Part 10 (1/2)

”The man was on his way to find his sister, but he yielded to the inevitable. He worked all day with the soldiers, and when released to get lunch he felt that he could conscientiously desert to go and find his own loved ones.”

”Half a block down the street the soldiers were stopping all pedestrians without the official pa.s.s which showed that they were on relief business, and putting them to work heaving bricks off the pavement. Two dapper men with canes, the only clean people I saw, were caught at the corner by a sergeant, who showed great joy as he said:

”'I give you time to git off those kid gloves, and then hustle, d.a.m.n you, hustle!' The soldiers took delight in picking out the best dressed men and keeping them at the brick piles for long terms. I pa.s.sed them in the shelter of a provision wagon, afraid that even my pa.s.s would not save me. Two men are reported shot because they refused to turn in and help.”

Many of the dead, of course, will never be identified, though the names were taken of all who were known and descriptions written of the others.

A story comes to us of one young girl who had followed for two days the body of her father, her only relative. It had been taken from a house on Mission Street to an undertaker's shop just after the quake. The fire drove her out with her charge, and it was placed in Mechanics' Pavilion.

That went, and the body rested for a day at the Presidio, waiting burial. With many others, she wept on the border of the burned area, while the women cared for her.

VICTIMS TAKEN FROM THE RUINS.

On Friday eleven postal clerks, all alive, were taken from the debris of the Post Office. All at first were thought to be dead, but it was found that, although they were buried under the stone and timber, every one was alive. They had been for three days without food or water.

Two theatrical people were in a hotel in Santa Rosa when the shock came.

The room was on the fourth floor. The roof collapsed. One of them was thrown from the bed and both were caught by the descending timbers and pinned helplessly beneath the debris. They could speak to each other and could touch one another's hands, but the weight was so great that they could do nothing to liberate themselves. After three hours rescuers came, cut a hole in the roof and both were released uninjured.

Even the docks were converted into hospitals in the stringent exigency of the occasion, about 100 patients being stretched on Folsom street dock at one time. In the evening tugs conveyed them to Goat Island, where they were lodged in the hospital. The docks from Howard Street to Folsom Street had been saved, the fire at this point not being permitted to creep farther east than Main Street. Another series of fatalities occurred, caused by the stampeding of a herd of cattle at Sixth and Folsom Streets. Three hundred of the panic-stricken animals ran amuck when they saw and felt the flames and charged wildly down the street, trampling under foot all who were in the way. One man was gored through and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons', it is said, were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells us that ”the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, and then told me he was the janitor of a big building. The first he knew of the catastrophe he found himself in the bas.e.m.e.nt, his dead wife beside him. The building had simply split in two, and thrown them down.”

In the camps of refuge the deaths came frequently. Physicians were everywhere in evidence, but, without medicine or instruments, were fearfully handicapped. Men staggered in from their herculean efforts at the fire lines, only to fall gasping on the gra.s.s. There was nothing to be done. Injured lay groaning. Tender hands were willing, but of water there was none. ”Water, water, for G.o.d's sake get me some water,” was the cry that struck into thousands of souls of San Francisco.

The list of dead was not confined to San Francisco, but extended to many of the neighboring towns, especially to Santa Rosa, where sixty were reported dead and a large number missing, and to the insane asylum in its vicinity, from the ruins of which a hundred or more of dead bodies were taken.

THE FREE USE OF RIFLES.

A citizen tells us that ”in the early part of the evening, and while the twilight lasts, there is a good deal of trafficking up and down the sidewalks. Having finished their dinners of government provisions, cooked on the street or in the parks, the people promenade for half an hour or so. By half-past eight the town is closed tight. A rat scurrying in the street will bring a soldier's rifle to his shoulder. Any one not wearing a uniform or a Red Cross badge is a suspicious character and may be shot unless he halts at command. Even the men in uniform do well to stop still, for it is hard to tell a uniform in the half light thrown up by the burning town and the great shadows.

”Last night two of us ventured out on Van Ness Avenue a little late.

There came up the noise of some kind of a shooting sc.r.a.pe far down the street. We hurried in that direction to see what was doing. An eighteen-year-old boy in a uniform barred the way, levelled his rifle and said in a peremptory way:

”'Go home.'

”We took a course down the block, where an older soldier, more communicative but equally peremptory, informed us that we were trifling with our lives, news or no news.

”'We've shot about 300 people for one thing or another,' he said. 'Now, dodge trouble. Git!' That ended the expedition.”

THE LOSS IN WEALTH.

If we pa.s.s now from the record of the loss of lives to that of the destruction of wealth, the estimates exceed by far any fire losses recorded in history.

The truth is that when flames eat out the heart of a great city, devour its vast business establishments, storehouses and warehouses, sweep through its centres of opulence, destroy its wharves with their acc.u.mulation of goods, spread ruin and havoc everywhere, it is impossible at first to estimate the loss. Only gradually, as time goes on, is the true loss discovered, and never perhaps very accurately, since the owners and the records of riches often disappear with the wealth itself. In regard to San Francisco, the early estimate was that three-fourths of the city, valued at $500,000,000, was destroyed.

But early estimates are apt to be exaggerated, and on Friday, two days after the disaster, we find this estimate reduced to $250,000,000. A few more days pa.s.sed and these figures shrunk still further, though it was still largely conjectural, the means of making a trustworthy estimate being very restricted. Later on the pendulum swung upward again, and two weeks after the fire the closest estimates that could be made fixed the property loss at close to $350,000,000, or double that of the Chicago fire. But as the actual loss in the latter case proved considerably below the early estimates, the same may prove to be the case with San Francisco.