The Age Herald

Porto Rico, August 20.-It had been pleasant all day, no sun and just cloudy enough to make the light pleasant, a very pleasing change from the glare under which Ponce lies during the summer. There is properly speaking no rainy season here, as they know it in Cuba, yet a rainy season it is, consisting of mild soft showers which lay the dust and make the heat of the summer tolerable.

Everybody thought it was preparing for a three-day rain, so there was no alarm felt when toward night, on that memorable Monday, August 7, the wind arose and the clouds massed before the breeze.

That evening few stirred out in Ponce.

Stones might have been hurled from the hands of a frantic mob, sledge hammers and battering rams might have been at work upon our doors and windows, yet there could have been no greater noise. It was as though all the demons and furies were at work in their wild task of slinging the furniture of the streets against our households. And still the din increased.

It was terrible. My wife and children cowered to the floor huddling close together with shawls over their heads: and at each wild gust I sprang to the door ready to take down the bar and let them out into the streets should the house twist over our heads.

As the day drew on it grew lighter. At 9 my wife prepared hastily a cup of coffee and we drank it standing near the front door. Outside there were no pedestrians, unless they could have been the shapeless things that went flying past, torn out of all semblance to human beings.

Until they seemed to fill the town. Then, with a roar like thunder, the water mains broke and the great reservoir of fresh water came seething down into the salt tide. The streets were impassable and the housetops were full. All that night we stayed upon the roof which fortunately sustained us and watched the tide carry others down stream. With ropes we rescued no less than ten: and could have rescued many others had we a boat, for there were at times calm pools in which the waters seemed to rest, only to swirl round for a fresh attack. How the waves dashed against the house and how they broke them and tore them from their foundations. It was terrible. Trees came floating down the streets, bodies passed by. Houses sailed along filled with persons, only