The city was gradually assuming the bustling ante-flood appearance. The principal streets were electrically lighted. Stenches no longer assailed the nostrils, except in the outside circle of destruction, where much debris still remained untouched. Cremation of the dead was being pushed, but it was many days before the working parties got out the last of the bodies.
The whole twenty-two miles' length of the island was submerged.
The horrors of the western portion beyond the city limits were just being learned at San Luis. One hundred and eighty-one bodies were buried on September 17. Between twenty and thirty bodies were counted among the piles of the railroad bridge between the island and Virginia Point. In Kinkead's addition about 100 were lost, eighteen in one house.
The farther the men worked in the Denver reservoir section the more numerous were the dead. Fires were burning every 300 feet on the beach and along many of the streets.
Mayor Walter C. Jones made a statement on that day of conditions and needs of Galveston people, basing his conclusions on the most reliable information which has come to him.
"It is almost impossible to speak definitely as yet of the needs of our people. We are broke, the majority of us. Galveston must have suffered, in my estimation, based upon all of the reports I have, $20,000,000. We now need money more than anything.
"From the advices I have received I believe the shipments of disinfectants and food supplies now on the way will be sufficient to meet the immediate wants. By the time these are used we shall have regained our transportation facilities and stocks of everything, so that we can use money more advantageously.
"It is impossible to state just how much money has reached us. We have received from the Governor, at Austin, $100,000 in cash. That is from the general fund. Special contributions have come through the Chamber of Commerce, the Cotton Exchange and several other channels. We have between 1,500 and 3,000 men at work searching for bodies, clearing the streets and burning debris. Of this work, which ought to be done as fast as possible in the interest of the living, there is enough to keep 3,000 employed for forty days, although I believe we shall have the principal streets clear in ten days or two weeks.