet ot him with 
 five men clinging to the bottom. It was blowing too hard to 
 save them. A uL-an named Hough, who was with Graham, was 
 drowned. Andrew Olesen, who was on the bark Annie B., 
 said that she struck early in the morning on Cat Island . 
 Himself and four otheis went over on the lumber and 
 drifted to the island. Before he got there one of the men 
 was washed overboard. The captain and the rest of the crew 
 are missing. A sailor told him he saw the captain go over- 
 board. When they reached the island the sand blown by the 
 wind drove them back to the water where they both clung to 
 the trees. They were taken off next day. 
 
 Captain Roberts of the tugboat Julius Albert reported the 
 day after the storm over a hundred dead bodies floating in the 
 gulf between the islands and the coast. Among the lost was 
 Louis A. Duckert, hospital steward, at Chandeleur. He was 
 swept off into the gulf by the tidal wave amid the howling of 
 the tempest. More than a week afterwards his body was found 
 on a small island more than ten miles away. For days and davs 
 searching parties found bodies in the long grass of the marshes. 
 
— 48 — 
 
 and they were buried where they were found, swelhng the list of 
 the unknown dead. Miles off shore the odor of the decaying 
 bodies told all too plainly that all of tbe dead had not been 
 found . 
 
 At every little town along the coast there was tremendous 
 damage to property and at many there was loss of life. 
 
 Jack Sbepard, the assistant bridge tender on the Biloxi 
 Railroad bridge, was washed overboard and drowned. His body 
 was recovered the nest day and buried at Ocean Springs. 
 
 The financial loss along the entire coast will foot up not less 
 than $1,000,000. 
 
 LOUIS A. DUCICERT, 
 
 The canning interests suffered severely from the storm. 
 Their losses in the aggregate amount to over $25,000. The 
 Barataria Canning Company lost their wharves, engine-room, 
 large lot of canned goods damaged, machinery, cans and other 
 material. They estimate their loss at from $8000 to $10,000. 
 Lopez, Dunbar's Sons & Co., oyster packers, lost about $10,000 
 ou their factorv plant and water craft. Wm. Gorenfle & Co., 
 oyster packers, on the Back bay, estimate their loss at about 
 $3000 and the E. C. Joulian Packing Company lost about $4000. 
 The Biloxi Canning Company also located in the Back bay, lost 
 from $3500 to $4000 in storm-swept buildings, damaged machin- 
 ery and canned goods. 
 
 At Scranton, Miss . , the waters of the river and sound rose 
 rapidly, submerging the track of the Louisville and Nashville. 
 Railroad, carrying the schooners Franklin and Amelia upon the 
 
— 49 — 
 
 embankment of the railroac!, where they were left by the water. 
 The brig Mary C Minor was carried into Lowery Island, about 
 half a mile north of the railroad, and the brig Emma and 
 schooner Taylor were stranded at Freutz shipyard. The charcoal 
 schooner Webb capsized 200 yards south of the railroad. 
 
 The Lutheran and Methodist churches and four negro 
 churches at Scranton were wrecked besides Odd Fellows' Hall 
 was so badly injured that it is ncf longer safe. The large machine 
 shop of T. C. Gatti was blown down. Mead Bros. ' mill was un- 
 roofed and incalculable dnmage done toothers. 
 
 In East Pascagoula the damage was much greater, as the 
 whole road front was destroyed, the Catholic church being 
 removed from its pillars and the Union Church completely des- 
 troyed. 
 
 At Lookout, the great fishing resort of New Orleans, the 
 storm was awfnl. Boat houses were destroyed, boats were 
 wrecked and the whole country inundated. Fortunately the 
 main buildings, though rough, were strong, and the large num- 
 ber of amateur fishermen there escaped with a bad fright. 
 
 The following graphic description of the storm at Waveland, 
 Miss. ,one of the prettiest watering places on the line of the L. 
 & N . road, is from the pen of Mr . Henry P. Dart, a leading 
 New Orleans lawyer: 
 
 "A moderate wind blew all Sunday forenoon, which rough- 
 ened the sea somewhat, but the sky was clear and there was no- 
 thing to indicate unusual weather. About 1 o'clock, the wind 
 changed to southeast, and with .H came rain, increasing as the 
 afternoon waned until at 6 o'clock it was quite dark and a stiff 
 gale blowing. 
 
 The direction of the storm sent everybody indoors, and 
 closed all openings toward the front. We are accustomed to 
 rough weather at this season, and if any attention was diverted 
 to it, it was not serious. Toward midnight, however, sleep was 
 out of the question. The trees creaked and cracked. There was 
 a deep booming along the shore, and over all the wind rushed 
 and whistled and the rain pelted in torrents. Chimneys and 
 openings of every kind leaked, and the town awaked and pre- 
 pared for something to happen. 
 
 About 4 o'clock the first touch of light crept up, and then 
 we saw that the sea had left its normal bed and was dashing over 
 bluffs and pouring across roads, while beyond and ahead of all 
 flew the scud as high as our trees . Just as day broke the sight 
 was most impressive; the great waves swept unimpeded over the 
 shore and broke in the road, with a mighty roar that could be 
 heard above every other sound; the horizon seemed only across 
 the way, — a mighty upheaval of water clouded by mist and full 
 of spoil. 
 
— 50 — 
 
 Between 2:30 and 5 o'clock the wharves and bathhouses suc- 
 cumbed, and soon there was not a stick of timber between sea 
 and shore. The gale was then at its height and half an hour 
 more it would have destroyed many a home. Just as it seemed 
 that the sea would sweep houses and people away the wind 
 changed round and blew equally against it. I saw the great roll- 
 ing crests scatter their furious spray, then flatten out and sud- 
 denly recede; moment by moment the victory was made surer, 
 and in two hours the watery giant was conquered, and we had 
 nothing more to fear, as he lipped the shore far below his previ- 
 ous usurpation." 
 
 At Bay St. Louis, Miss., the storm began on Sunday morn- 
 ing about 8 o'clock with a heavy rain. The rain continued all 
 day, and the wind increased in fury every hour. It rained and 
 blew big guns all night, but the full force of the storm was not 
 felt until about 5:30 on Monday morning. Then it blew a reg- 
 ular cyclone, and every bathhouse on the beach from one end to 
 the other was swept away and hurled out into the raging waters. 
 Trees along the beach were uprooted, while the roofs of nearly 
 all of the outhouses were blown away. A negro church was un- 
 roofed and the roof thrown alongside of the building. Every yacht, 
 schooner and small craft that was moored to the various land- 
 ings were torn from their posts, and were either dashed to pieces 
 against the ruins of the wharves or were blown high and dry 
 ashore. Eight or nine large schooners were washed ashore, and 
 either ruined or badly damaged; $250,000 would not cover the 
 damage done the beach and Bay. So far as has been ascertained, 
 but one life was lost, although many had narrow escapes from 
 death. 
 
 Charlie Chariot, one of the crew of the schooner Centennial, 
 which was wrecked in front of Mr. F. Butler's home, in Wave- 
 land, was washed away and drowned while clinging to the keel 
 of the capsized vessel . The Centennial was under command of 
 Capt. W. H. McDonald, brother of Hon. John McDonald, mayor 
 of Pass Christian, and was anchored off the Pass. About mid- 
 night the anchor chain broke, and in making an effort to draw it 
 aboard and get under way he was knocked overboard by the 
 boom. From midnight until day he fought a terrible battle for 
 his life. Many times he was on the point of giving up, and 
 would have been drowned had he not secured a piece of timber 
 on which to rest his body. About day he was washed on the 
 drift of the broken railroad bridge and managed to crawl from 
 that upon the bridge, that was still standing, but over which the 
 waves were furiously dashing. 
 
 Manuel Marti and Johnnie Dougherty, draw bridge tenders, 
 were not rescued until late Monday afternoon. When they saw 
 the bridge was doomed, they opened wide the draw and thus 
 saved themselves, while the bridge was washed away for many 
 hundred feet on each side. 
 
— 51 - 
 
 At Pass Christian the havoc was terrible. Every vessel in 
 the vicinity except a snaall cat boat was wrecked; every wharf 
 and bathhouse was washed away; houses were torn to pieces, 
 and the waves rolled through it threatening to wipe it out of 
 existence The damage here was over $100,000. 
 
 At Mississippi City, De Buys and Beauvoir (the home of 
 Jefferson Davis), in fact all along the coast, the same story of 
 death and damage was repeated. Houses destroyed, roads 
 ruined, fences and outbuildings prostrated, the beach torn and 
 seamed and scarred by the mighty pounding of the waves which 
 rolled furiously in, bearing on their crests the timbers of 
 wrecked vessels and the bodies of their drowned crews. Column 
 after column of the newspapers was filled with lists of the ves- 
 sels lost, and the dead were so numerous that only the number, 
 not the names, were given in the reports. At the Rigolets, (the 
 pass from Lake Pontchartrain to Lake Borgne) sixteen lives 
 were lost, — three captains of vessels with thirteen of their 
 crews. The schooner Angeline with her captain and crew dis- 
 appeared ; not a timber of the boat nor a single body of all who 
 manned her were ever found. 
 
 The City of Mobile, the point where the Louisville and 
 Nashville road leaves the gulf and strikes north, was a heavy 
 sufferer. The damage here was in the neighborhood of a quar- 
 ter of a million dollars. 
 
 Mobile is situated at the head of Mobile bay, where the 
 river of the same name enters it. Like New Orleans it has its 
 suburbs and water side resorts, where many thousands of dollars 
 were invested. But not only these places were stricken by the 
 storm. The water invaded the business houses on the principal 
 streets, and thousands of dollars' worth of goods were damaged. 
 A number of vessels were driven ashore; one steamer, after her 
 passengers and crew escaped, was lifted on the crest of a wave 
 and carried in and deposited across the "shell road," Mobile's 
 chief drive . Every wharf and bath house on the western shore, 
 from the city to the mouth of Dog river was swept away. On 
 this same shore a singular effect of the storm was seen. In the 
 memory of the oldest inhabitant there was not a time when it 
 was not covered with logs and debris of all sorts, thrown there 
 by the waters on their way to the gulf. The storm swept it 
 bare and for the first time in the history of Mobile the western 
 shore showed a clean beach of pure white sand. The handsome 
 courthouse was damaged to the extent of three or four thousand 
 dollars. The mills in the vicinity suffered severely, both in 
 damage to buildings and machinery and in loss of stock. One 
 merchant alone lost $4000 worth of salt. By a singular freak 
 the wind took a piece of marsh about 40 feet square and 2 feet 
 thick and turned it completely upside down, leaving a pond for 
 ducks and a hill at the other side. Mr. Frank Ruter found a 
 
— 52 — 
 
 grand piano floating in the bay and brought it ashore; no owner 
 could be found for it. 
 
 All the suburbs of Mobile, and the little hamlets near it 
 suffered severely. The residence of Henry Seaman was car- 
 ried away by the flood, himself and family on top of it. As 
 they drove before the storm a huge alligator climbed aboard, 
 and refused to vacate, though repeatedly clubbed over the 
 head by Seaman. The family were rescued from their perilous 
 position. 
 
 In the marshes around Mobile were numerous market 
 gardens, most of them cultivated by Germans, who, with their 
 families, lived in their little plots. Tbey were devastated. 
 Not only the crops, but the gardens themselves were utterly 
 destroyed and the land reduced to the original marsh from 
 which it was redeemed by the labor of these men. Nor was this 
 the worst. For days after the storm abated the bodies of 
 these poor people were found, where they had been carried by 
 the waves or blown by the wind, in the stagnant pools which 
 studded the marshes. 
 
 The heaviest sufferer from the storm was the Louisville 
 & Nashville railroad. There was hardly a foot of its road from 
 New Orleans to Mobile that was not damaged; and when it is 
 stated that a large part of it is composed of long and costly 
 drawbridges spanning "passes" which are really arms of the 
 gulf, and that these were wrecked, it can be seen that damage 
 meant destruction. 
 
 Of the Bay St. Louis bridge there only remained a half 
 mile on the Bay side and the iron draw near the Pass, or east 
 end; of the balance there was not a trace, not a stringer or rail 
 left on the posts. 
 
 The Ocean Springs bridge at Scranton was badly damaged; 
 three miles of track between Scranton and West Pascagoula 
 entirely gone and roadbed more or less damaged. The track 
 material was found in the marsh, scattered far and wide from 
 its original position. One span of the long iron bridge at 
 West Pascagoula was down in the river a total wreck, and the 
 remainder of the bridge was damaged. The bridge across Bi- 
 loxi bay, except the draw and about seventy spans, was washed 
 away. The assistant drawkeeper was drowned. The tender 
 saved his life by climbing upon the draw, whence he was res- 
 cued by lifeboats upon the subsidence of the waters. The 
 bridge at Bay St. Louis was all lost with the exception of the 
 draw and 170 bents. 
 
 There was over 7500 feet of the Biloxi bridge destroyed, 
 while over a mile of the Bay St. Louis bridge was washed into 
 the gulf. Every stick of the Back Bay trestle and every grain 
 of the fill at the same point completely disappeared. 
 
-53 — 
 
 Between Gulf View and Claiborne, about a mile of the 
 track was washed away, and there were also washouts at Rigo- 
 lets and Lake Catherine, and between Rigolets and Lookout. 
 
 For a distance of two miles and a half between Micheaud 
 and the Chef the track was in a bad condition. The heavy 
 wind storm had driven the water from the gulf until it over- 
 flowed the tracks, and when it receded it had carried the earth 
 filling between the ties with it. At Chef Menteur a worse 
 state of things greeted the officials. The Lake Catherine fill 
 
 THK BIL.OXI BRIDGK. 
 
 was found to have been washed away for a distance of about 
 350 feet. This fill is at the place where the line crosses Lake 
 Catherine, just beyond the Chef station. Instead of bridging 
 the water it was filled in and boxed on either side. This fill- 
 ing had been washed away, thereby causing the tracks to sink 
 into the lake. 
 
 Just beyond the Rigolets bridge the greatest washout 
 ever happening to a railroad in the South occurred. As far as 
 the eye could reach, the straight road bed could be seen and 
 not a vestige of a crosstie or rail was anywhere. The hard 
 road bed was smooth on the surface and a horse could 
 
— 54 — 
 
 have been trotted along where the trains had been running on 
 the iron bands without encountering a single obstacle, except 
 the occasional gap where the sand in the road was soft and the 
 water made a small opening. Along the side of the track for 
 many miles a bayou about 12 feet wide runs within 10 feet of 
 the track. All the rails and crossties had been washed into 
 this canal and were buried out of sight. Every few hundred 
 feet the trackj had been broken and the ends of the rails 
 were twisted out of all shape and bent and almost tied in 
 knots. This washout extended without a break to Lookout, a 
 distance of three miles. 
 
 But it would take too much space to describe all the dam- 
 age in detail. Enough has been said to give an idea of what 
 it was. The scene just described was repeated over and over 
 again, mile after mile, almost to Mobile. 
 
 The telegraph lines were down everywhere, poles snapped 
 off or washed out of the ground, wires broken and twisted into 
 a tangled web, and all communication cut off; and a train 
 loaded with passengers was caught between two of the 
 wrecked bridges, unable to get back or go forward, and lay 
 exposed to that dreadful storm all night. 
 
 By a stroke of good fortune Mr. Charles Marshall, super- 
 intendent of the wrecked division, hapj)ened to be in Mobile, 
 the east end of the division, while his chief clerk, Mr. A. J. 
 Jacobs, was in New Orleans. Both immediately began work 
 from their respective ends of the wrecked division and by 
 laboring night and day reopened traffic in two weeks; the 
 lowest estimate made of the time necessary to do so being one 
 month. How it was done is best told in the words of Mr. 
 Marshall in an interview in the New Orleans Picayune the 
 day the road re-opened for travel. 
 
 "I was in Mobile," he said, "having gone over there to see 
 if I could arrange for the capture of the men who wrecked our 
 train at Gulfport, and also to look after the strike which had 
 not as yet adjusted itself, when the first news of the great 
 storm reached me. Late Sunday night I received the inform- 
 ation from Scranton and Biloxi, that there was a great gale 
 blowing there, and danger imminent to our road, as well as to 
 the property and lives of the people. I was at the telegraph 
 office anxious to get all the news about it, for I was apprehen- 
 sive that if the storm was very severe that our road would 
 suffer, as it has done in the past. But I was not permitted to 
 get another telegram, for the wires were all down. Then I 
 knew that the mischief was to pay, and made all arrangements 
 to get out early Monday morning, to investigate the matter. 
 Monday morning arrived, and with it as fierce a gale as I ever 
 saw. The storm in this city was at night, between 10 and 3 
 o'clock, so I learn, but in Mobile the greater wind blew be- 
 
— 55 — 
 
 tween 3 o'clock and daylight. I had my train all ready to go to 
 Scranton, at daylight, but the wind was so wild and seemed to 
 be hungering so to blow something away, that for a while I 
 hesitated in starting out. As its fury, however, did not seem 
 to abate, I deemed it best to go ahead. I had no trouble in 
 getting within a few miles of Scranton, and there I learned of 
 the vast damage done to our road all along the line. I went 
 right to work, as a matter of course, and there was work to bo 
 done, as I found out later. 
 
 "As soon as I could, all arrangements were made for men 
 and materia'. Telegraphic communication was had with our 
 officials at the other end of the line, and, the situation realized, 
 material began to arrive. Much of it was in readiness to be 
 used, and much of it was not. I had no trouble in getting 
 men, but the proper kind of material was at first hard to se- 
 cure. At last, however", after a few days, I had barges of it on 
 the bay, and a tug on hand to haul it about. The first thing 
 was to get matters systematized. I made Scranton a sort of 
 base of operations, and from thei'e progressed along the line 
 as fast as the repairs would permit. Having gotten all the 
 needed material on hand, the work of repairs was conducted 
 smoothly enough. 
 
 "At Biloxi there was a crew of nearly 300 men, under the 
 supervision of the company's chief engineer, Mr. R. Montfort. 
 At Bay St. Louis, our superintendent of bridges, Mr. H. Bolla, 
 had charge of the work, and at Ocean Springs, Mr. Fay. At 
 each of the other points, there was an engineer of the road 
 stationed, and a gang of men placed at his disposal In each 
 of these gangs there was the greatest system that could be es- 
 tablished. There were men to do every part of the work, and 
 these men did nothing else, except that which was assigned to 
 them. Sub-bosses were in charge of smaller gangs, all under 
 the direction of a head engineer. 
 
 "There was a pile driver at every bridge, and a crew of men 
 to work it. The pile-driving gang drove piles where needed, 
 and straightened up those which had been washed aside by the 
 storm. Most of the work consisted of the latter, the water, 
 though fierce enough, not being able to entirely drive the deep 
 driven piles from their position. Following on the heels of the 
 pile drivers came the stringermen, whose duty it was to place 
 the long stringers in position on the tops of the piles, upon whick 
 the ties were to be laid. This done, along came the capping 
 meu, those who fastened the stringers in position and made theia 
 ready for the receipt of the ties. The next gang placed the ties 
 in position, another following fastened them as they should be, 
 while still another gang hauled the rails from the rafts and 
 barges underneath, and laid them in position . The next gang 
 nailed the rails in place and the following gang a<^usted them t© 
 
the proper width. This placed the track in shape, and then along 
 came the inspectors, who looked over the work and saw that it 
 was all right. 
 
 "Thus was the work of rejjair carried on, a gang thus sys- 
 tematized being at each bridge of au}' importance, though most 
 of them were concentrated at Biloxi, Bay St. Louis and Ocean 
 Springs. At all the other less serious breaks smaller gangs, 
 working under the same system, carried the repairs as rapidly 
 as possible. You can readily see that witli a force of 600 men, 
 all thus systematized, when they all got down to business we 
 made things move. 
 
 "Well, we had to," continued Mr . Marshall, "for time was 
 worth to us the sum of $5 per minute — that is the company was 
 being put to that much expense in the employment of laborers 
 and in the loss from delaying of traing and the detention of bu- 
 siness, or approximately that amount. As soon as one piece of 
 work was finished another was begun. Having finished the 
 work at Ocean Springs, which was nothing serious, without 
 hardly even stopping for a meal the entire gang moved on as 
 fast as possible to Bay St. Louis, where the same system was 
 adopted and the work finished. We had some trouble on ac- 
 count of the barges containing some of the material being blown 
 away, but they were soon recovered and gotten within easy 
 access, having a tug at hand for all such emergencies. The work 
 looked at first as almost a futile task for I never saw such wreck, 
 ruin and devastation. Everything was torn all to pieces, the 
 solidly built trestling and tracts in many places being blown 
 from their positions intact and swept to the four winds of the 
 earth. Some of our road, for all I know, is in the Gulf of Mex- 
 ico 100 miles from land, much of it, perhaps, further away. I 
 learn, however, that there is a string of the Bay St. Louis bridge 
 300 or 400 feet long off the coast some fifteen or twenty miles, 
 on the Chandeleur island. Mr. Montfort is over there now, with 
 a force of men, to see if he can't capture it and bring it back. All 
 along the coast, on all the small islands, I understand there are 
 strings of our track lying high and dry on the sands." 
 
 Speaking of the manner in which the night work was carried 
 on, Mr. Marshall said. 
 
 "We had large iron baskets extemporized and hung from 
 wires stretched along the line of operation. In these baskets 
 was constantly kept burning a large bright fire of pine knots, for 
 of this material there is an abundance there. The locomotives 
 also, on both ends of the line, furnish us considerable light. It 
 was rather a picturesque scene to see 400 or 500 men at work in 
 the glimmering rays of a pine knot fire. The negroes, however, 
 seemed to like the night work, and for several nights we accom- 
 plished as much good as during the day." 
 
— 57 — 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 
 
 The whole gulf coast, from Barataria bay to Mobile, both 
 banks of the Mississippi river, from Polute-a-la-Hache to the 
 Jetties, and the desolate marshes between were strewed with 
 the bodies of the dead. Men, women and little children, 
 drowned in the mad rush of the angry water, or mangled be- 
 yond recognition by the huge logs and house timbers which 
 were borne upon the flood, or dashed to death against trees 
 and piles and houses by the tidal wave, lay cold in death on 
 the devastated fields, in the rank rushes of the marsh, in the 
 depths of the moss-hung swamps and on the white sands ot 
 the seashore. Some lay dead by their own hearthstone, their 
 life crushed out by their own roof tree; some were carried 
 miles and miles from their homes; and some were swept out 
 to sea never to be found. Nor was it the dead alone who were 
 thus carried away. When the sun rose on Monday morning it 
 looked down on many a mangled and bruised form, m which 
 there was yet just enough of life remaining to be conscious ot 
 its own suffering, and to realize the helplessness of its own 
 condition and the narrow hope of rescue. Many of these were 
 foundin time to save their lives; but the burial parties found 
 many another whose position told all too plainly that death 
 had come only after many, many hours of suffermg, in that 
 awful solitude, with no witnesses save the foul carrion birds 
 which circled aloft, waiting their hour, which they knew would 
 
 come. , , . ,, . . , 
 
 Many of these incidents will be told in their appropriate 
 place in this work; now we are dealing with the number of 
 
 the dead. .„ , , 
 
 How many of these there were will never be known ex- 
 actly for all were never found. Some were swept to sea, some 
 werecarried into the trackless marsh or tangled swamp where 
 the foot of man has never trod, and some found sepulture in 
 the "trembling prairie" in graves dug by their own weight. 
 
 The following list gives the number of the dead found and 
 buried at the places named; those marked as lost from vessels 
 were seen by witnesses to go down to their death: 
 
 THE i>e:-a.x>. 
 
 Cheniere Caminada 8^2 
 
 Bayou Cook ^"h 
 
 Bayou Shute ... J^ 
 
 Bayou Lafond 1^0 
 
 Bird Island ^U 
 
 Bayou Andre (All Chinamen) o^ 
 
— 58- 
 
 TH£ D£}AD— continued. 
 
 Grand Bayou 16 
 
 Bayou Challon 40 
 
 Grand Lake 20 
 
 Cabanage 20 
 
 Near Shell Beach 17 
 
 Simon Island 15 
 
 Pearl River 10 
 
 Grand Isle 27 
 
 St. Malo (All Malays) ".' 12 
 
 Bayou Dufon 11 
 
 Barthelemy 7 
 
 Grand Bank 4 
 
 Grand Prairie 4 
 
 Razor Island 5 
 
 Empire Mill 3 
 
 Oyster Bayou 3 
 
 Fort St. Philip 6 
 
 Point Pleasant 5 
 
 Hospital Bay 4 
 
 Faesterling's- 3 
 
 Grand Bay 3 
 
 Old Quarantine 2 
 
 Bayou Chato 3 
 
 Nairn , 1 
 
 Port Eads 1 
 
 Happy Jack 2 
 
 Nicholls Postoffice 4 
 
 Back Bay .* 1 
 
 Stockf elths 1 
 
 Sixty Mile Point 3 
 
 Devil'sFlat 1 
 
 Bolivar Point 2 
 
 Socola's 7 
 
 Riceland 2 
 
 Chandeleur Island 100 
 
 Biloxi 1 
 
 Bay St. Louis 2 
 
 Mobile 12 
 
 Lost on Schooner Alice McGuigan 7 
 
 Lost on Schooner Angeline 6 
 
 Lost on Schooner New Union 6 
 
 Lost on Bark Rosella Smith 3 
 
 Lost on Lugger Young American 15 
 
 Lost on Bark Annie E. B 6 
 
 Lost on Sloop Laura B 6 
 
 Lost on Lugger Three Brothers . 3 
 
 Lost on Sloop Alice 2 
 
 Lost on Barge Hero 1 
 
— 59 — 
 
 THE DKAD— continned. 
 
 Lost ou Barge Boss 1 
 
 Lost on Schooner Bertha 3 
 
 Lost on Lugger Sunny 3 
 
 Lost ou Schooner Premier 5 
 
 Lost on Schooner Centennial 2 
 
 Lost on Schooner Pecourt 5 
 
 Lost on Unknown Schooner 3 
 
 Total 16u7 
 
 To show that the foregoing figures are not guess work, 
 the following list of families at Cheniere Camiuada is given, 
 
 showing the number of saved and lost in each family, so far 
 as the names could be ascertained: 
 
 Saved. Dead 
 
 Victor Busere 1 7 
 
 Jack Sponge . . 8 
 
 Joseph Sponge 1 5 
 
 Ouace Dantin 1 6 
 
 George Dantin 6 
 
 John Michel 1 4 
 
 Pierre Nicol 9 
 
 Talesfort Bonnamour. . .. 3 
 
 Antone Allanda 1 5 
 
 Pierre Amont 1 2 
 
 Orelien Crosby 8 
 
 Mr. Carmody 1 
 
 — . Tracy 1 
 
 — . Joseph 1 
 
 — , Carpenter 1 
 
 Oscar Terrebonne .... 4 I 
 
 Dr. Frederick Collin .... 2 
 
 Licar Jambon 2 2 
 
 Andre Pizani . . 5 
 
 Saved. Dead 
 
 Rodolph Cheramie .... 10 . . 
 
 Louis Malcon . . 1 4 
 
 Pierre Colin 7 
 
 Sihs Viger 7 1 
 
 Louis Chabert 10 
 
 Veronnique Pitre .... 1 2 
 
 Prospere Terrebonne . . 4 5 
 
 Dupres Terrebonne .... 2 
 
 Louis Terrebonne 2 2 
 
 David Pitre 7 4 
 
 Mme. Richard Pitre ... 4 
 
 Didier Pitre 2 . . 
 
 Augustin Gaspard . . G 
 
 Ernest Gaspard 3 5 
 
 Oleus Cheramie 8 . . 
 
 Felicien Lefurt . 7 . . 
 
 Harisonne Gaspard 7 
 
 Elfege Lefort 5 .. 
 
 Alexis Lefort 9 . . 
 
 Millen Lefort 2 . . 
 
 Esebe Crosbe 2 . . 
 
 Adrien Lefort 4 . . 
 
 Borgard Viger 8 
 
 Armand Crosbe 5 1 
 
 Julien Crosbe 3 
 
 Nicolas Turol 3 . . 
 
 Tele Terrebonne .... 14 . . 
 
 John Rebstock 11 . . 
 
 Camil Rebstock 3 
 
 Arthur Terrebonne 2 . . 
 
 Pierre Turol 4 .. 
 
 Etienne Curol 2 . . 
 
 Leopold Pizani 7 
 
 Maick Allen 5 
 
 Michel Terrebonne 7 1 
 
 Michel Jambon 7 . . 
 
 Theodule Terrebonne . . 1 4 
 
 Leon Cherriot 1 5 
 
 Picha Sponge 5 . . 
 
 Lucien Terrebonne ... 8 . . 
 
 Manuel Incaiade 2 
 
 Philip Billili 1 G 
 
 Marius Perrin 1 4 
 
 Chapha Danlin 2 
 
 Odras Sponge_ 3 . , 
 
-66 
 
 Saved. Dead 
 
 3 
 
 '7 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 Saved. Dead 
 
 Andres Curol 9 
 
 Melfort Gaspard 6 
 
 Melfort Arnodin 8 
 
 Livode Pitre 6 
 
 Auguste Macolm 6 
 
 Mme. Malcona 2 
 
 Mme. Justin Pitre .... 6 
 
 David Pitre 2 
 
 Leodgard Pitre 1 
 
 Bebe Labave, 4 
 
 Augustine Pitre 2 5 
 
 Marc Pissiola 3 
 
 Dupres Terrebonne ... 8 
 
 Aisere Pitre 5 10 
 
 Jerazime Dantiu 3 
 
 Thomas Alario 3 7 
 
 John Kilgin 1 6 
 
 John Sanamon 2 5 
 
 Mme. Jacko Terrebonne 4 
 
 Steph Pitre 2 
 
 Raimond Terrebonne . . I 
 
 Alexanere Anselm 5 
 
 Robert Martin 6 
 
 Guillaume Martin 5 
 
 Jos Martin 11 
 
 Jerazime Dantin 9 
 
 Octave Dantin 5 
 
 Francois Sandras 3 
 
 Singesse Terrebonne . . 8 
 
 John Stout 2 
 
 Paul Malgom 1 5 
 
 Charles Gilbot 4 
 
 Felicien Sandras 1 2 
 
 Alexis Sandras 4 
 
 Besinthe Sinblanc 7 
 
 Pierre Grimaud 2 
 
 Mme. Victor Sandras. . 5 4 
 
 Thomas Martin 6 
 
 John Miller 3 
 
 Frank Gilbert. 5 4 
 
 John Hadje 1 
 
 Jeck Fallen 1 
 
 Mme. Exavier Sandras. 1 
 
 Claude Gilbos 1 6 
 
 Jos. Lafont 1 3 
 
 Andre Gilbot 2 
 
 Mme. Joseph Cotton. . . 4 . . 
 
 Jos. Gamesse 3 4 
 
 Lucien Theniat 
 
 Leo Amandin 
 
 Belente Terrebonne . . 
 Rudolph Terrebonne. . 
 
 Didemi Darbin 
 
 Orelier Oroby 
 
 Mme. John Polket . . . 
 
 Opil Bouziga 
 
 Clement Bouziga 
 
 Romain Delgrandij . . 
 Mme. Dom. Bouziga. . 
 
 Miguel Lanane 
 
 Alexis Terrebonne . . . 
 
 Leopold Guedry 
 
 Thomas Valena 
 
 Charles Lafont 
 
 Charles Lafont, Jr ... 
 
 Pete Lafont 
 
 Theogeni Lafont 
 
 Theophile Guedry .... 
 Blanchard Guedry . . . 
 
 Lee Demer 
 
 Manuel Terrebonne . . 
 
 Joe Boudro 
 
 Dr. Frey 
 
 Alexis Crosby 
 
 Pit Labove 
 
 Ovide Petit 
 
 Michel Never. 
 
 Clebert Boudro 
 
 Mme. Faustin Boudro 
 
 Dupret Lizard 
 
 Ernest Angelleto 
 
 Ozeme Cherami 
 
 Julien Boudro ... ... 
 
 Faustin Boudro 
 
 Clemene Claws 
 
 Enoch Claws 
 
 Victor Arnodin 
 
 Jos . Ortis 
 
 Alexis Serriot ........ 
 
 Armand Palket 
 
 Antoine Volence 
 
 Zephirin Duet 
 
 Jos. Terrebonne 
 
 Adam Sauveur 
 
 Andre Collin 
 
 Mme. Duces 
 
61 — 
 
 Saved. Dead. 
 
 Gaspard Sicard 1 3 
 
 Constatin Itros ....... 1 6 
 
 Ernest Lafonc 5 
 
 Eouard Terrebonne. .. . 3 1 
 
 Etienne Terrebonne ... 8 . . 
 
 Henry Gardey 8 
 
 Dupre Terrebonne 10 
 
 Louis Gurdey 6 
 
 Lorence Terrebonne 7 
 
 Bonnard Jambon 9 
 
 Raphael Pitre 4 . . 
 
 Jos. Pitre 9 
 
 Adam Duet 7 1 
 
 Adrien Pitre 6 
 
 Auguste Pitre 5 
 
 Dede Lafont 3 4 
 
 Brou Brankly 3 9 
 
 Francois Bartelleme. . . 2 7 
 
 Auguste Bonamour .... 1 11 
 
 Batiste Abillet 4 5 
 
 William Reed 1 8 
 
 W. Corron 4 
 
 Pierre Dantin 1 1 
 
 Dorcily Dantin 7 
 
 Etienne Perrin 3 3 
 
 Emile Angellet 2 5 
 
 Etienne Perrin 1 3 
 
 Aleide Pisanie ■ 3 
 
 Hyppolyte EUein 2 4 
 
 Saved. Dead. 
 
 Louis Broussard 1 5 
 
 Wilfred Pitre 2 3 
 
 Donnatien Coron 8 . . 
 
 Join Valence 1 6 
 
 Louis Lafont 1 9 
 
 Felix Pisanie 8 
 
 Andre Pisanie 4 
 
 Lesta Cheramie . . 6 
 
 Cirlaque Prospery 3 2 
 
 Leonce Prospery 1 3 
 
 Antoine Valence 10 
 
 Mme. Jos. Incalade. . • . 2 
 
 Theodore Crosbe 2 
 
 Albertine Pisanie 2 7 
 
 Theodore Pisanie 1 5 
 
 Martin Bonne 6 
 
 Joseph Lefort 3 
 
 Jacques Collin 5 
 
 Alfrtd Collin 5 
 
 Mme. Peltier 2 
 
 Filazaque Collin 5 
 
 Ernest Lefort ..... 8 
 
 Adrien Sarol 3 
 
 Noel Lefort 8 
 
 Alice Lefort 6 
 
 Julien Lefort 7 
 
 Leonce Pitre 4 
 
 Felicien Collin 6 
 
 RESCUE AND KELIEF. 
 
 From the character, direction and intensity of the storm 
 in New Orleans the residents of that city apprehended that gieat 
 damage had been done in South Louisiana, but no one dreamed 
 of its extent. And while it was believed that much ])roperty 
 had been destroyed and that perhaps a life or two had bten 
 lost by the wrecking of vessels, there was not an idea of 
 the utter destruction and terrible loss of life which had 
 occurred, consequently there was no concerted actiou look- 
 ing to relief until Wednesday afternoon. That afternoon the 
 lugger Good Mother, of Cheniere Caminada, the only vessel of 
 that place which was not wrecked, reached New Orleans with 
 the news of the dreadful calamity. Captain Terrebonne, her 
 commander (a hero who had saved some three score lives during 
 the storm), appealed to the people to go to the rescue of the 
 survivors. The response was instantaneous. The lugger 
 
62 
 
 landed in front of the French Market, and before her 
 captain had concluded his story the merchants and resi- 
 dents of that vicinity began to gather food and clothing. 
 They loaded the Good Mother with their contributions and she 
 started on her return trip. This boat succored one hundred 
 and forty families. Of course the news reached the newspaper 
 offices immediately, and was promptly bulletined. But bulletin- 
 
 ROBKKT BLEAKliEV, Chairman Relief Committee. 
 
 ing the news or sending boats after further information did not 
 satisfy the New Orleans papers. The New Orleans Times- 
 Democrat chartered a boat, loaded ber with supplies and sent 
 her down Bayou Barataria. The New Orleans Picayune imme- 
 diately chartered the steamer Emma McSweeney, loaded her with 
 a cargo of food, clothing, medicines and water, and sent aboard 
 her a complete crew with a staff of helpers, doctors and report- 
 ers, with orders to first relieve the distress and then to get and 
 bring in the news. Loaded to the guards the McSweeney 
 swung out into the stream and departed on her errand of mercy. 
 
— 63 — 
 
 That night several members of the Commercial Club (one of 
 the leading social clubs in New Orleans) held a conference and 
 the result was the following call, which appeared next morning 
 in all the papers : 
 
 "The citizens of New Orleans are invited to meet in the 
 rooms of the Commercial Club, 152 and 154 Canal street, at 12 
 
 THE GOOD MOTHER. 
 
 m. to-day to take immediate action toward aiding in the rescue 
 of those who maj be still alive but helpless at Chtniere and 
 Grand Isle. 
 
 "Robert Bleakley, President." 
 
 In response to this call a meeting was held at the appointed 
 time and an executive relief committee with full powers was ap- 
 pointed, with Mr. Bleakley as chairman. This committee went 
 immediately to work. Funds were collected, supplies purchased, 
 
— 64 — 
 
 medicines obtained and volunteers for relief parties enlisted. 
 One party was sent by rail down the bank of the Mississippi 
 to relieve the distress there; the steamboat Gamma was char- 
 tered and sent with clothing, food, medicine, water, surgeons 
 and searching parties down to the Barataria section, and the 
 steamer Alice, similarly equipped, was dispatched through lake 
 Pontchartrain to the Louisiana Marsh and the gulf coast and its 
 islands. 
 
 The Times-Democrat sent out the steamer Amelia Harvey 
 on a similar errand down Bayou Barataria, 
 
 THE PICAYUNE'S. RELIKF BOAT. 
 
 The French Market Protective Association organized a com- 
 mittee with Mr. John Alsina as chairman, and it dispatched sim- 
 ilar aid by luggers. Boatload after boatload of necessaries was 
 sent to the stricken section, and well it was that it was done, for 
 everything was gone; in many instances the storm had torn 
 even the clothes from the backs of the survivors, leaving them 
 as naked as when they came into the world. 
 
 The various commercial organizations of New Orleans ap- 
 pointed committees to raise funds, in which they were emi- 
 nently successful, and the contributions poured in. The Citi- 
 zens' Relief Committee issued the following call, which was 
 iberally responded to ; 
 
.-.65 
 
 THE CITIZEKS RELiIEF COMMITTEE'S BOAT. 
 
— 66 — 
 
 To the People of New Orleans : The committee for the 
 relief of the storm sufferers request donations from the people 
 of articles of wearing apj^arel for both adults and children, 
 shoes, hats, blankets, etc., all of which are urgently needed. 
 Send to 126 Camp street, opposite Lafayette square, or notify 
 committee at that number, and articles will be sent for. 
 
 EOBEET BlEAKLEY, 
 
 Chairman Executive Committee. 
 
 Jno. C. Wickliffe, Secretary. 
 
 The New Orleans Board of Trade sent out the following 
 appeal : 
 
 New Oeleans, October 5, 1893. 
 
 The awful calamity which has overtaken the residents of 
 the islands and coast near our city should appeal to the charity 
 of all our citizens. 
 
 Food, medicine, and the means of assisting ihose unfor- 
 tunates are [necessary immediately, and the Board of Trade 
 urges liberal contributions of cash and supplies, which will be 
 distributed by the executive copamittee of the Board of Trade, 
 of which Mr. Hugh McCloskey is chairman. 
 
 Each member of the following committees is authorized 
 to solicit and collect subscriptions as stated above : 
 
 Provisions — Hugh McCloskey, Max Schwabacher, Simon 
 Pfeifer. 
 
 Grain and Naval Stores — F. J. Odendahl, Jno. E. Simpson, 
 Jno. T. Gibbons. 
 
 Ei«e — Jos. Buhler, F. G. Ernst, Jno, A. Hubbard. 
 Grocers — W. L. Saxon, I. H. Stauffer, Jr., Nicholas Burke. 
 Coffee — Chas. Dittman, E. P. Cottraux, A. L. Arnold. 
 Esculents — Henry Kahn, Leon Bloch, Martial Casse. 
 Brokers — W . H. Beanham, Wm. A. Gordon, D. R. Graham. 
 
 John M. Pakker, President 
 Hy. H. Smith, Secretary. 
 
 And on the next day sent the following telegram: 
 
 To the Commercial Exchanges at Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, 
 Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, 
 Pittsburg, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Omaha and other 
 jDlaces : 
 A terrible disaster has destroyed a majority of the inhabi- 
 tants of the islands and marshes adjacent to this city, and the 
 survivors are left penniless, their stock, houses, boats and 
 means of livelihood gone, and they are in dire distress. 
 
 The people of Louisiana will bury the dead and feed the 
 starving, but appeal to a generous public to assist in con- 
 tributions which will enable thousands of deserving people 
 to again follow their avocations and support their families. 
 
— 67 — 
 
 Subscriptions of every character will bfe thankfully re- 
 ceived and be disbursed by the executive committee of the 
 Board of Trade, acting jointly with committees of the other 
 commercial bodies. 
 
 John M. Paeker. Jr., 
 
 President Board of Trade. 
 
 The Ked Cross Society of Louisiana, fully alive to the 
 emergency, issued the following call : 
 
 Bed Cross Society of Louisiana, ) 
 New Orleans, Oct. 4, 1893. j 
 To the Public: 
 
 The Bed Cross Society of Louisiana, of which Miss Clara 
 Barton is the national executive, does hereby issue a call upon 
 the public generally for subscriptions and contributions in aid 
 of the sufferers from the recent storms in Southeast Louisiana, 
 who are at present without food or shelter. The society re- 
 quests that all subscriptions and contributions be made to 
 John M. Coos, treasurer, at No. 2 Tchoupitoulas street. 
 
 J. B. Vinet, President, 
 E. K. Skinner, Secretary. 
 
 The various secret societies sent in their contributions; the 
 Southern Pacific Eailroad sent a check for a thousand dollars; 
 the Grand Opera House, the Academy of Music and the St. 
 Charles Theatre each tendered a benefit, the gross proceeds of 
 which went to the fund; the pupils of the public schools gave 
 their pocket money to the fund, thirty, forty and fifty dollars 
 being sent in by each school; the city council of New Orleans 
 voted $2500 to the fund and the individual members added a 
 handsome donation from their own pockets. Eeplies to the 
 appeal made by the Board of Trade began then to come in. It is 
 impossible to particularize, for the contributions came from all 
 over the country from individuals and organizations, especially 
 the commercial ones, and were promptly applied. The churches 
 of all sects and denominations set apart a special Sunday for 
 collections and realized a large sum which was turned over to 
 the committee. 
 
 The Stevedores and Longshoremen's Benevolent Association, 
 an organization of laboring men, contributed one thousand 
 dollars of their hard-earned wages. 
 
 Soon the various organizations recognized that relief could 
 be more effectually given under one directing head and all of 
 them were merged into the Citizens' Central Storm Belief Com- 
 mittee, of which Mr. Bleakley was chaii-man, which committee is 
 still in existence and at work when this book goes to press. 
 This committee worked in conjunction with the police juries of 
 the parishes of Jefferson, Plaquemines and St. Bernard in which 
 
— 68 
 
 THK RED CROSS HEADQUARTERS. 
 
— 69 — 
 
 the devastation occurred. Not only were the immediate neces- 
 sities of the people supplied but they were assisted to rebuild 
 their homes and to raise, relaunch or repair their wrecked boats 
 and were placed in a position to again become self-supporting. 
 
 But there were some instances of individual action which 
 should be recorded. 
 
 Mrs. Ludwig, whose general store has long been known to 
 nearly all the fishermen along the Gulf coast, dealt out goods to 
 all who called for them, wholly regardless of their ability or ina- 
 bility to pay for them, until her store was completely emptied, 
 the only person she refused being a man who desired to buy out 
 her entire stock of certain necessities with a view of making a 
 "corner" on them. 
 
 Mr. George Jurgens, a New Orleans merchant, who owned 
 an orange farm on the lower Mississippi, went down on Monday 
 morning to see to what extent he had been damaged. When he 
 reached there the suffering and dead made him forget his own 
 affairs. A few of his houses had withstood tbe storm. He 
 filled them with sufferers, he divided among them every ounce 
 of food on his place. He then hurried to New Orleans and sent 
 down at his own cost, food, clothing, bedding and medicine. 
 Then covered with mud, he appeared before the first meeting of 
 citizens, told of the destitution, and then went immediately back 
 at the head of a relief party. 
 
 The store of Mark Cuessiola at Grand Isle was wrecked but 
 the spirit of the owner was not destroyed. He had suffered, but 
 others, he knew, who could less afford to suffer, had suffered 
 even more. Bright and early the next morning he made an in- 
 ventory of his goods and found about $700 worth that were fit 
 for use. He summoned his neighbors and gave them all that he 
 did not himself actually need for a day or two. 
 
 Fred. Stockfleth, a store keeper of the lower Mississippi 
 threw open his house and his store to the sufferers and gave 
 away almost his entire stock. One of the sufferers among the 
 scores relieved by Mr. Stockfleth voiced the sentiments of all 
 when he said: 
 
 "I was stark naked, bleeding, and so hungry I could scarce- 
 ly stand. He took me in and fed me and clothed me. What he 
 did for me is but a repetition of what he did for every sufferer. 
 Men like him are rare . He did more than any other three men 
 in this section for the sufferers, and the saved remnant of the 
 stricken people of Austria will ever be mindful of what he has 
 done for us. God bless him." 
 
 The generous response to her appeal in her hour of need 
 will ever be remembered in Louisiana. It knew neither section- 
 al lines nor contiguity of situation, but came from the entire 
 country. Americans were in distress and Americans came to 
 their assistance. 
 
— 70-- 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LAST ISLAND. 
 
 Louisiana has had two horrors preceding this terrible calam- 
 ity which resembled it but did not near approach it in loss of 
 life. 
 
 On the night of October 4, 1886, a cyclone accompanied by 
 a tidal wave swept down upon the settlements on Johnson's 
 Bayou and Sabine Pass in Southwestei'n Louisiana, utterly ruin- 
 ing the country and killing about fifty people. 
 
 A thrill of horror went through the State, and relief was 
 promptly given. 
 
 Her other disaster, known as the destruction of Last Island, 
 more nearly approached the present one. Like it, it occurred 
 on Sunday night, the date being August 10, 1856. Last Island 
 lay west of Cheniere Caminada and Grand Isle, and, like the 
 last, was a popular summer resort. When its storm occurred it 
 was crowded with the representatives of the wealth and fashion 
 of the Crescent City, and the loss of life was frightful. It was 
 swept out of existence, the water rolling over it ten feet deep, 
 and all that is now left of it is a narrow spit of sand. We repro- 
 duce the account of the disaster as it appeared in tbe New Or- 
 leans Picayune of August 16, 1856. This was the first account 
 published of it, for news traveled slowly in those days. 
 
 "Statement of rescuing party returned from Grand Isle : 
 
 "They inform us that the storm commenced about 10 o'clock 
 on Sunday morning, and a faithful picture of the calamity they 
 declare to be beyond realization. The gale did not abate until 
 Monday morning, and then the rain continued almost without 
 intermission up to the time of their leaving the island, at times 
 the wind rising pretty strongly again . The number of the vic- 
 tims they estimated at over 200, at least 182 having been already 
 counted. The island was swept by 2 o'clock on Sunday, having 
 been overflowed between noon and that hour. The wind blew 
 first from the north and the northern part of the island was then 
 overflowed. Next the wind came from the east, which beat the 
 water off from the north side of the island; afterwards the wind 
 shifted to the south, and then the island became overwhelmed by 
 the water of the gulf. Horses, cattle and even fish lay strewn 
 dead about the island among the victims of the storm. It id be- 
 lieved that many bodies have been washed out into the gulf. 
 
 "The following is a letter written by a survivor of the dis- 
 aster: 
 
 "Bayou Boeuf, Aug. 14, 1856. 
 
 "Dear Pic — You may have heard ere this reaches you of the 
 dreadful catastrophe which happened on Last Island on Sunday, 
 the 10th inst. As one of the sufferers, it becomes my duty to 
 chronicle one of the most melancholy events which have ever 
 
— 71 — 
 
 occurred. On Saturday night, the 9th inst., a heavy northeast 
 wind prevailed, which excited the fears of a storm in the minds 
 of the many; the wind increased gradually until 10 o'clock on 
 Sunday morning, when there existed no longer any doubt that 
 we were threatened with imminent danger. 
 
 "From that time the wind blew a perfect hurricane; every 
 building upon the island giving away, one after another, until 
 nothing remained. At this moment every one sought the most 
 elevated point on the island, exerting themselves at the same 
 time to avoid the fragments of buildings which were scattered in 
 every direction by the wind. 
 
 "Many persons were wounded, some mortally. The 
 water about this time (about 2 o'clock p. m.) commenced rising 
 rapidly from the bay side and there could no longer be any doubt 
 that the island would be submerged. The scene at this mo- 
 ment forbids descrij)tion, men women and children were seen 
 running in every direction, in search of some means of salva- 
 tion. The violence of the wind, together with the rain, which 
 fell like hail, and the sand which blinded their eyes, prevented 
 many from reaching the objects they aimed at. At about 4 
 o'clock the bay and gulf currents met, and the sea washed 
 over the whole island. Those who were so fortunate as to find 
 some object to cling to were seen floating in all directions. 
 Many of them, however, were separated from the straw to 
 which they clung for life, and launched into etei'nity; others 
 were washed away by the rapid current and drowned before 
 they could reach their point of destination. 
 
 "Many were drowned from being stunned by scattered 
 fragments of the buildings, which had been blown asunder by 
 the storm. Many others were crushed by floating timbers and 
 logs, which were removed from the beach, and met them on 
 their journey. To attempt a description of this sad event 
 would be useless. No words could depict the awful scene 
 which occurred on the night between the 11th and 12th insts. 
 It was not until the next morning, the 12th, that we could as- 
 certain the extent of the disaster. 
 
 "Upon my return after having drifted for about twenty 
 hours, I found the steamer Star, which had arrived the day be- 
 fore, and was lying at anchor, a perfect wreck, nothing but her 
 hull and boilers, and a portion of her machinery remaining. 
 Upon this wreck the lives of a large number were saved. Tow- 
 ards her each one directed his path as he was recovering from 
 the deep, and was welcomed with tears by his fellow-sufferers, 
 who had been so fortunate as to escape. 
 
 "The scene was heart-rending; the good fortune of many 
 a poor individual in being saved was blighted by the news of 
 the loss of a father, brother, sister, wife or some near relative. 
 
 "I will not prolong the detail of this unparalled catastro- 
 phe, but will give you the li^t, as correctly as I could obtain it, 
 of those who were lost." 
 
-72 — 
 CHAPTER yilT. 
 
 PATHETIC INCIDENTS. 
 
 The story of the storm would be incomplete without a 
 record of some of the many acts of heroism which shine out 
 from that background of horror, and a recital of some of the 
 pathetic incidents which brought to the eyes of stalwart men 
 tears of which they were not ashamed. All of them will never 
 be known, for many a hero died with those he tried to save, 
 and many an incident whose pathos would have moved a stoic 
 left no witness alive to make it known. Nor is there space in 
 a work of this description to record all that are known. But a 
 few, culled here and there at random from different sections of 
 the stricken country, are here related. 
 
 Trainmen and passengers on the New Orleans and Gulf rail- 
 road the day after the storm, saw a picture of a mother's cour- 
 age and endurance they will never forget. The train was mov- 
 ing slowly through a stretch of country below the Crescent City 
 where the wind had played sad havoc, and had made of that 
 section of Louisiana, already a dreary, repulsive place, a scene 
 that would be a fitting addition to Dante's Inferno. The stag- 
 nant waters of the marsh between the railroad and swamp be- 
 yond had risen almost to the tops of the low latauia bushes and 
 weeds, and on its foul surface the bodies of animals drowned by 
 the tempest, were floating. Against the dark back ground of the 
 forest with its uprooted and twisted trees, from which the gray 
 moss fluttered ia tresses yards long, the figure of a woman was 
 outlined. A woman, a mother, with a child in each arm and a 
 bundle in a sheet which she held in her teeth, in such a spot, 
 sent a thrill of horror over all who saw her. In the swamp from 
 which she came, few hunters would have dared to penetrate, 
 for it was a veritable jungle in which many dangers lurked, 
 and the green scummed water in which she was wading almost 
 to her waist, shoving aside as she went, the matted weeds and 
 bushes in whose shelter reptiles hid, seemed too foul and horri- 
 ble for human being to enter and not be overcome by its noisome 
 caress. But mother love had been stronger than that heroine's 
 fear of the animals that shrank and snarled in the dense swamps, 
 or the reptiles that she knew were all about her in the stagnant 
 water through which she waded, and straight toward the 
 railroad she made her way, and reached it with no injury save 
 that of exhaustion. The train had been stopped, and willing 
 hands pulled the brave mother aboard. She placed the children 
 she held in either arm on the car floor, then tenderly laid the 
 bundle in the sheet she had carried by its corners in her teeth, 
 on a seat, and as a faint wail came from it, she carefully drew 
 from its snowy wrapping a tiny babe that cooed and laughed 
 when clasped to the mother's bosom, as if it were safe in the home 
 
-73- 
 
 nest that had been washed away by the flood. This heroine had 
 travelled two miles through swamp and marsh land with her 
 three children, and after passing through dangers that make 
 brave men shrink to think of, guarded by the A'mighty, she 
 saved herself and her babes. 
 
 ;;;^ By the flickering light of an oil lamp in Stockfleth's store 
 and in the "still watches" of the Sabbath morn, one week after 
 the storm, Maximillian Duplease told the story of the wreck of 
 his camp on Cheniere Kouquille. He said: 
 
 "My camp is twenty miles from here. On Sunday night the 
 weather was bad, and I knew trouble was going to occur. At 8 
 o'clock it was bad, and between that hour and 10 I went through 
 years of agony. All night long I fought for my life and for the 
 lives of those dear to me. At 10 o'clock the camp went to smash 
 and we all fell into the roaring waters. When I came to a bit 
 I found that my wife had the two children, one gripped in her 
 teeth by the clothes and the other thrown across her shoulder, 
 The water was breast-high and the footing, you may imagine, 
 very bad. My kitchen table came floating by and I seized it, 
 and on it I placed my wife, my eldest child being in her arms, 
 while I took the infant on my left arm. With my right arm I 
 encircled a post, and the table was kept in position by my wife, 
 who also gripped another upright timber. From 10 o'clock till 
 daylight we stayed there, fighting for our lives, every now and 
 then being overwhelmed with water, till we thought the end was 
 near. 
 
 "On Monday morning the water subsided Then I went to 
 hunt for a boat. There was not one to be found and until 
 Thursday we were prisoners on the Cheniere, with nothing to 
 eat or drink, save brackish salty water. On Thursday I found a 
 skiff, and, after kissing my wife good-by, I started for Grand 
 Isle, distant fifteen miles. I have a sister there and knew I could 
 get help from her . At Fort Livingston I met Louis Valdon and 
 Theo. 'Blackberry' in a skiff, and they, knowing me well, went 
 to Cheniere Ronqnille and carried my family to my relalives . 
 Then I came on here to look after my other relatives. There 
 were six of them; now there is one," and here the poor fellow 
 broke down and wept freely. 
 
 Michael Trantovich, a Slavonian, had a frightful experience. 
 His family consisted of his wife, Amelia; four sons, Michel, aged 
 21; Ura, 16; George, 8, and Nick, 5. His sailor, Andrew Kuzzi, 
 aged 26 years, was also in camp with the family. About 11 
 o'clock Sunday night the house was demolished. Above the din 
 he could hear the heart-rending cries of his wife. . He caught 
 a post and seeing his son George swept along within reach, he 
 grasped him. 
 
 He then saw his son IJra, clasping the little fellow Nick, 
 supported by another post. A heavy swell washed ^eorge from 
 
— 74 — 
 
 t^ Z 
 
-^75- 
 
 liis embrace, while the continuous overwasli of waves drowned 
 the little fellow Nick in the arms of his 16-year old brother. Des- 
 perate over the loss of his cherished ones, the father called out 
 to his sole surviviDj/ son: "Farewell, Ura, I go to join your mother 
 and brothers." He loosened his grip on the log and sank beneath 
 the waves. The current carried him immediately alongside of 
 the post on which the boy Ura was hanging. Filial devotion 
 lent strength to the boyish arm as he reached, out, and catching 
 his father by the hair, he elevated his head above the surface of 
 the water . The boy's pleading and piteous cries moved the 
 father, and with the reaction came a return of parental love for 
 the living. He reached out and caught the post, and there the 
 two remained until the next afternoon, about 2 o'clock, before 
 the water became low enough to permit them to wade. They 
 gradually made their way to the coast, where they obtained 
 assistance, eventually reaching the Grand Isle road, over which 
 they were brought to New Orleans. 
 
 Eachel Prince and one daughter were the only members of 
 a colored family of fifteen who were saved, and their home and 
 all it contained was washed away by the flood. Weak from hun- 
 ger, the old negro woman and her only remaining child stood on 
 the bank and watched the work of the good JSamaritans who 
 were dealing out provisions to the white survivors of the storm, 
 without making any attempt to get food and drink from the 
 supplies on the relief boat. Noticing the miserable looking col- 
 ored people, one of the oflScers on the boat called: "What do you 
 want. Auntie?" 
 
 "Ise hongry, boss, and dis yere chile, de only one de good 
 Lawd spar'd me, is mos' dade for somethin' to eat, sah, but we'se 
 only poor niggers, an dere ain't nothin dere for us, I reckon." 
 
 ■She was told that the provisions were sent to the storm suffer- 
 ers regardless of race or color, and she should have her share. 
 Then a ham, some j)ork, tea, coffee, sugar, bread, potatoes and cab- 
 bage were given her, and the poor old negro sank down oh her 
 knees and while the tears poured over her withered cheeks, she 
 thanked God, and the people who gave charity, for the relief 
 given her. 
 
 Emile Delgrante was a young fisherman of Cheniere, of 
 handsome face and form, and a great favorite on the island. For 
 months the young man had looked forward to October 1st, with 
 the most joyful anticipation, for on that day he planned to bring 
 to the home he^was making, a bride. A pretty girl who lived 
 on Chandeleur island, a fisherman's daughter, was Emile's 
 sweetheart, and with more than usual ardor the young couple 
 loved each other. Delgrante built him a home, and then spent 
 his leisure hours until his wedding day making it attractive. He 
 made a garden and planted there the flowers his sweetheart 
 loved best, and in the little cot that was to be their home, he 
 
— 76 — 
 
 planned all sorts of devices for the comfort and pleasure of his 
 wife, and when the day dawned that was to make the couple 
 one, the place made for the bride at Cheniere was unusually 
 attractive and seemed to the young firsherman, as he took a last 
 look at it before going for the wife to grace it, a veritable para- 
 dise. 
 
 Delgrante was married and set sail for Cheniere, and on 
 that fatal Sunday afternoon reached their new home. Many 
 friends of the couple were there to make them welcome, and sev- 
 eral hours were spent in festivity; then the couple were left 
 alone, for the storm commenced, and every one sought the shel- 
 ter of his own roof tree. 
 
 The happy life planned by those two young lovers was des- 
 tined to be brief indeed. The tempest howled about their little 
 home and soon it went to pieces, and Delgrante and his wife 
 were thrown out into the water that had risen about their house, 
 and together they perished. The next day their bodies were 
 found on the beach. They were locked in each other's arms — 
 united in death as they were in life. One grave was made 
 for both,and they were laid to rest on the spot where their lit- 
 tle cot once stood, and a few feet away, when the tide is in, the 
 sea waves lap the shore and sound the dirge of the dead lovers, 
 whose wedding march was a funeral hymn and whose bridal 
 couch was the grave. 
 
 The mother of Capt. John Taylor, an old lady nearly ninety 
 years old, who lived at Buras, had a narrow escape from death 
 in the tempest; and the storm of October 1st, was the third that 
 this old lady had weathered, when many of her neighbors and 
 kindred found watery graves. She was the only one saved 
 of the seven children of her mother from the hurricane of 1811; 
 and in 1831 she was blown in a tree by the furious gale that 
 devasted a great portion of Louisiana. And to-day she survives 
 to tell of the horrors of the hurricane of her infancy, the cyclone 
 of her womanhood and the blast of death of her old age. 
 
 An engineer, named Field, on the Fort Jackson and Grand 
 Isle Railroad, who took a train out soon after the storm, related 
 bis experience. He said all along the track dead animals were 
 piled so high they had to be removed before the engine could 
 go along its accustomed route, and near Bonner while directing 
 the removal of numerous dead animals, a sad spectacle was un- 
 covered. It was the body of a babe lashed to a dead calf, its 
 little arms still clinging to the animal that went under the waters 
 and carried it to death instead of to high ground and safety, as 
 some mother no doubt fondly hoped, when she found all other 
 chance gone, and ba'de her darling farewell and trusted to the 
 animal's instinct to carry it beyond the flood. 
 
 One of the women who escaped the fury of the elements at 
 Cheniere had a terrible experience. She clung to a piece of tim- 
 
-77 — 
 
 ber when the tidal wave swept over the ill-fated island, and was 
 dashed inland at a fearful speed; and then when the wind lulled 
 just before it veered and swept back, washing houses, and dead 
 and living out to sea, she tore up her skirt and catchicg the 
 limb of a tree, securely lashed her body to it. Other boughs 
 beat her body when the gale recommenced, and great waves 
 broke over her and threatened to drown her where she hung 
 suspended. She saw great trees and timber dashicg along, 
 sometimes seemiug to be swooping down upon her, then just 
 when she felt her last moment had come, a merciful Providence 
 seemed to intervene, the course of the huge missile would be 
 turned, and hope would once more be renew-ed in her bosom. 
 Thus she endured the agony of direst terror for five hours, 
 then the water receded, and she was left hanging between 
 Heaven and earth in such a way she could not release herself, 
 and hung thus for a half a day before a party of rescuers found 
 her. 
 
 Early on the morn after the tempest a young girl started 
 out from Grand Isle in a pirogue, and cruised about searching 
 among the stacks of dead, rowing close to every dark object she 
 saw floating on the water, and scrutinizing closely everything 
 resembling a body and asking of everyone she met, "Have you 
 seen Freddie?" 
 
 Freddie Eichein was her lover, and'on that Sunday when 
 the Gulf was churned by the most terrible gale that has swept it 
 for more than half a century, the young fellow was out on a fish- 
 ing expedition and met the fate of many of his neighbors; he per- 
 ished in that wind of death, and his body went down to the 
 depths of the sea where no human hands could find it to give it 
 christian burial. Only the darkness of night sent to her home 
 the sweetheart who searched for him, and the first gray of the 
 dawo sent her again on her frantic search for her lover. Her 
 reason tottered, and it is probable for months to' come that 
 maid will haunt the waters about Grand Isle hunting for 
 "Freddie." 
 
 St. Malo was made up of a colony of Malays, natives of the 
 Malay Archipelago, who had congregated in a village ofjtheir 
 own making, beside the waters from which they drew with lines 
 and nets the fish and shrimp that made them a livelihood. They 
 were a happy congregation of good hearted, simple people, who 
 felt, each toward his neighbor, that tender, close feeling of 
 alliance, that all feel toward the people of their own race and 
 country when far from their native land. Many of these people 
 were out on fishing expeditions when the tempest swept over 
 the gulf with such irresistible fury, and they ,^sleep their lust 
 sleep in the depths of the waters that has been both their best 
 friend and their worst foe. At St. Malo, the Malay men, women 
 and little ones, had a terrible experience. Their homes were 
 
— 78 — 
 
 swept away, many of their number were killed, and the survi- 
 vors are a few desolate mourning people, who have neither 
 homes nor means of making a living, each grief-stricken for the 
 loss of near and dear ones, all seemingly with naught to arouse 
 again ambition to take up life again with any degree of interest. 
 
 Carlos Ehring, is one of those who lived to tell of the hor- 
 rors of that Sabbath night, when St. Malo was wiped from the 
 earth by the tempest that spared so little in its path along the 
 Gulf coast. Ehring says: 
 
 AT ST. MALO. 
 
 "When the storm came up every one made for my uncle's 
 house, as it was the strongest house on the place. There were 
 sixty people huddled together in the house, men, women and 
 children. Most of the women were praying, and the men were 
 trying to comfort them. My uncle had two children in his 
 arms; he handed me one of the children, a little giii, about 
 two years old. Soon the house began to tremble, and it fell 
 with a crash. I felt a rush of wind, and I ran, I don't know 
 where, but I found myself in the open air. I heard some one 
 calling, and I called and asked who it was, I found that it 
 
— 79 — 
 
 was John Lewis, a boy sixteen years old. I suddenly thought 
 of an old post, used at one time -as a corner post for a house, 
 and I made toward it with the child in my arms. I knew there 
 was a crosspiece on the post, and I climbed toward it. Then I 
 assisted John up the post, wrapping my leg around it, with 
 John under one arm and the baby pressed close to my breast. 
 With the other I clung to the post. The waves rolled over us 
 and the baby cried until exhausted. Poor Johnny was nearly 
 scared to death, but I told him not to be afraid, but to cling 
 to me, which he did. 
 
 "There w^e stayed all night— from 10 o'clock till daybreak 
 next morning. I was terribly stiff and exhausted when I 
 reached the ground. Then I found that the house we had 
 
 '.THE MALAY HERO. 
 
 been in was completely swept away, and that out of the sixty 
 who were in the house the night before we were the sole sur- 
 vivors. I found some whisky and bread, which had been 
 washed under the gallery of the house. 
 
 "The child had been crying from hunger, so I soaked the 
 bread in whisky and gave it to the child. I could not eat it 
 myself. About 10 o'clock the lugger Continental hove in 
 sight, and we were taken on board." 
 
 Mr. McDonald, son of the mayor of Pass Christian, had a 
 terrible experience, but showed the most remarkable presence 
 of mind recorded during the storm. He was in a sailboat in 
 
— 80 — 
 
 front of Biloxi wben the gale commenced, and was blown over- 
 board. There were two sailors and a colored boy on the craft, 
 but they were unable to rescue the young man, for their little 
 vessel was being blown about like a cork on the angry waves. 
 The colored boy threw Mr. McDonald a plank, however, and 
 this he grasped and held to and commenced a wonderful 
 struggle for life. The waves were mountain high, and he was 
 dashed along by the furiously driving wind as if but a feather. 
 He wore a derby hat, and with presence of mind and coolness 
 that is almost beyond credence, he made the piece of head 
 gear answer as a life preserver by catching it full of wind and 
 putting it under his chest. In this way the young man kept 
 above water for more than an hour, and reached the wreck of 
 a bridge where he remained until rescued. Mr. McDonald 
 swam almost nine miles in that fearful storm, with only a piece 
 of plank and a derby hat to aid him in his magnificent strug- 
 gle for life. 
 
 The strength of the tidal wave may be imagined when it 
 is known that several porpoises were found in the marsh still 
 alive at Tropical Bend, four miles from salt water, where they 
 had been washed by the wave. 
 
 A whale, sixteen feet long and weighing several thousand 
 pounds, was found washed high and dry on a reef, half a mile 
 west of the West Jetty Light, four days after the storm, and 
 this wanderer from the deep was still alive and was the object 
 of much curious scrutiny until some more practical fisherman 
 came along and killed him to get the oil. 
 
 One survivor of the ill-fated Cheniere Caminada was 
 picked i;p four days after the storm far out in the Gulf in a 
 skiff, without oars or sail, and his face bore the unmistakable 
 imprint of the most terrible suffering. For ninety-six hours 
 that poor unfortunate had drifted at the mercy of the wind 
 and waves, scorched by the sun and chilled by the night air, 
 without water or nourishment except a small catfish which he 
 caught and ate raw the day before he was rescued . 
 
 One of the saddest and most startling sights that met the 
 band that penetrated the swamps after the storm in search of 
 wounded and dead was the corpse of Mrs. Geo. Danton. Deep 
 in the SAvamps, where the trees grow so close together their 
 boughs were intertwined and made a roof of green that kept 
 out sun and rain, save in one spot where a giant oak stood in a 
 small clear space, she was found . A beam of sunlight found 
 its way across a limb of the oak, which was about ten feet from 
 the ground, and there, showing in clear relief, in that one ray 
 of light in the dark forest, was Mrs. Danton, hanging by a 
 tress of her long, raven black hair to the limb, her body per- 
 fectly nude, her eyes wide open, with the look of horror in 
 them that froze there by the chill of death when she saw the 
 
— 81 — 
 
 pandemonium about her and realized her deathVas inevitable 
 in that furious hurricane. 
 
 The experience of Joseph Frelich, the little Austrian hero, 
 could not be told in more beautiful languap^e than that of the 
 report of his story as follows, by the New Orleans Times-Dem- 
 ocrat of Oct . 7 . It is one of the most pathetic incidents of 
 that terrible storm: 
 
 "Joseph Frelich is a hero. With his father and friends he 
 had found the remains of his mother during the day, and when 
 found by the reporter had just come from her resting place. 
 The body had been brought in late, not being found until 
 nearly 6 o'clock. The sad scenes at the last resting place are 
 described elsewhere. The lad, a mere child, had passed 
 through experiences within a few days that would age him 
 more than years of natural life. His home was at Bayou 
 Cook. There had been seven in the famil} — father, mother, 
 three brothers and two sisters. All were at home Sunday 
 night when the awful visitation came. Their camp was 
 blown down about 10 o'clock in the evening. Joe and Rosalie 
 had been always the most friendly of brothers and sisters. It 
 was his pride and joy to do for Eosalie all that in older 
 persons would have been termed the ofifices of lovers. She was 
 his darling and his pet, and when this evening came all his 
 love and devotion and all hers were shown. But in how sor- 
 rowful and how tender a way. The records of the world might 
 be searched without finding more heroism than was shown by 
 these simple fisher folks' children amid all the horrors and 
 darkness of the night. She had given up her life that her 
 brother might be saved ! He was to her the type and acme of 
 all that was to be sought as well as her best beloved blood rel- 
 ative. When the camp was blown down and all were strug- 
 gling for very life in the wild and raging waters, Joe looked 
 for Rosalie. They had been separated in the blowing down of 
 the dwelling. Rosalie also had her favorite brother in mind 
 and when they found one another in the darkness, with glad 
 cries they clasped arms and Joe guided her to where a piece 
 of the roof was out of the raging current and a little shelter 
 was afforded. Soon their frail and insufficient support was 
 swept from them, and here Joe began the story which, were it 
 known broadcast over this land would render him and his lit- 
 tle dead sister famous : 'I cried to Rosalie when the pieces of 
 roof to which we were clinging were lost to us to put her arms 
 around my neck and hold tight and fast to me. This she did. 
 No fear was shown by the little darling. She was as brave and 
 as much composed as at any ordinary time . 
 
 Many a time have I had her out in my boats, and she 
 knew the water well ; she knew me well too. Once she had 
 me strong and good I shouted to her, for notwithstanding we 
 
— 82 — 
 
 were only a few inches apart, such was the howling of the gale 
 that no ordinary tones could be heard, to slip up on my back 
 as I struck out to swim, and that I would save us both. She 
 smiled at me and pulling my head down kissed me twice. I'll 
 never forget how beautiful she looked as she gazed into my 
 ej^es for what was the last time. Having twisted herself about 
 and securing a firm clasp of her arms around my neck, she 
 shouted in my ear : 'Joe, darling, now go quick. I'll help 
 you all I can.' 
 
 "Off we were, and water all over us, down into the seeth- 
 ing and boiliog waves. Sometimes under, sometimes, for a 
 brief time, on the surface ; but we kept up and I began to 
 have hope. Big logs came swirling and hissing by us and we 
 were nearly forced apart, but still we struggled on. It was 
 nearly a mile to land from where we started. We must have 
 been in the water half an hour when I was becoming weak and 
 faint. I am a good swimmer and the Mississippi River never 
 had a better one," and everybody gathered around knew the 
 lad was telling the truth, "but the pressure of sister's arms 
 around my neck had interfered with my breathing, which, 
 under any circumstances, would have been hard enovigh, and 
 I was short of wind. I began to go deeper and deeper into 
 the foul water ; each time it was more and more difficult to re- 
 cover myself and dimness and darkness seemed to be rushing 
 through my eyes. Rosalie noticed it. She let go one hand 
 and tried in a weak way to help me buffet the waters; but alas ! 
 we were making less and less headway. 'Joe, Joe, good-by 
 darling : good-bye forever,' she shouted to me. 'Save your- 
 self. Good-by, good-by ! ' and she was gone. She had volun- 
 tarily sacrificed herself to save me. I caught for her hair, 
 Avhich had become loosened and was floating like a beautiful 
 mass of the ivy moss. I could not reach her and she swept by 
 me. I saw her sink and with all my remaining strength I 
 dived down into the black waters. I couldn't see a thing under 
 the water, and my strength gone, nearly strangled and ex- 
 hausted, I came to the surface . Rosalie had gone. She was 
 drowned before my eyes and I couldn't save her. There can't 
 be a good Lord. He never would have allowed it." And the 
 lad broke down and wept. No wonder. Fresh from the grave 
 of a beloved mother and the scenes of his struggle for the life 
 of his only love, brought vividly before him by the recital of 
 the tale, were too much, and by kindly friends he was led away 
 to be taken care of by sympathizing and generous neighbors. 
 The body of Rosalie has been recovered." 
 
 A tale of horrible suffering was told by a party that were 
 rescued at Southwest Pass, four days after the storm: 
 
 The party was as follows : Leon Torrio, Paul Gautrie, A . 
 Terrebonne, Andre Colon, Alcide Pinsene, Dupre Terrebonne, 
 
— 8S~ 
 
 0. Terrebonne, Joseph Bonette, Alcide Bonnette Alexis 
 Croby, an American, named Gaspard, an Australian and three 
 Malays. The American, Australian and Malays were picked 
 up in Bayou Andre. The others came from Oheniere. These 
 unfortunates were all in Torio's house when the wave came that 
 carried the house away and threw them into the sea. They say 
 that just before the storm the wind was from the east. Then 
 it Inlied and the water beg'an to rise very rapidly and the house 
 of Torrio was swept away. The nine men clung to planks 
 and doors and managed to bind their frail supports together 
 in the form of a raft, and on this they floated out to sea and 
 met the party from Bayou Andre and they floated about 
 for four days before they reached the Pass and received suc- 
 cor. Their bodies were parched and swollen and they were so 
 haggard and weak they presented a most pitiful appearance. 
 All they had to subsist on for ninety-six hours had been the 
 dead rats and animals that floated near enough their raft to be 
 reached by the starving men, and not a drop of water had 
 passed the parched lips of the unfortunates since they had 
 been swept out into the storm-lashed waters the Sunday night, 
 four days before their rescue. 
 
 The following is from the New Orleans Times-Democrat 
 of Oct. 8: 
 
 " Among the passengers who arrived on the Grand Isle 
 train, a week after the storm, were two Slavonian fishermen, 
 Matthew Culuz and Matthew Eumarich. These men were five 
 days clinging to an upturned boat, floating in the Gulf of 
 Mexico without a mouthful of food or a drop of water. Emaci- 
 ated and bruised, with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks and the 
 skin peeled off their faces in large patches, they presented a 
 pitable appearance. The men's clothing consisted of a suit of 
 underclothing, every other garment having been lost during 
 the great storm . 
 
 On their arrival they were taken in charge by the Slavo- 
 nian Society and furnished with clothing and medical attend- 
 ance. The men were seen at the store of Mr. Baccich by a 
 Times-Democrat reporter. They were hardly able to talk, 
 owing to their tongues being swollen from the terrible suffer- 
 ings undergone. What could be gathered from their incoher- 
 ent talk would furnish a tale of suffering and distress which 
 would rival any of the best stories of our best writers of naval 
 fiction, the difference only being that in the case of these mfen 
 it is a demonstrated fact, the condition of the men showing 
 plainly that theirs is no ordinary tale of suffering. 
 
 The man Culuz, when he arrived, was not recognized by 
 his most intimate friends around the French Market. 
 
 From a stout hearty man of 165 pounds, straight as an 
 arrow, he is now bowed down, with stooping shoulders, and a 
 
— 84 — 
 
 look of despair on a face which must have had an intelligent 
 look before the present awful experience. His present weight 
 is 132 pounds, a falling off of 33 pounds in five days. His com- 
 panion, Matthew Rumarich, is a swarthy heavy built man, with 
 a full beard, and twinkling brown eyes, which have not lost 
 their lustre, notwithstanding the hardships undergone in the 
 last few days. He did not appear to suffer as much as his 
 companion, although he complains of his chest feeling sore 
 and a difficulty of breathing. 
 
 MATHEW RUMARICH and MATHEW KU1.UZ. 
 
 The men were in their fishing camp on Razor Island, in 
 Grand Lake, in the early part of last Sunday's storm, and 
 while the water was rising the men, realizing that it was m ore 
 than an ordinary storm, pulled up the floor of the camp to 
 keep the building from floating away. Ere this work was fin- 
 ished the water was several feet deep in the camp . They 
 sought refuge in the loft of the house, thinking the building 
 would weather the gale. In this they were disappointed,_as in 
 
— 85 — 
 
 a short time tlie building gave way and they were buried 
 among the ruins. Fortunately the house broke up and each 
 managed to secure a piece of the wreck. They became sepa- 
 rated and Rumarich came in contact with a submerged skiff, 
 which he caught hold of, abandoning the rude raft. Culuz 
 also floated- close to the skiff, and guided by his companion's 
 cries, managed to join him. 
 
 All night long they clung to the skiff, buffetted by the 
 waves and drifting they knew not whither . When morning 
 dawned they were terrified to find that they had di'ifted out of 
 sight of land and were in the open Gulf. The wind had calmed 
 down considerably, but the sea, as usual, after a storm, was 
 running high and they were still obliged to exert all their 
 strength to keep hold of their frail support. Finding that the 
 heavy clothes they wore were an impediment to them, holding 
 them in the water, they began the work of stripping them- 
 selves. This was no easy task, with the waves carrying their 
 little craft first high on a wave and then dashing them with 
 hurricane force into a trough of the sea. All day Monday the 
 men clung to the boat, keeping a sharp lookout for a passing 
 vessel. 
 
 Monday night came and went and the sun rose on Tues- 
 day with still no change in their dreadful situation. All day 
 Tuesday the men held on, still hoping against hope, and al- 
 though their bodies were soi-e and every muscle ached they 
 still clung to their only support. Through the long hours of 
 Tuesday night the men tried to cheer one another, and both 
 kept a lookout, with the delusive hope that a passing vessel 
 would come close enough to hear their cries. Wendesday 
 came and the real suffering of the men commenced. With a 
 hot sun beating down on them and the salt spray flying over 
 their uncovered backs, their skin commenced to blister and 
 peel off, leaving the raw, tender flesh beneath. 
 
 Over the raw flesh the waves would wash ; the sun 
 then coming down would still further aggravate their misery. 
 Added to this they were intensely thirsty and weak from their 
 long fast. 
 
 After dark on Thursday, probablv about 9 o'clock, Rumar- 
 ich cried out to his companion in their native tongue: " Nvala 
 Bogu ero, svjetlos" — "Thank God, here is a light. " True enough, 
 there before them was a lighthouse, and as they had often 
 sailed around it they recognized it as being the lighthouse at 
 Southwest Pass. The wind was blowing then directly toward 
 the light and they looked on their deliverance as being near 
 at hand. Slowly they drifted towards the light and were al- 
 ready thanking God for their escape when suddenly the wind 
 freshened and veered round to another direction and the seem- 
 ingly doomed men were again driven out to sea. 
 
— 86 — 
 
 Culuz then gave way in despair and loosened his hold of 
 the boat. His companion caught him by the hair and dragged 
 him back to the skilf, saying: "Nebojse." "Dont fear we shall 
 be saved yet." After that Kumarich had to use his best per- 
 suasive powers to induce his companion to retain his hold. 
 Twice Culuz cast himself adrift and each time he was caught 
 by his spirited shipmate. 
 
 It was well that he did not abandon the craft, for deliver- 
 ance was, unknown to them, close at hand. 
 
 Early Friday morning, at about 2 o'clock, as near as they 
 could judge, their feet touched bottom and they waded ashore. 
 In walking around the island they saw the light of a lugger, 
 lying about a quarter of a mile from the island. 
 
 One of the men, Culuz, although weak and exhausted, un- 
 dertook to swim to the lugger, being fearful of taking the 
 chance of waiting till morning. He reached the lugger safely 
 and immediately a boat was dispatched for his companion. 
 Before the boat reached the beach, Michel Sacanogao, who was 
 hunting lost friends, pulled to the beach and took off Rumar- 
 ich. 'I'hey were taken by the Louisiana, the rescuing boat, 
 and cared for. 
 
 Thursday two men were at the landing at Gretna awaiting 
 a boat that was en route to Cheniere. One was white faced, 
 haggard and desperate looking and when the boat arrived he 
 took passage, after bidding his companion an affectionate fare- 
 well. The appearance of the man who had left was such that 
 inquiry was made of the other as to his identity, and the cause 
 of his grief stricken appearance. The man refused to give his 
 name, but said, "It is my brother you saw me tell good-bye. He 
 has gone to Cheniere, and I shall never see him again, never. 
 His wife and five children perished in the storm, and every- 
 thing he possessed of earthly value was swept away by the wind 
 and waves, and he has gone to commit suicide on the spot where 
 his loved ones met their sad fate." 
 
 The men were not alone in their deeds of daring and self- 
 sacrifice, women, in many instances, showed wonderful presence 
 of mind and fortitude. Mrs. Barbier, the wife of Capt. John 
 Barbier, whose camp is on Grand Bayou, proved herself one of 
 the heroines that were developed in that night of terror, devas- 
 tation and death. Her husband was in New Orleans, and she 
 was at their home with her five small children,|the eldest but nine 
 years old, when the storm commenced . The little ones became 
 panic stricken when the wind shrieked above the house like an 
 army of demons; and when the waters rose beneath the build- 
 ing and upheaved the floor, it was only by the greatest effort 
 Mrs. Barbier succeeded in getting her children on the only piece 
 of floor that remained — a small fragment in one coruei:. Just as 
 she pulled one frightened little fellow to her, the baby she had 
 
-87- 
 
 clasped in her arms, was swept from her, and she never saw it 
 again; its little body was dashed among the debris, and went to 
 swell the list of those who found unknown graves. The house 
 was unusually strong and stood the tempest, and all night that 
 mother stood in water up to her breast and managed to keep the 
 heads of her other children above the waves, while she mourned 
 the loss of her babe which was swept, only God knows whither. 
 At Savoy there is a house denuded of its eaves. The wind 
 shaved them off as cleanly as if some giant instrument had been 
 used, yet left the house itself otherwise uninjured. 
 
 George Seferovich had a terrible experience. The big 
 waves from the Gulf rent his home in bits and threw him, his 
 wife and two children into the foaming, storm-lashed waters. 
 Before his very eyes he saw a huge piece of timber crush his 
 wife, the mother of the two children he was struggling to save. 
 He heard the wails of his little ones for the mother they loved, 
 and his own heart echoed their cries, yet he fought for life for 
 the sake of his little ones . One child climbed on his back and 
 clung round his neck, but finding the huge waves that ever and 
 anon broke over them, were strangling the child, he seized it by 
 its clothing with the same hand that held up the other, and 
 struggled toward a tree. When that haven was almost reached, 
 a big cypress log swooped down upon them, and struck the 
 child who he was supporting by its dress. The brave Austrian 
 felt the shock of the awful blow it received, and he longed, yet 
 feared, to learn the extent of his darling's injuries. The wind 
 shrieked above them and the rain beat upon them fiercely, and 
 almost exhausted, Seferovich pulled himself and his children up 
 into the tree. Then he looked into the face of the child who 
 had been struck by the cypress log. It shown white in the dark- 
 ness, and no heaving of the tiny bosom told the anxious father 
 that his darling still lived. The form of the little one stiffened 
 in his grasp. Its soul had winged its flight to the mother, gone 
 just before. All night the brave Austrian hugged the bodies of 
 the dead and the living child; and there he was found in the 
 morning, stupid with grief and exhaustion. 
 
 Francoise La France, a man of magnificent phisique, and 
 wonderful strength by reason of his tall, well proportioned stat- 
 ure, and muscles that were hardened by daily toil, saved his wife 
 and four children from the ruin of their home at Riceland, but 
 his first born, a sturdy little fellow, who was the pride of his 
 parents, met his death in a horrible manner . When the roof 
 began to cave in, Mr . La France called to his family to leave the 
 building, and himself caught the rafters and heavy boards on 
 his broad back, and prevented their crushing his wife and younger 
 children. When he supposed his dear ones were all out of his 
 home he struggled out into the storm himself and hurried with 
 his family to the home of his nearest neighbor where his first ex- 
 
clamatlon, as he staggered across the tliresliold, was "Thank God 
 we are all saved." But the mother's eye missed one from the 
 number of her family. Michel, the oldest boy, was not there. Back 
 through the fierce wind and driving rain the frightened parents 
 went, accompanied by their neighbors. The work of removing 
 the wreck and searching for the lad was commenced in the dark, 
 with the mother's wails to urge them on to their task. Finally, 
 the little fellow was found, pinned down by heavy timbers, and 
 just as his crushed body Was discerned some one appeared with 
 a lantern, and its yellow light fell across the mangled form and 
 showed the mother her boy pinned to the earth, with one eye 
 squeezed from the socket, and one little hand extended, and fast 
 stiffening in the clasp of death, with a rafter across it, that 
 showed the flesh and bone crushed to a pulp when it was removed. 
 After the child was taken from the wreck he was cari'ied by his 
 father, followed by the mother, whose cries could be heard above 
 the din of the storm, and the sympathizing friends who went 
 with them to the house they thought would be a haven of safety 
 for all, until the boy was missed. The next morning, a rough pine 
 box was made, and the mangled body was laid in it and carried 
 to a spot of high ground and laid to sleep, the sleep eternal, with 
 only the sobs of his mother and the dull thuds of spads patting 
 the earth on other graves all about to break the depressing silence 
 that hovered about that scene of desolation, 
 
 Charles Dennette, a negro, who lived at Happy Jack, fifty 
 miles from New Orleans, was in his humble home when the wind 
 became furious, and his family clung to him and begged to be 
 protected from the "wrath of ole Marster." The roof of the 
 Jiouse was blown off and carried into a neighboring cornfield and 
 Dennette bade his family get out of doors as the house was sure 
 to fall upon them if they did not leave it. All but two of the 
 family escaped to the yard before their home caved in, but two 
 children were crushed beneath the fallen timbers, and then were 
 cremated by the fire that started among the debris. The rushing 
 winds fanned the flames until, but a few moments later, nothing 
 remained to Dennette of his home or the two children burned 
 with it, — not even the ashes, for they were blown far and wide. 
 
 Among those who were doomed by that fatal storm was a 
 gentlemen from New York, whose name is not known, for all 
 those who had been wont to associate with him passed beyond the 
 possibility of giving their evidence. He came from the North, 
 and left his home and kindred who were dear to him, to seek 
 health in the balmy southland. The breezes of mild tempei*- 
 ature at Cheniere had wooed back to the stranger the strength 
 he sought, and he lingered with the people who had been his 
 companions for a half a year, because he had grown attached to 
 them and their beautiful land, and he was slow to bid farewell 
 to the scenes where he had found health and strength. But the 
 
— 89 — 
 
 storm came and is now but a memory, and the family of the 
 straoger in the far North will look in vain for his return. He will 
 go home never more. His body rests with a host of others in a 
 shallow grave dug by a band of good Samaritans who laid to rest 
 the victims of the great storm. Instead of gaining a new lease 
 of life down among the orange trees and salt breezes, the north- 
 ern stranger met death and an unknown grave, — death in a 
 strange land with no loved one near, the sad fate the Hindoo 
 ever fears, and that he prays may not befall his friends in his 
 benediction "may you die among your kindred." 
 
 Near Fort Jackson the receding waters left a sad spectacle 
 for the band of rescuers who came that way soon after the storm. 
 Caught in a barbed wire fence were the bodies of three little 
 girls, sisters no doubt, tor the same brown curls clustered around 
 the faces of each, and the features were strongly similar. Each 
 held one hand of the other in a close death grip, and they wei'e 
 not separated by those who dug the shallow grave in which they 
 were placed. Side by side the Jittle girls were laid upon a litter 
 of planks, and green boughs covered forever the sweet iaced 
 dead children who went together over Death's river, and the 
 strong men who piled the boughs above their bodies were not 
 ashamed of the tears that trickled down their rough cheeks as 
 they buried, without coffins, shroud or burial service, some 
 mother's darlings, some father's pride. 
 
 When the first light dawned of the coming day that was to 
 reveal in all its hideousness the desolation and ruin created du- 
 ring the darkness of that Sabbath night, Mr. Fred Sfcockfleth 
 heard a plaintive sobbing out in the shadows of a pile of debris 
 that was being tossed by the falling waters. Wondering if there 
 could be any living being among that stack of wreckage, lie called 
 "Is any one there?" and a weak baby voice sobbed "I is,'' and 
 another childish tone added, "and me." There were not many 
 minutes between the time when those little ones were heard cry- 
 ing miserably out on the dark water, that was ruffled by the cold 
 morning air, until brave Fred. Stockfleth pushed his way on a 
 plank, to their sides. There, crouched on a huge log, were two 
 children, a boy and a girl: the boy, who was evidently two or 
 three years older than his little sister, was about eight years 
 of age. With one arm around the shoulders of the sister whose 
 long blonde curls were crushed against his shoulder, that little 
 fellow had alternately begged "don'c cry, sister," and then sobbed 
 pitifully himself, for hours, while the log on which they drifted 
 was many times almost careened or sunk, by others. Their baby 
 tongues lisped this broken story to Mr. Stockfleth, of some of 
 their trials out in the darkness and danger of that night, but 
 neither could tell what their names were. Only "sister," and 
 "buzzer" had they been taught to call each other, and when an 
 effort was made to learn what name their parents were called by, 
 
-00 — 
 
 tlie cries of the children for "Mamma" and "Papa," were so piti- 
 iful their new friends desisted in their efforts to learn their iden- 
 tity; and nuless some acquaintance sees and recognizes these lit- 
 tle waifs of the storm they will have to go through life without 
 the knowledge of father, mother or kindred, unacquainted even 
 with their own name. 
 
 Nick Salotich and John Perovich. two of the survivors, 
 worked among the injured and buried the dead near their camp 
 on Bayou Cook, all Monday, and late in the evening rejoiced in 
 the discovery of some hard tack and fresh water, which they 
 found in a portion of a wrecked lugger. On this meagre refresh- 
 ment they subsisted until Wednesday, when it gave out, and they 
 started toward the city for succor. They had not proceeded far 
 when they discovered two objects on the sandy beach, weakly 
 moving, and hurried to discover who the beings were, and to 
 help them, if possible. They found Nicholas Micisich, and John 
 Descovich, both bereft of their reason. These unfortunates had 
 managed to save themselves from the watery grave their families 
 found, but their fate was far worse than if they had succumbed 
 to the wind of the hurricane of three evenings previous, for 
 they had been so bruised and battered they found strength only 
 to descend to the beach the next morning, and there they had 
 lain for three days. The limbs of the tree to which they 
 clung through that night of terror, had bruised and battered 
 their bodies, and broken their bones, leaving only a remnant 
 of life that would have been better taken. The sun the 
 next day shone brightly on their bodies from which the clothes 
 had all been torn off, and their flesh scorched and blistered 
 in the heat, and their blood coursed madly through their 
 veins from the fever that slowly consumed their vitality. 
 Their tongues parched and swelled and cracked and hung 
 bleeding from their mouths, and their eyes almost burst from 
 their sockets; and while their voices lasted, they buried their 
 bruised hands in the sand, in excess of agony, and cried aloud 
 for water. Visions of pools of the life-giving elixir that is 
 brewed in the clouds floated before them, but while they vainly 
 struggled to reach the limpid depths that would have been to 
 them the greatest boon, like the mirages of the desert, they 
 kept ever just beyond reach and goaded them to madness. 
 Springs seemed to gush up from the burning sands beside 
 them, and the cool waters sparkled in the sunlight, and the 
 spray, like a vail of mist between, seemed almost to dash in 
 in their very faces; but when they put out their hands 
 for just the few drops their palms would have held, 
 the spring vanished; they were but the result of their 
 fevered fancy. Night came, and the stars looked down on 
 them, and to the bloodshot eyes of the crazed men, seemed 
 like fiery torches that added to their fever, and yet failed to 
 
— 91 — 
 
 keep them from shivering when the night air struck their nude 
 and burning bodies. They raved aloud until their tongues 
 became so swollen they could not speak, then their senses left 
 them — they became insane. In this awful plight they were 
 found Wednesday evening by Salovich and Perovich. Human 
 help came too late to relieve the agonies of Macisich. A few 
 moments after he was found, his swollen, blackened body was 
 relieved of pain by the Master's hand. He was dead. Desco- 
 vich lived to reach a neighboring camp where he was carried 
 
 Sisters of Charity on Picayune Relief Boat, 
 
 by his rescuers, and food and water were given him, and physi- 
 cians who saw him later say he will probably recover his 
 strength, but his mind, never. His reason has forever for- 
 saken him. 
 
 Capt. Elie Peters and Philip Peters, of the schooner Ees- 
 cue, had a sad and thrilling experience. The vessel capsized 
 in the early hours of Monday morning, and Capt. Peters and 
 his brothers Allan and Philip clung to a piece of lumber, from 
 which they were repeatedly washed until they succeeded in 
 getting on to a piece of square timber and were carried out to 
 sea. They were at the mercy of the waves for three days and 
 nights. On Wednesday Allan gave out and went down. On 
 the evening of the same day Capt. Peters saw the waterlogged 
 lugger Raphael Raymo, of New Orleans, with two young men 
 on board. He and Philip got on board the lugger and bailed 
 her out, rigged up a sail from some old canvas, and steered 
 
her as best tliey could, her rudder being lost. This work took 
 until Thursday morning. They were exposed to the elements 
 four days and nights without food or water except two cans of 
 tomatoes found on the lugger and a little rain water licked up 
 from the deck. To Capt. Peters is due the saving of Philip 
 and the two young men on the lugger, as well as himself. He 
 repeatedly helped his brother Allan back on the stick of tim- 
 ber when the seas would wash him off, often letting go and 
 swimming out after him, but all to no purpose. He kept 
 Philip with him to the last, and by his courage and fortitude 
 managed the lugger until land was reached. The two youths 
 in the lugger had abandoned all hope and given up. 
 
 In one place a lugger was found after the storm in a dense 
 forest more than a mile from the water, where it had been car- 
 ried over the tree tops on that great tidal wave, and left were it 
 now stands. To launch it again, a road would have to be chopped 
 through the woods, and the vessel would have to be hauled 
 overland for a mile before it could be floated again. The ap- 
 pearance of a big lugger resting in the midst of a dense forest, 
 where no human skill could have ean-ied it, is novel. It must 
 have been carried on the water above the tops of the tall 
 trees, and then left where it now is, and allowed to gradually 
 settle down to the earth as the water receded. 
 
 In what is left of the handsome orange orchard of Louis 
 Clugigola, toward the northwestern portion of Grand Isle, 
 there were seen and recognized the fragments of furniture and 
 household goods from Cheniere Caminada, while above them 
 in the wind-whipped leafless branches of the trees were flutter- 
 ing the tattered fragments of little children's clothes that had 
 been driven some six miles from the Cheniere, grim and sor- 
 rowful reminders of the cold and merciless impartiality of that 
 terrible cyclone. 
 
 There was but one white person drowned on Grand Isle, 
 although the tempest blew with such terrific force over the re- 
 sort it levelled to the earth almost everything there, and when 
 the water from the sea swept over it, houses and hotels, trees 
 and furniture were carried out in the Gulf. Several colored 
 people perished on the island, but Madame Victor Rigaud, was 
 the only white person there who was sacrificed to the warring 
 elements during that storm that will doubtless prevent Grand 
 Isle from ever again attracting the idle pleasure seekers to its 
 shores. She was a highly respected old lady who had first 
 seen the light on the island, and who had seldom left it during 
 her lifetime. She was the wife of one of the descendants of 
 Lafitte's crew, and the couple lived in a house that was over a 
 hundred years old, and which contained many relics of a by- 
 gone jiirate's collection of curios and handsome spoil that 
 fell to his share from Iqoting expeditions, among them five 
 
— 93 — 
 
 copies from originals by Eaphael and Le Brun. Only six weeks 
 before the storm a Northern visitor offered the old man $4000 
 cash for the five paintings, and he refused to sell thtm. They 
 had been in the family, he said, for generations, and no amount 
 of money could buy them. He valued them because they 
 were valuable, but more because they were heirlooms. When 
 the storm came the old man gave his attention to his own life 
 and his wife's. They both clung to the roof of their house as 
 long as they could, but Madam Rigaud was swept off and 
 drowned. 
 
 The name of Lawrence Lawson, the lighthouse keeper at 
 Grand Isle, should be preserved as a hero, for that night when 
 the winds beat down houses and trees that had weathered a 
 century's storms, and sent to the depths of the sea, sturdy ves- 
 sels that never before were injured by the tempests of the deep, 
 brave Lawrence Lawson stood to his perilous post of duty when 
 it seemed as if his allegiance to his task must be met with death. 
 In the teeth of the gale, with the roar and rush of the wind 
 about the lighthouse, sounding like the booming of cannon, and 
 above it the shrieks of the people who were being dashed to 
 death, the keeper climbed the narrow stair-way and kept burn- 
 ing the light that shone far out on the boiling waters, and that 
 gleamed, a beacon of hope, to the struggling beings who were 
 being tossed about on the seething waves; and many there were 
 who say that but for that one light that shone in the black of 
 that stormy night, they must have perished. But ever and anon 
 as they rose to the top of some foam crested wave, they saw the 
 beacon beaming and renewed their grasp of the plank or tree 
 that kept them from the jaws of death. The people of Grand 
 Isle speak the name of Lawrence Lawson reverently, and agree 
 that he played the part of a hero in his performance of duty that 
 awful night, and strong men and little children send aloft in 
 their prayers to the Almighty petitions for the Divine blessing 
 to ever rest on this noble, fearless fellow. 
 
 Of the family of which Mme. Sandras and her cousin, John 
 Valence, were members, they alone survive, of their fifty odd 
 kinspeople who lived with them at Cheniere Caminada. 
 
 The pilot boat Underwriter picked up Gladimer Lafond, a 
 fourteen year old boy, eighteen miles off South Pass lighthouse, 
 eight days after the storm. The poor little fellow was in a piti- 
 able condition, having drifted about on a plank in the Gulf 
 eight days without food or water. He was unconscious when 
 found, and not until liquor had been poured down his throat did 
 be show any sign of life, and then he only roused sufficiently to 
 give his name and age, and to say he, with his father and mother 
 had lived at Cheniere, and they had taken refuge on a lugger 
 when the storm burst in its fury, and the vessel had been cap- 
 sized by the wind, and he alone was left to tell the tale. 
 
— 94 — 
 
 Mr. Mendona's house was demolished, but a cabin in the 
 rear withstood the attack of wind and waves. He was absent 
 on a trip to the city for provisions when fhe relief boat visited 
 his place, but his wife, Constantin, a very handsome and edu- 
 cated lady, who spoke excellent English, told a graphic story 
 of the storm to a Times-Democrat reporter: She with her 
 daughter, Mathilda, a beautiful little dark-eyed miss of ten 
 years, and her sister were in the hovise when the storm came 
 on a little before 9 o'clock. From the manner in which the 
 big house swayed and shook during the storm, they quickly 
 determined that their only chance of escape lay in retreating 
 to the smaller cabin. The water was dashing over the high 
 gallery that connected the two buildings, but they clung to the 
 narrow walk as they crawled along on their hands and knees, 
 and finally reached the cabin, hardly knowing how they did so. 
 They fastened the doors and windows tightly, feeling that they 
 had made they last stand against despair and death. 
 
 "We can only pray," said Constantin Mendoza to her sis- 
 ter and daughter. The swaying of the cabin had thrown the 
 clock and the lighted lamp, which stood on the same shelf, 
 half way across the room and they were in blackest darkness, 
 fearing every moment that the great waves, which were now 
 making clean breaches over the roof, would bring it down upon 
 their heads, while th(( immense volume of water that was roll- 
 ing under the house threatened to burst open the floor or tear 
 the whole structure in pieces. Mrs. Mendoza groped about for 
 matches, and ultimately finding them, she lit the candles on 
 the little alter, and setting the example herself, she exhorted 
 the others to pray for divine aid. The altar was only a little 
 cracker box, neatly cover with wall paper, having a crucifix 
 and decorated with scriptural pictures. 
 
 It was firmly fixed to the wall and when the candles within 
 it had been lighted tney threw a dim shaft of pale yellow light 
 into the thick and almost palpable darkeess of the room. 
 Then, with the wind striking wildly as it swept through the 
 inky darkness of that awful night, the mountainous waves 
 roaring and thundering on the trembling beach and lashing the 
 slender walls of the cabin till they bent and fluttered like the 
 sails of a schooner in a tempest, these three dark- eyed women 
 knelt upon the heaving, quivering floor, right in the path of 
 that shaft of yellow light and it strangely illumined their dark 
 oval faces, which seemed to come out of the surrounding dark- 
 ness with an effect weirdly suggestive of the supernatural. 
 
 Then came a demand for further action. With a small 
 hatchet they chopped the thin board flooring and soon they 
 were waist deep in the heaving water. The black waves rose 
 and fell as they lapped and splashed the furniture in the dark 
 corners of the room, but still the candles, set deep in the altar 
 
— 95 — 
 
— 96 — 
 
 their flames almost toiicbin J? the crucifix, threw that shaft of 
 dim yellow light out upon the dark heaving water that threat- 
 ened to swallow them up. and stilJ, though chilled to the heart 
 with terror and bitter cold and deafened by the dreadful roar- 
 ing of the hungry seas as they thundered along the low-lying 
 beach and swept across the broad levels of sea marsh, they 
 turned their pale faces up to that dim light, while their blue 
 and quivering lips moved in prayer. Thus they prayed and 
 wept and waited for dawn. It came at last and the storm 
 passed away with the darkness. Though the tempest had 
 swept away about all that thrift, industry and good fortune 
 had converted into a happy and prosperous home for the Men- 
 doza family, they were happy and thankful that Monday morn- 
 ing's svin brought to them the knowledge that no breach had 
 been made in the home circle. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most thrilling experiences of the storm 
 was told by a woman who drifted in to shore lashed to a log. 
 She, her husband and two children had taken refuge on board a 
 schooner anchored outside of Bayou Cook, and intended to ride 
 out the gale. When the wind came from the west, followed by 
 a mammoth wave, the husband and two children were washed 
 overboard, and the lugger's mast, snapping off at its foot, drifted 
 from the side of the vessel. The frantic woman jumped for the 
 floating timber and in some way lashed herself to it. All night 
 she drifted through Adam's bayou and the neighboring bays, 
 and when daylight came she was picked up by the lugger Venus. 
 She was brought to Mr. Fred Stockfleth's, half naked, starved 
 and terribly bruised about the body, and half crazed with grief for 
 the loss of her husband and children. 
 
 Villechere Vinet, who lived on Bayou Challon, with his 
 father, mother and brother, took refuge on a raft, and they 
 were tossed about all through that night of terror, in the dark- 
 ness, wind and rain. When the day dawned, the father caught 
 a pirogue that floated near, and entered it to go for aid for his 
 family. He had not gone two boat lengths when the frail craft 
 overturned, and the father went down to rise no more. The 
 mother sprang to the edge of the raft and waited several min- 
 utes, gazing on the water for the re-appearance of her life com- 
 panion, but he was fast in the sea weed in the depths beneath. 
 Then she leaped into the bayou and was again united with her 
 husband, this time on the shores of Eternity, to part never more. 
 The eldest son seeing both parents drown, leaped from the raft, 
 and he, too, found a watery grave, leaving only the last member 
 of the family, the boy Villechere, to tell the story. He was 
 picked up several hours later, dazed with grief and half dead 
 from exhaustion. 
 
 There is but one member of Emile Prosperi's family of six- 
 teen to tell how the storm beat against their home and the fate 
 
— 97 — 
 
 ii meted out to the others. A boy ten years old is the survivor. 
 He, with his father, mother, brothers and sisters were seated 
 about a table on which a lamp burned brightly, lighting the 
 pages of the old family bible from which the father read the 
 usual evening lesson to his family. The wind howled more 
 fiercely as verse after verse of the good Book was read, until the 
 voice, that told the story of the death that gave to mankind hope 
 beyond the grave, was drowned by the war of the tempest. 
 The house trembled and swayed as the great tidal wave rose 
 rapidly beneath and around it and beat against its walls. 
 Stricken with sudden terror the family rushed toward the attic, 
 but the ten year old boy who survived, was slower of motion 
 than the rest, and to this fact he owes his life. Before he reached 
 the stairway the other members of his family had ascended, the 
 floor was upheaved, and before he realized what was happen- 
 ing, he was borne out on the flood, and into a tree a hundred 
 yards beyond. Then he saw a tiny flame shoot up from the. 
 half collapfed building then another and another, until, in a 
 few moments the wild scene about was illumined by the 
 flames, that started by the overturned lamp, enveloped Pros- 
 peri's home. The cries of the family j^enned in the garret were 
 borne above the howling of the tempest, and the boy in the 
 tree clung to the branches and watched the burning funeral 
 pyre of his loved ones, and was found by a rescuing party the 
 next day. 
 
 Mrs. Frank Kranz, Jr., a daughter-in-law of the hotel pro- 
 prietor of Grand Isle, lost one hundred and fifty relatives in the 
 storm. Among them was her sister, the wife of John Valence, 
 of Cheniere Caminada. When the survivors at stricken Cheniere 
 were counted Mrs. Valence, who was shortly expected to become 
 a mother, was missing. Her body could not be found, and she 
 was enrolled among those who had found a grave in the waters 
 of the gulf, or whose bones were blf-aching in the trackless sea- 
 marsh of the shore. Five weeks after the storm the crew of a 
 lugger dancing over the dimpling waters of the gulf descried a 
 dark spot on the blue water twenty miles from land. The lug- 
 ger's course was altered and it bore down upon the object. As 
 it approached the crew made out the object to be a raft and on 
 it a motionless figure; its dress proclaimed it a woman, its 
 posture announced it dead. But these fishermen resolved to 
 give it christian burial and took the raft in tow and made for 
 land. 
 
 By the clothing the body was recognized as that of Mrs. 
 Valence. Swept to sea on that awful night, she had managed, 
 in her desperate struggle for her own life and that of her unborn 
 babe, to gather a few planks of the wreckage and construct the 
 rude raft iipon which her body was found. The thought of this 
 helpless woman alone, in her condition, upon that night of 
 death, was awful enough, but when tender hands sought to lift 
 
— 98 — 
 
 the emaciated body from the few planks which bore it up, the 
 full horror of her fate was seen. By her side lay the naked 
 body of a new born babe. On a frail support of a few rough 
 planks, tossed on the waters of a storm lashed sea, with the de- 
 mon of the storm as the only attendant, that young life was 
 ushered into the world, to die. What pen can paint, what 
 imagination can picture, the awful fate of that helpless woman, 
 slowly starving to death on that awful expanse of water with the 
 wails of her famished babe ringing in her ears ? Mother and 
 child had perished from starvation. 
 
 Archie Williamson, A Hero of Caminada. 
 
 While the storm was raging on that awful night and death 
 was riding abroad on the wings of the wind the crossing of the 
 electric wires in the city of New Orleans caused the fire bells to 
 ring continuously through the night. Not with the rapid 
 clangor of the fire alarm, but with the slow and measured toll 
 of the "passing bell." The weirdness of that eerie sound cannot 
 be imagined, much less described. 
 
 Borne on the pinions of the rushing wind each mournful 
 stroke smote on the hearing of the startled listener with a fu- 
 neral sound, ominous of disaster. And so it proved. The latest 
 found element of nature tolled the knell of the hundreds of vic- 
 tims who, on bay and bayou, in marsh, swamp and prairie, on 
 the shores of the river, the coasts of the gulf and the islee of the 
 sea, were falling before that awful Wind of Death. 
 
 riNis. 
 
^^CheniQiG Caminada." 
 
 Copies mailed, post paid, to any address for 
 25 cents. 
 
 ^IJ^Agents wanted everywhere Liberal com- 
 missions paid. 
 
 Address: MISS ROSE C. FALLS, 
 910 Magazine Street, 
 
 New Okle.\ns, La. 
 
 WOOD, SCHNEIDAU & CO., 
 
 WHOLESALE AND RETAIL. 
 
 Steamships, Steamboats, Flaiitatiotis, Rice Mills, Cotton Presses. 
 Foundries, Dealers and Families Supplied. 
 
 MAIN OFFICE -43 Oarondelet Street, 
 
 COAL YARD.— Foot of Race Street on Levee. 
 
 Telephone 576. NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 CHARLIE WOOD TRANSPORTATIOH CO. 
 ELMER E. WOOD ^TRAHSPORTATIOIT CO. 
 
 CZ:::^ TUG- BOAOTS =5^0 
 
 W. M. WOOD, CHARLIE WOOD, 
 
 ELMER E. WOOD. 
 
 TO^V^ING DO^JE AX RK-A-SON ABLE RATES 
 
 MAIN OFFICE LEVEE OFFICE 
 
 43 Carondelet Street. Foot of Julia Street. 
 
 Teleplioae 5T6. Telephone C4:a. 
 
A. M. & J. SOLARI, Limited, 
 
 27, 29 & 31 Royal Street, 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 November 8th, 189H. 
 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN : 
 
 "We have just received an entire fresh stock of all kinds of Fancy 
 Family Grocei-ies, lioth foreign and domestic. 
 
 We would be pleased to- show you our capacious stock when in the city, 
 or send you one of our catalogues, from which you can gain some idea of our 
 very large assortment. We can safely say, without fear of contradiction, 
 that we carry the finest line of Fancy Groceries in the United States. 
 In our catalogue we do not put prices, as we always give the prices of the 
 day on which inquiry is made. Should any items lie wanted not in our line, 
 we' will cheerfully get same and ship with your orders, thereby saving you 
 some little extra charge. We pack and deliver all goods to depots free of 
 char-^e. Yours truly, A. M. & J. SOLARI, Limited. 
 
 THE FINEST AND BEST 
 
 FOR SALE BY 
 
 L Grunewald Co., Limited 
 
 137 Canal Street. , 
 
 LOWEST PRICES! 
 
 EASIEST TERMS. 
 
 ORGANS AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF EVERY DESCRIPTIOl| 
 SEND FOR CATALOGUE. 
 
 - 
 
 »»»»»»»» ■*■- 
 
1?KE OLD RELIABLXi. 
 
 Louisville and Nashville R.R. 
 
 LIMITED EXPRESS DAILY 
 
 IN PULMANN VESTIBULED CARS. 
 
 TO 
 
 Moiitg'oniery, Birniiiig^liam, 
 
 Nashville, Louisville, 
 
 Cincinnati, Atlanta, 
 
 Jacksonville, Wasliing^ton, 
 Baltimore, Philadelphia 
 
 and ENew York, 
 
 Through Without Change. 
 
 Our limited vestibule service from NEW ORLEANS TO NEW 
 
 YORK without change makes several hours the quickest 
 
 time to competitive points. 
 
 NO EXTRA FARE WILL BE CHARGED ON THIS TRAIN. 
 
 Dining Cars Attached and Meals Served en route. 
 
 City Ticket Office, corner St. Charles and Com- 
 mon streets. Depot Ticket Office, foot of Canal st. 
 
 JOHN KILKENY, Div. Pass. Agent. 
 C. P. ATMORE, G. P. A., Louisville, Ky. 
 
F. CODMAN FOUD, Agt. 
 
 BUILDING SPECIALTIES, 
 
 REPRESENTING 
 
 Northwestern Terra Ootta Co. 
 
 Pioneer Fire Proof Oonstrnction Co. 
 
 Akron Roofing Tile "Works. 
 
 The Hydraulic Press Brick Co. 
 
 Star Encaustic Tile Co., Ltd 
 
 W. H. Evans & Sod's Italiaa M Tennessee Marlile, and MarWe Mantels. 
 
 FIRE CLAY FLUE LINING IN STOCK aud by CAR LOADS. 
 ARCHITECTURAL TERRA COTTA. 
 
 Finials, Crestings, Bevel Plates, 
 
 Hip Rolls & Chimney Tops, Leaded and Art Glass, 
 
 In Stock and by Carloads. For Doors and \Vindo>vs. 
 
 Estimates and Designs Furnished on Application. 
 
 jg@-OFFIOE AND SHOW EOOM, 63 BARONNE STREET,--^ 
 
 WAREHOUSE FOOT OF UNION ST. 
 
 Telephone H51 Bos M. D. & L. Ex. 104. NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 Wid. LEON LAfflOTHE & CO, 
 Wholesale & Hetail Liquor Dealers, 
 
 S3 ST. CHARLES ST., 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 PROPRIETORS OF 
 
 LEON'S EESTAURANT, 23 St. Charles St., 
 
 Where the best of the market is served. Cuisine unsurpassed, 
 and its cellar stocked with the Finest Wines. 
 
 And ST, CHAHLES BAE HOOM, Icwer Botunda, St. Charles Hotel, 
 
 and COMMEBCIAL BAB, Cor. Camp and Commercial Place, 
 Where are served the Finest Wines and Liquors 
 in the South. 
 
 Hot Lnnch from 11 A. JM. till 1 F*. IVt. 
 
WHAT IS THEA-NECTAE, 1 
 
 It is the Finest Tea Imported. Try 
 
 it once and you will use no other. 
 
 THEA-NECTAR 
 
 is the Finest Flavored Pure Natural Leaf Tea ever 
 offered to the Public. It is a Black with a Green 
 Tea Flavor, and is a selection of the choicest 
 leaves from the Best Tea Districts. It will suit 
 all tastes. It is cured upon porcelain in the same 
 manner as if prepared tor native consumption. 
 It is delicious in flavor, perfectly healthy, of full 
 strength and very economical. 
 
 One Pound of this Tea Mailed (o any Address on receipt of 75 cents. 
 
 Main Office: 182 Canal St., 
 
 Cor. Ui3iversit7 Place, 
 
 BRANCHES : 
 
 609 Magazine St., 
 
 and 440 Dryades St. 
 
 Telephone 701 . New Orleans, La. 
 
 THE GREAT 
 
 ATLANTIC AND PAeiFIG 
 
 TEA CO. 
 
 3Iauufacturers of 
 
 J. H. KELLER'S SOAP WORKS, •x■ox3Ll:E3^E■ ssk:>a.ie'!S, 
 
 Office, 110 GRAVIER ST., New Orleans, La. 
 
 The highest Market Price paid for TALLOW, GREASE and OILS, Correspondence solicited. 
 
 Iq orderin' from your Grocer or Direct from us. state Keller's Brand and Size Bars to 
 box and if wrapped or unwrapped. Do not accept substitutes from your Grocer tor our Brand. 
 
imiL^^ 
 
 Lj% 
 
 Corner Canal and St. Charles Streets, 
 
 ©sri 
 
 i^llM' 
 
 USED OVER THE BAR 
 ARE AS PINE AS CAN BE HAD. 
 ttespectfully, 
 
 L. C. WILT, Proprietor. 
 
 cl® Mm VlllHW^- 
 CROCKERY, 
 
 PLATEI> WARE 
 
 AND HOUSE FURNISHING GOODS. 
 IV o. 168 Canal Street, JV^etv Orleans, La, 
 
 
 
 OFFICE AND RESIDENCE, 
 
 2To, 1041 MAGAZZXTS STB.SST, 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 Hours : — Until lo A. M. and from 2 to 4 P. M 
 
 JNO. C. & CHAS. A. WICKLIFFE, 
 ATTORNEYS AT LAW, 
 
 ^E=L<DCD10CL IS, 
 
 IDeneg-re JB-U-ilciiiagr, \ 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
GOOD WORK. 
 
 LOW PRICES. 
 
 PRINTING ^ OFFICE, 
 
 20 and 22 Commercial Place, 
 
 Near St. Charles St., .... NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 All Rinds of Printing Done at the Lowest Prices. 
 
 JOHN P. HOPKINS. 
 
 Se^wer and Oiilvert JPipe, 
 
 FIRE BRICK, FIRE TILE, 
 
 FIRE CLAY, FLUE PIPE, CHIMNEY TOPS, AND ALL 
 KINDS OF FIRE CLAY PRODUCTS. 
 
 O - UIVIOIV STP^JEET, - 9 
 
 P. O. Box 1615. NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 FACTORY PRICES FOR CA.R LOAD LOTS. 
 
HENRY KAHN. 
 
 Telephone 964. 
 
 LAZARE LEVY 
 
 KAHN & LEVY, 
 
 AISTD 
 
 COMMISSION MERCHAHTS, 
 
 111 & 113 PoydraS St., New Orleans, La. 
 
 p. O. Box 1059. 
 
 J8@°^ Best attention paid to purchasing Goods of all kinds. ; 
 Consignments of Cotton, Sugai-, Molasses, Rough Rice, Hides, \ 
 
 Wool and all Country Produce Respectfully solicited. \ 
 
 1 
 
 CRESCEITT CITY ! 
 Moss ^ Ginnery, : 
 
 Office, 52 DECATUR ST., ! 
 
 p. O. Box 395. 1 
 
 I 
 
 SOL. STERN, Manager. i 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. \ 
 
 WACKERBARTH, JOSEPH & CO , j 
 
 Established 1866. ! 
 
 'i 
 MANUFACTURERS OP j 
 
 Office and Salesroom, No- 43 Magazine St, I 
 
 i 
 Factory, 93 & 95 Julia Street, ! 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. ' 
 
AlTD CAFE RESTAURANT, 
 13 & 16 Royal Street. Near Canal St., 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 Cosmopolitan Annex, 
 
 16 & 18 Bourbon St. 
 
 Now in course of construction. Will be ready 
 January ist, 1894. 
 
 THE FINEST LADIES RESTAURANT IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 i^ ^3 
 
 'd 
 
 REAL ESTATE BROKER 
 
 mmM 
 
 129 Common St., 
 
 New Orleans. 
 
 Oypress and. Fine Lancls for Sfile, 
 
 LARGE TRACTS DF VIRGIN FOREST, 
 
 Jter-SEND FOR CIRCULAR. 
 
S. D. Wood, Elmer E. Wood. Will H. WooJ. C. W. Wood. 
 
 B, D, WOOD & SONS, 
 
 ®#®I mM§ Xtwia 
 
 No. 92 CAHAL STREET, Morris Building, \ 
 
 NEW ORLEANS. LA. j 
 
 1 
 
 OFFICE OF TUGS B. D. WOOD & ELLA ANDREWS. I 
 
 Plantations, Steamboats and Stsamships | 
 
 SUPPLIED AT LOWEST MARKET RATES. j 
 
 BRANCH YARD, PLAQUEMINE, LA. 
 
 Capt. A. J. CARTER, - Manager. 
 
 Ladies' and Gent's Restaurant ^f Hotel, 
 
 DELICACIES OF THE SEASON ALWAYS OIV HAND. 
 
 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108 Customhouse Sts., 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 Breakfast, 4r0c. Dinner, 50c. LAWRENCE PABACHER, Piop. 
 
 PHCENIX HOUSE, 
 
 No. 96 St. Charles St., next to Academy of Music, 
 
 IMPORTED AND DOMESTIC 
 
 p. J. CALDWELL, - Proprietor. 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
GEO. JURGEHS, 
 
 Successor to FRANK RODER & CO., and EDMOND DUBOIS. 
 
 ^ Tmwom's: 
 
 r^ 
 
 Wholesale Liquor Dealer, 
 
 39 TCHOUPITOULAS STREET, 
 
 ^w ©laiiM®. 11. 
 
 "Trade /I^^ark, 
 
 P^H^c 
 
 
 E. H. CHAFFE, President. E. F. Del LONDIO, Vice Pres. & Xreas. 
 
 R. A. BAIRD, Secretary. 
 
 R. H. CHAFFE & CO. Ltd., 
 
 HiOULisiatxa.^. IVEcDlatssos 
 
 44, 46, 48 SOUTH PETERS ST., 
 
 F>. O. Box SO. NE;^V ORLKAlSrS. 
 
 RIGHT IN IT ALL THE TIME. 
 Best Goods. liowest Prices. Q,uiclvest Service. 
 
 ;8®"Send for samples and quotations. 
 
Is the Largest General Store in the South. 
 
 Only the Best Goods liaiulled, and at the lowest possible 
 profit. This Estal)lishment comprises many stores in one. 
 
 Silks, 
 
 
 Shoes, 
 
 Books, 
 
 Carpets, 
 
 Laces, 
 
 
 Fancy Goods, 
 
 Stationery, 
 
 Curtains, 
 
 Dress Goods, 
 
 
 Black Goods, 
 
 Handkerchie 
 
 ifs. Blankets, 
 
 White Goods, 
 
 
 Wash Goods, 
 
 Notions, 
 
 Pictures, 
 
 Meii's H»ts, 
 
 
 Millinery, 
 
 Hosiery, 
 
 Men's Furnishings, 
 
 Cloaks, 
 
 
 Boy's Clothing, 
 
 Muslin 
 
 } Linens, 
 
 Dresses, 
 
 
 Corsets. 
 
 Underwear, 
 
 J' Flannels. 
 
 
 Etc., 
 
 Etc. 
 
 
 Etc. 
 
 We can fill yovir order as promptly as if we waited on you in person, 
 
 and will please you as well. 
 
 155 CANAL ST. 
 
 i 91 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 (Formerly ST. LOUIS HOTEL,) 
 
 ON EUROPEAN PLAN. 
 
 B^-LOCATED IN THE HEART OF THE OLD FRENCH 
 QUARTER OF THE CITY. 
 
 FOUR BLOCKS FROM CAKAL STREET. 
 
 Thoroughly * Refitted * and* Modernized. 
 
 ROOMS FROM $1.00 UP." 
 
 ( i 
 
 NBW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
JOS. A. SHAKSPEARE. JULIAN M. SWOOP. 
 
 Shakspeare Iron Works, 
 
 SHAKSPEABE k SWOOP, Proprietors, 
 
 219 - GIROD STREET, - 219 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 Steam [ngines, Sugar Mills, Saw Mills, 
 
 "V-A.OXJXJl^ I^ -AGISTS, 
 
 STOBE FRONTS, DBAINING MACHINES, CENTRIFUGAL 
 
 MACHINES, COLUMNS, VENTILATORS 
 
 AND GRATE BARS. 
 
 J8@- Every Eescription of Machinery and Blacksmith Wcrk.''^a 
 
 A. K. Miller, Meletta & Co, 
 
 STEjlMSHIP A!(D SHIP AGEf(TS, 
 
 Room 5. COTTON EXCHANGE BUILDING, New Orleans, La. 
 
 Liverpool Office; 4 Tower Chambers. 
 
 Cable Address: "Miller." 
 Use Scott's or Watkin's Code and Appendix. 
 
 Agents for "Glynn,'' "Serra," " Larrinaga" and Lam- 
 port and Holt Lines of Steamers between New 
 Orleans and Liverpool, Hamburg American Pack- 
 et Co.'s Steamers between New Orleans and 
 Hamburg. Cuban Steamship Line, between New 
 Orleans, Antwerp and London. 
 
 6®" Agents British and Foreign Marine Insurance Co , Limited. 
 
IIIISIIII, BIOS, k C 
 
 MANUFACTURERS OF THE CELEBRATED 
 
 La Belle Creole, 
 El Belmont, 
 
 o 
 ^ 
 
 Mardi-Gras, 
 Jackson Square 
 
 
 2^^Standard Brands of Unvarying Excellence, 
 
 CEi^ GENERAL FAVORITES. ^^^E) 
 Factory, MAGAZINE and JULIA STF. 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 illf 1 llOf ill 
 
 99i\ 
 
 XilMlTiCX), 
 
 Wholesale •:•:• Grocers, 
 
 AND COFFSE IMPORTERS, 
 
 103, 10t>, lOT^ L^afaj ette »ts., 
 
 NE^A^ ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 DIRECTORS 
 
 J. B. SINNOTT, Pres't & Gen'l Mj 
 W. H.^CANTZON,|Sec'y & Treas. 
 
 GEO. C. BOHNE, Vice-Prest. 
 W. L. SAXON. 
 
WfJ^K'^^U^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^wSI^^jIMV^ 
 
 This Great Newspaper is published evert/ day in the year. 
 
 It is the Brightes , Best and Cleanest Paper issued in the South. 
 
 It Leads all other Southern Papers in enterprise and completeness as a Newspaper in all departments. 
 
 It reaches the homes of the People, and has their confidence and support. 
 
 IT HAS THE LARGEST CIRCULATION AND 
 
 IS THE BEST ADVERTISING MEDIUM. 
 
 It leads in All Reforms and measures for the good of the South and Humanity. 
 Its System of Gathering Netns has been perfected by Tears of Experience and Liberal Expenditure 
 of Money necessary to promote a Great Paper, 
 
 THE SUNDAY PICAYUNE 
 
 Is especially interesting in its literary features, containing Tales and Poems from the Best 
 Writers, Special Contributions from Pen and Pencil of Talented Authors and Artists, in ad- 
 dition to the NEWS OF THE DAY. 
 
 THE WEEKLY PICAYUNE. 
 
 This mammoth 16 page paper contains ALL THE NEWS OF THE WEEK, the latest and most 
 reliable Market Reports and Commercial News, more Special Telegrams and Items from South- 
 ern States, particularly Louisiana and Mississippi, than any other paper. The Weekly Pica- 
 yune ia published every Thursday morning, and reaches all Subscribers for Sunday Reading : 
 
 THE DAILY PICAYUNE. 
 
 DAILY (INCLUDlNa SUNDAY), 10, 12, 16, 20, 22 or 24 Pages. 
 Twelve Months $12 00 Six Months $6 00 
 
 SUNDAY PICAYUNE, BY MAIL, 22 or 24 Pages. 
 Twelve Months » $2 00 
 
 WEEKLY— SIXTEENJ^ PAGES. 
 Twelve Months $1 00. 
 
 NICHOLSON & CO., Prop'rs Picayune, New Orleans, La, 
 
 Utx'JSToTT. I ESTABLISHED 1868. ^ i^- ^- po^^hs^ne. 
 
 A. A. WOODS & CO., 
 
 General Insurance OfTices, 
 
 37 Carondelei St., Cor. Gravier, 
 
 Opposite Cotton Exchange, 
 
 'New Orleans, La. 
 
 Dwelling and Sugar House Risks Especially Solicited. 
 
-^^^^ 
 
 DnticHENOftANTISEPTIC 
 
 or 
 
 e. 
 
 WOUNDS. BURNS. BRUISES, SCALDS, COLIC 
 Cramps, Cholera morbus 6i flux 
 ^ eOLie, BOTTS (& ron>^ o 
 
 HORSES & MULES. 
 
 r*/ "Kier^f/ti- 1 
 
 •d 
 
 II 
 
 Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating. 
 
 SEE HOW OUR HOME DRUGGISTS BUY. 
 
 n 
 
 New Orheans, La., Jan. Ist, 1891. 
 
 Gentlemen : — Please enter our order for One Hundred 
 gross Dr. Tichenor's Antiseptic. 
 
 I. L. LYONS & CO., Druggists. 
 
 New Orleans, La., Nov. 3rd, 1891. 
 Gentlemen : — Please deliver to us at your earliest convenience, 
 One Hundred gross Dr. Tichenor's Antiseptic. 
 
 FINLAY & BRUNSWIG, Druggists. 
 
 New Orleans, La., Oct. 30th, 1893. 
 
 Gents: — Please enter us for another One Hundred gross Dr. 
 Tichenor's Antiseptic. E. J. HART & CO., Druggists. 
 
 SHERROUSE UEDICINE CO., Ltd., 
 
 Manufacturers aud Proprietors, NEW OKLEANS, LA. 
 
/ 
 
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014 646 169 4