Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1893 — ONE THOUSAND DEAD. [ARTICLE]

ONE THOUSAND DEAD.

The List of Storm Victims in the South Is Still Growing:. Three hundred and ninety dead bodies have been found on the islands about Beaufort and Port Royal, and the total number of dead will reach 1,000. Over $2,000,000 worth of property has been wrecked near the same points. Both are the direct result of the storm which swept along the Atlantic coast. Every one of the fifteen or twenty islands lying around Port Royal and Beaufort is steeped in sorrow. On every door knob there is a bunch of crape and upon every hillside there are fresh-made graves, some already filled, while others are awaiting the bodies that will be deposited in them just as soon as some one can be found to do the Christian act of shoveling the dirt upcn the coffin. Tho beeches, tho undergrowth, trees and shrubbery, the marshes, and the inlets are turning up new dead bodies every time an investigation is made. Of the many disasters and devastations which have visited that section of the country none have been half as horrible. As the waters recede and the people move deeper into the wreckage gathered by the storm, the ghastly pictures are uncovered. So frequent are the discoveries that the finding of a single body attracts no attention at all. It takes the discovery of a clump of at least half a dozen or more to induce the people to show any feeling whatever. It was around Beaufort and Port Royal that the death rate was the greatest, but in neither of the towns were many lives lost. Around the two towns there is a complete chain of islands, and it was upon these that the harvest of death was reaped. This section of the Atlantic coast has been prolific in storms that scattered death and destruction of property in their wake, but the weather-wise, tho oldest citizens and the pilots, cannot recall anything equaling this last storm. The people are now suffering for, food and 7,000 negroes, who have been driven to Port Royal by the storm from the surrounding islands and the rice and cotton plantations, are starving. They are so destitute and so badly in need of something to eat that they have resorted to fighting among themselves for food. Several were killed in a fight for provisions. Men, women and children stand in tho streets pleading for something to eat. The white people in Port Royal are doing all ip their power to relieve the suffering, but their efforts alone cannot begin to better affairs. The horrors of the devastation can scarcely be imagined, and nothing can be extravagantly said of the wreck and ruins. That part of South Carolinaua known as the black district and is almost entirely inhabited by negroes.