CHAPTER VII.

FREE WATER.

The most welcome visitor to the Mission district.

DISTRIBUTING CLOTHES.

Handing out clothes to all who need them.

WIRES DOWN.

The earthquake shook down wires and poles.

MILITARY CAMP.

View in Golden Gate Park. Too much praise cannot be given our soldiers.

Thursday morning at daybreak he reached his apartments onPope street. Flames were burning fiercely. A friend told him that his wife had fled less than fifteen minutes before. She carried only a few articles in a hand satchel.

For two days and nights Judge Shaw wandered over hills and through the parks about San Francisco seeking among the 200,000 refugees for his wife.

During that heart-breaking quest, according to his own words, he had “no sleep, little food and less water.” At noon Saturday he gave up the search and hurried back to Los Angeles, hoping to find that she had arrived before him. He hastened to his home on West Fourth street.

“Where’s mother?” was the first greeting from his son, Hartley Shaw.

Judge Shaw sank fainting on his own doorstep. The search for the missing woman was continued but proved fruitless.

One of the beautiful little features on the human side of the disaster was the devotion of the Chinese servants to the children of the families which they served. And this was not the only thing, for often a Chinaman acted as the only man in families of homeless women and children. Except for the inevitable panic of the first morning, when the Chinese tore into Portsmouth square and fought with the Italians for a place of safety, the Chinese were orderly, easy to manage, and philosophical. They staggered around under loads of household goods which would have broken the back of a horse, and they took hard the order of the troops which commanded all passengers to leave their bundles at the ferry.

A letter to a friend in Fond du Lac, Wis., from Mrs. Bragg, wife of General E. S. Bragg, late consul general at Hong Kong, and one-time commander of the Iron Brigade, gave the following account of the escape of the Braggs in the Frisco quake. Mrs. Bragg says under date of April 20:

“We reached San Francisco a week ago today, but it seems a month, so much have we been through. We were going over toOakland the very morning of the earthquake, so, of course, we never went, as it is as bad there as here.

“General Bragg had to wait to collect some money on a draft, but the banks were all destroyed. The chimneys fell in and all hotels were burned as well as public buildings. There was no water to put out the fires which raged for blocks in every square and provisions were running low everywhere. Eggs were $5 a dozen, etc.; no telegraph, no nothing.

“We went from the Occidental to the Plymouth and from there to the Park Nob hill, where we lay, not slept, all Wednesday night, the day of the earthquake. From there we took refuge on the Pacific with friends who were obliged to get out also and we all came over together to Fort Mason, leaving there last night. We came from there to the flagship Chicago, the admiral having sent a boat for us.

“General Bragg is very well and we have both stood it wonderfully. The Chicago fire was bad enough, but this is worse in our old age. May we live till we reach home. So many here have lost everything, homes as well, we consider ourselves quite fortunate. May I never live to see another earthquake.

“The General had a very narrow escape from falling plaster; never thought to leave the first hotel alive. Many were killed or burned. God is good to us. Our baggage was rescued by our nephews alone. No one else’s was to be got out for love or money. The baggage was sent to the Presidio, not four miles from us.”

Scenes of Horror and Panic Described by Victims of the Quake Who Escaped—How Helpless People Were Crushed to Death by Falling Buildings and Debris—Some Marvelous Escapes.

THE stories of hundreds who experienced the earthquake shock but escaped with life and limb constitute a series of thrilling stories unrivalled outside of fiction. Those that contain the most marvellous features are herewith narrated:

Albert H. Gould, of Chicago, describes the scene in the Palace Hotel following the first quake:

“I was asleep on the seventh floor of the Palace Hotel,” he said, “at the time of the first quake. I was thrown out of my bed and half way across the room.

“Immediately realizing the import of the occurrence, and fearing that the building was about to collapse, I made my way down the six flights of stairs and into the main corridor.

“I was the first guest to appear. The clerks and hotel employes were running about as if they were mad. Within two minutes after I had appeared other guests began to flock into the corridor. Few if any of them wore other than their night clothing. Men, women, and children with blanched faces stood as if fixed. Children and women cried, and the men were little less affected.

“I returned to my room and got my clothing, then walked to the office of the Western Union in my pajamas and bare feet to telegraph to my wife in Los Angeles. I found the telegraphers there, but all the wires were down. I sat down on the sidewalk,picked the broken glass out of the soles of my feet, and put on my clothes.

“All this, I suppose, took little more than twenty minutes. Within that time, below the Palace the buildings for more than three blocks were a mass of flames, which quickly communicated to other buildings. The scene was a terrible one. Billows of fire seemed to roll from the business blocks soon half consumed to other blocks in the vicinity, only to climb and loom again.

“The Call building at the corner of Third and Market streets, as I passed, I saw to be more than a foot out of plumb and hanging over the street like the leaning tower of Pisa.

“I remained in San Francisco until 8 o’clock and then took a ferry for Oakland, but returned to the burning city an hour and a half later. At that time the city seemed doomed. I remained but for a few minutes; then made my way back to the ferry station.

“I hope I may never be called upon to pass through such an experience again. People by the thousands and seemingly devoid of reason were crowded around the ferry station. At the iron gates they clawed with their hands as so many maniacs. They sought to break the bars, and failing in that turned upon each other. Fighting my way to the gate like the others the thought came into my mind of what rats in a trap were. Had I not been a strong man I should certainly have been killed.

“When the ferry drew up to the slip, and the gates were thrown open the rush to safety was tremendous. The people flowed through the passageway like a mountain torrent that, meeting rocks in its path, dashes over them. Those who fell saved themselves as best they could.

“I left Oakland at about 5 o’clock. At that time San Francisco was hidden in a pall of smoke. The sun shone brightly upon it without any seeming penetration. Flames at times cleft the darkness. This cloud was five miles in height, and at its top changed into a milk white.”

Mrs. Agnes Zink, Hotel Broadway, said:

“I was stopping at 35 Fifth street, San Francisco. The rear of that house collapsed and the landlady and about thirty of her roomers were killed. I escaped simply because I had a front room and because I got out on the roof, as the stairway had collapsed in the rear. Out in the street it was impossible to find a clear pathway. I saw another lodging house near ours collapse—I think it must have been 39 Fifth street—and I know all the inmates were killed, for its wreck was complete. In ten minutes the entire block to Mission street was in flames.”

Mr. J. P. Anthony, a business man who escaped from the doomed city in an automobile tells a graphic story:

Mr. Anthony says that he was sleeping in his room at the Romona hotel on Ellis street, near Macon, and was suddenly awakened at 5:23 in the morning. The first shock that brought him out of bed, he says, was appalling in its terrible force. The whole earth seemed to heave and fall. The building where he was housed, which is six stories high, was lifted from its foundation and the roof caved in. A score or more of guests, men and women, immediately made their way to the street, which was soon filled with people, and a perfect panic ensued. Debris showered into the street from the buildings on every side.

As a result, Mr. Anthony says, he saw a score or more of people killed. Women became hysterical and prayed in the streets, while men sat on the curbing, appearing to be dazed. It was twenty minutes before those in the vicinity seemed to realize the enormity of the catastrophe. The crowds became larger and in the public squares of the city and in empty lots thousands of people gathered.

It was 9 o’clock before the police were in control of the situation. When they finally resumed charge, the officers directed their energy toward warning the people in the streets away from danger. Buildings were on the brink of toppling over.

Mr. Anthony says he was walking on Market street, near the Emporium, about 9 a. m., when a severe shock was felt. At once the street filled again with excited persons, and thousands were soon gathered in the vicinity, paralyzed with fear. Before the spectators could realize what had happened, the walls of the building swayed a distance of three feet. The thousands of bystanders stood as if paralyzed, expecting every moment that they would be crushed, but another tremor seemed to restore the big building to its natural position.

Mr. Anthony said that he momentarily expected that, with thousands of others who were in the neighborhood, he would be crushed to death in a few moments. He made his way down Market street as far as the Call building, from which flames were issuing at every window, with the blaze shooting through the roof. A similar condition prevailed in the Examiner building, across the street.

He then started for the depot, at Third and Townsend streets, determined to leave the city. He found a procession of several thousand other persons headed in the same direction.

All south of Market street about that time was a crackling mass of flames. Mr. Anthony made his way to Eighth and Market, thence down Eighth to Townsend and to Third street, and the entire section which he traversed was afire, making it impossible for him to reach his destination. He attempted to back track, but found that his retreat had been cut off by the flames. He then went to Twelfth street and reached Market again by the city hall. San Francisco’s magnificent municipal building had concaved like an egg shell. The steel dome was still standing, but the rest of the $3,000,000 structure was a mass of charred ruins.

It was not yet noon, but the city’s hospitals were already filled with dead and injured, and all available storerooms were being pressed into service. Dead bodies were being carried from the streets in garbage wagons. In every direction hysterical womenwere seen. Men walked through the streets, weeping, and others wore blanched faces. Transfer men were being offered fabulous sums to remove household goods, even for a block distant. Horses had been turned loose and were running at large to prevent their being incinerated in the burning buildings. Women had loaded their personal belongings on carts and were pulling them through the city, the property being huddled in the public squares.

“The Grand Hotel tossed like a ship at sea. There was a wavelike motion, accompanied by a severe up and down shake,” said J. R. Hand of the Hand Fruit Company of Los Angeles. “The shock was accompanied by a terrific roar that is indescribable. An upright beam came through the floor of my room and the walls bulged in. I thought I should not get out alive. All my baggage was lost, but I still have the key to my room as a souvenir, No. 249.

“I was on the third story of the hotel and got the last vacant room. No one in any of the stronger built hotels was killed, to the best of my knowledge. These hotels were destroyed by fire after being severely wrecked. I reached the ferry station by a trip of about six miles around by the Fairmount Hotel and thence to the water front.

“The Examiner Building went up like a flash. I was standing in front of the Crocker Building and saw the first smoke. Just then the soldiers ran us out. We went around two blocks and the next view we had the building was a mass of flames. The burning of the Palace was a beautiful sight from the bay.”

F. O. Popenie, manager of the Pacific Monthly, was asleep in the Terminus hotel, near the Southern Pacific ferry station, when the first tremble came.

“The Terminus hotel did not go down at the first shock,” he said. “We were sleeping on the third floor when the quake came. The walls of the hotel began falling, but the guests had time to run outside before the building fell in.

“I started for San Jose on foot. When I reached the Potrero I looked back and saw the business section a furnace. Fires had started up in many places and were blazing fiercely. Finally a man driving a single rig overtook me. He was headed for San Jose and he took me in. After a distance of fifteen miles we took the train and went on.”

The Terminus hotel was a six-story structure with stone and brick sides. It collapsed soon after the first shock.

Among the refugees who found themselves stranded were John Singleton, a Los Angeles millionaire, his wife and her sister. The Singletons were staying at the Palace hotel when the earthquake shock occurred.

Mr. Singleton gives the following account of his experience: “The shock wrecked the rooms in which we were sleeping. We managed to get our clothes on and get out immediately. We had been at the hotel only two days and left probably $3,000 worth of personal effects in the room.

“After leaving the Palace we secured an express wagon for $25 to take us to the Casino, near Golden Gate Park, where we stayed Wednesday night. On Thursday morning we managed to get a conveyance at enormous cost and spent the entire day in getting to the Palace. We paid $1 apiece for eggs and $2 for a loaf of bread. On these and a little ham we had to be satisfied.”

“I was asleep in the Hotel Dangham, Ellis and Mason streets, when the shock came,” said Miss Bessie Tannehill of the Tivoli Theatre. “There were at least 100 persons in the building at the time. At the first shock I leaped from the bed and ran to the window. Another upheaval came and I was thrown off my feet. I groped my way out of the room and down the dark stairway. Men, women and children, almost without clothing, crowded the place, crying and praying as they rushed out.

“When outside I saw the streets filled with people who rushed about wringing their hands and crying. Proprietor Lisser of the hotel offered a cabman $50 to take himself and his wife to thePresidio heights, but he refused. He wanted more money. We finally secured a carriage by paying $100. Fire was raging at this time and people were panic-stricken.

“After getting outside of the danger region I walked back, hoping to aid some of the unfortunates. I have heard about big prices charged for food. I wish to testify that the merchants on upper Market street and in nearby districts threw open their stores and invited the crowds to help themselves. The mobs rushed into every place, carrying out all the goods possible.

“I saw many looters and pickpockets at work. On Mason street a gang of thieves was at work. They were pursued by troops, but escaped in an auto.”

The members of the Metropolitan opera company of New York were all victims of the great disaster, including Mme. Sembrich, Signor Caruso, Campanari, Dippel, Conductor Hertz and Bars.

All of the splendid scenery, stage fittings, costumes and musical instruments were lost in the fire which destroyed the Grand Opera House, where their season had just opened.

No one of the company was injured, but nearly all of them lost their personal effects. Mme. Sembrich placed the loss by the destruction of her elegant costumes at $20,000. She was fortunate enough to save her valuable jewels. The total loss to the organization was $150,000.

On the morning of the earthquake the members of the company were distributed among the different hotels.

The sudden shock brought all out of their bedrooms in all kinds of attire. The women were in their night dresses, the men in pajamas, none pausing to dress, all convinced that their last hour had come. Ten minutes later Caruso was seen seated on his valise in the middle of the street. Many of the others had rushed to open squares or other places of supposed safety. Even then it was difficult to avoid the debris falling from the crumbling walls.

Several of those stopping at the Oaks were awakened by plaster from the ceilings falling on their bed and had barely time to flee for their lives. One singer was seen standing in the street, barefoot, and clad only in his underwear, but clutching a favorite violin which he carried with him in his flight. Rossi, though almost in tears, was heard trying his voice at a corner near the Palace hotel.

A. W. Hussey, who went to the Hall of Justice on the morning of the disaster, told how at the direction of a policeman whom he did not know, he had cut the arteries in the wrists of a man pinioned under timbers at St. Katherine hotel.

According to the statement made by Hussey the man was begging to be killed and the policeman shot at him, but his aim was defective and the bullet went wide of the mark. The officer then handed Hussey a knife with instructions to cut the veins in the suffering man’s wrists, and Hussey obeyed orders to the letter.

A story was told 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 in 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 it had rested for a day at the Presidio, waiting burial. With many others she wept on the border of the burial area, while the women cared for her. That was truly a tragic and pathetic funeral.

In the commission house of C. D. Bunker a rescuer named Baker was killed while trying to get a dead body from the ruins. Other rescuers heard the pitiful wail of a little child, but were unable to get near the point from which the cry issued. Soon the onrushing fire ended the cry and the men turned to other tasks.

Hundreds of firemen and rescuers were prostrated, the strain of the continued fight in the face of the awful calamity proving more than any man could stand. In the crowds at many pointspeople fainted and in some instances dropped dead as the result of the reaction following the unprecedented shock.

At Mechanics’ Pavilion scenes of heroism and later of panic were enacted. The great frame building was turned into a hospital for the care of the injured and here a corps of fifty physicians rendered aid. Nurses volunteered their services and also girls from the Red Cross ship that steamed in from the government yards at Mare island and contributed doctors and supplies.

While the ambulances and automobiles were unloading their maimed and wounded at the building the march of the conflagration up Market street gave warning that the injured would have to be removed at once.

This work was undertaken and every available vehicle was pressed into service to get the stricken into the hospitals and private houses of the western addition. A few minutes after the last of the wounded had been carried through the door, some on cots, others in strong arms and on stretchers, shafts of fire shot from the roof and the structure burst into a whirlwind of flame.

One of the most thrilling of all stories related of adventures in stricken San Francisco during the days of horror and nights of terror is that of a party of four, two women and two men, who arrived at Los Angeles April 20, after having spent a night and the greater portion of two days on the hills about Golden Gate Park.

This party was composed of Mrs. Francis Winter, Miss Bessie Marley, Dr. Ernest W. Fleming, and Oliver Posey, all of Los Angeles.

“I was sleeping in a room on the third floor of the hotel,” said Dr. Fleming, “when the first shock occurred. An earthquake in San Francisco was no new sensation to me. I was there in 1868, when a boy ten years old, when the first great earthquake came. But that was a gentle rocking of a cradle to the one of Wednesday.

“I awoke to the groaning of timbers, the grinding, creakingsound, then came the roaring street. Plastering and wall decorations fell. The sensation was as if the buildings were stretching and writhing like a snake. The darkness was intense. Shrieks of women, higher, shriller than that of the creaking timbers, cut the air. I tumbled from the bed and crawled, scrambling toward the door. The twisting and writhing appeared to increase. The air was oppressive. I seemed to be saying to myself, will it never, never stop? I wrenched the lock; the door of the room swung back against my shoulder. Just then the building seemed to breathe, stagger and right itself.

“But I fled from that building as from a falling wall. I could not believe that it could endure such a shock and still stand.

“The next I remember I was standing in the street laughing at the unholy appearance of half a hundred men clad in pajamas—and less.

“The women were in their night robes; they made a better appearance than the men.

“The street was a rainbow of colors in the early morning light. There was every stripe and hue of raiment never intended to be seen outside the boudoir.

“I looked at a man at my side; he was laughing at me. Then for the first time I became aware that I was in pajamas myself. I turned and fled back to my room.

“There I dressed, packed my grip, and hastened back to the street. All the big buildings on Market street toward the ferry were standing, but I marked four separate fires. The fronts of the small buildings had fallen out into the streets and at some places the debris had broken through the sidewalk into cellars.

“I noticed two women near me. They were apparently without escort. One said to the other, ‘What wouldn’t I give to be back in Los Angeles again.’

“That awakened a kindred feeling and I proffered my assistance. I put my overcoat on the stone steps of a building and told them to sit there.

“In less than two minutes those steps appeared to pitch everything forward, to be flying at me. The groaning and writhing started afresh.

“But I was just stunned. I stood there in the street with debris falling about me. It seemed the natural thing for the tops of buildings to careen over and for fronts to fall out. I do not even recall that the women screamed.

“The street gave a convulsive shudder and the buildings somehow righted themselves again. I thought they had crashed together above my head.

“The air was filled with the roar of explosions. They were dynamiting great blocks. Sailors were training guns to rake rows of residences.

“All the while we were moving onward with the crowd. Cinders were falling about us. At times our clothing caught fire, just little embers that smoked and went out. The sting burned our faces and we used our handkerchiefs for veils.

“Everybody around us was using some kind of cloth to shield their eyes. It looked curious to see expressmen and teamsters wearing those veils.

“Quite naturally we seemed to come to Golden Gate Park. It seemed as if we had started for there. By this time the darkness was settling. But it was a weird twilight. The glare from the burning city threw a kind of red flame and shadow about us. It seemed uncanny; the figures about us moved like ghosts.

“The wind and fog blew chill from the ocean and we walked about to keep warm. Thousands were walking about, too, but there was no disturbance.

“Families trudged along there. There was no hurry. All appeared to have time to spare. The streets, walks, and lawns were wiggling with little parties, one or two families in each. The men had brought bedding and blankets and they made impromptu shelters to keep off the fog.

“The cinders still kept falling. They seemed at times to comedown right against the wind. They stung my face and made me restless.

“All night we moved about the hills. Thousands were moving with us. As the night wore on the crowd grew.

“Near daylight the soldiers came to the park. They were still moving in front of the fire.

“I had brought a little store of provisions before nightfall and somehow we had kept them. It seemed easy to keep things there. I walked over to the fire made by one squad of soldiers and picked up a tin bucket. They looked at me but made no move. I went to a faucet and turned it on. Water was there. Not much, but a trickling little stream. There was water in the park all night. I boiled some eggs and we ate our breakfast. Then we concluded to try to make our way back to the water front. We did this because the soldiers were driving us from that part of the hills. The flames were still after us.

“The dumb horror of it seemed to reach right into one’s heart. Walking and resting, we reached the ferry near sunset. We had come back through a burned district some four miles. I do not understand how the people stood it.

“Other parties staggered past us. They were reeling, but not from wine. It was here that the pangs of thirst caught us. But the end came at last. We reached the ferry and the boats were running. The soldiers were there, too. They seemed to be everywhere. They were offering milk to the women and children.

“We are in Los Angeles now. It hardly seems real. If it were not for the sting of the cinders that still stick to my face and eyes I might think it was all a nightmare.”

Adolphus Busch, the St. Louis brewer, gave this account of his experiences in the earthquake:

“The earthquake which shook ’Frisco made all frantic, and was undoubtedly the severest ever experienced in the United States. The St. Francis hotel swayed from south to north likea tall poplar in a storm; furniture, even pianos, was overturned, and people thrown from their beds.

“I summoned my family and friends and urged them to escape to Jefferson square, which we did.

“An awful sight met our eyes. Every building was either partly or wholly wrecked, roofs and cornices falling from skyscrapers on lower houses, crushing and burying the inmates.

“Fires started in all parts of the city, the main water pipes burst and flooded the streets, one earthquake followed another, the people became terrified, but all were wonderfully calm. Over 100,000 persons without shelter were camping on the hills. There was no light, water, nor food. Regular soldiers and the militia maintained order and discipline, otherwise more horrors would have occurred and riots might have prevailed. Then the worst happened. The fire spread over three-fourths of the city and could not be controlled, no water to fight it, no light, and the earth still trembling.

“Building after building was dismantled to check the progress of the flames, but all of no avail. We were fortunate to secure conveyances and fled to Nob Hill, from which we witnessed the indescribable drama. Block after block was devastated. The fires blazed like volcanoes, and all business houses, hotels, theaters—in fact, the entire business portion—lay in ruins, and two-thirds of the residences.”

Hairbreadth Escapes from the Hotels Whose Walls Crumbled—Frantic Mothers Seek Children from Whom They Were Torn by the Quake—Reckless Use of Firearms by Cadet Militia—Tales of Heroism and Suffering.

FOR two weeks or more tragedy, romance and comedy crowded the lives of women and children survivors homeless in the city of ashes and in Oakland, across the bay, the city of refuge. In this latter place thousands separated from their loved ones were tearfully awaiting developments, and every hour in the day members of families were restored to each other who had been lost.

On record in the Chamber of Commerce at Oakland, which was the headquarters of the Oakland Relief Committee, some queer stories were told. Not a day passed but there were from two to eight marriages in that office. Homeless young couples met each other, compared notes and finally agreed to marry.

At the registry bureau in Oakland scores of women, young and old, worked gratis. One applied for work to relieve her mind. She said she had seen her husband and eldest son killed and had fled with her baby. During the rush of people she lost her baby.

One of her first duties was to copy names of the lost and found. In one of the lists she believed she recognized the description of her baby. An investigation was made and the child proved to be hers.

COOKING IN THE STREET.

A familiar scene in San Francisco after the disaster.

WING OF CITY HALL.

Two policemen were buried under walls.

CATTLE KILLED.

A view showing a drove of cattle killed by falling walls.

ST. JOHN’S CHURCH.

Mission Street looking west.

A grief-stricken mother came in crying for her child, which she had not seen since the day of the disaster. A member of the relief committee was detailed on the case and he found the baby. The same day, while walking on the street, he saw a womancarrying a baby in a pillow slip thrown over her shoulder. Two hours later he again met the woman. The pillow slip had ripped and the baby had fallen out unknown to the mother. When her attention was called to this fact the mother fainted.

Again the young man set to work and found the baby two blocks away, but upon returning could not find the mother.

One man escaped with his two babes as he saw his wife killed in a falling building. He seized two suit cases and placed a baby in each and started for the ferry. When he reached Oakland he found both smothered. He became violently insane and was put in a strait-jacket.

Hermann Oelrichs of New York, ten times a millionaire and husband of the eldest daughter of the late Senator Fair of California, arrived in Chicago on a scrap of paper on which was written a pass over all railroad lines. The scrap of paper was roughly torn, was two inches square, but upon it in lead pencil were written these magic words:

“Pass Hermann Oelrichs and servant to Chicago upon all lines. This paper to serve in lieu of tickets.—E. H. Harriman.”

Mr. Oelrichs described some of his experiences after he was driven from his quarters in the St. Francis Hotel by the earthquake. He said:

“It was heaven and hell combined to produce chaos. I have a bad foot, but I forgot it and walked twenty miles that day, helping all I could. Mayor Schmitz had a meeting in the afternoon at the shaking Hall of Justice and appointed a committee of fifty, of which I was one. He gave me a commission as a member of the Committee of Law and Order, which, together with my policeman’s star and club, I shall hand down to my son as heirlooms.”

“I am proud of that,” said Mr. Oelrichs. “That is the Mayor’s own signature and he has proved himself every inch a man. Lots of people thought the Mayor was just a fiddler, but they think differently now.

“The regulars saved San Francisco. The militia got drunk and killed people. The hoodlums south of Market street were all burned out and they swarmed up in the swell quarter. The report was that they meant to fire the houses of the rich which had not been destroyed. Every night a west wind blows from the Pacific, and they meant to start the fire at the west end. That had to be guarded against.”

Mr. Oelrichs had fitted up apartments in the St. Francis, packed with curios and rarities to the extent of $20,000. These were all burned.

The operators and officials of the Postal Telegraph Company remained in the main office of the company at the corner of Market and Montgomery streets, opposite the Palace Hotel, until they were ordered out of the building because of the danger from the dynamite explosions in the immediate vicinity. The men proceeded to Oakland, across the bay, and took possession of the office there.

Before the offices of the telegraph companies in hundreds of cities excited crowds of men and women surged back and forth the morning of the catastrophe, all imploring the officials to send a message through for them to the stricken city to bring back some word from dear ones in peril there. It was explained that there was only one wire in operation and that imperative orders had been received that it was to be used solely for company purposes, press dispatches and general news.

Mr. Sternberger of New York was on the fourth floor of the St. Francis, with his wife, son and a maid. After hurriedly dressing he and his family rushed into Union square.

“We had hardly got seated,” said Mr. Sternberger, “when firemen came along asking for volunteers to take bodies from the ruins just above the hotel. There was a ready and willing response. It was a low building on which had toppled a lofty one, and all in the former were buried in the debris. We heard the stifled cries and prayers, ‘For God’s sake, come this way,’‘O, lift this off my back,’ ‘My God, I’m dying,’ and others, nerving us to greater efforts.

“Finally we got to some of them. Bruised, bleeding, blinded by smoke and dust, terrified past reason, the poor fellows who fell in the street fell from utter exhaustion. Those that were penned away below we could not reach, and their seeming far-off cries for mercy and life will ring in my ears till death.”

Henry Herz, a New York traveling man, after a terrible experience, made his escape and constituted himself a traveling relief committee. At Sacramento he organized a shipment of eggs. At Reno he set the housewives to baking bread, and in Salt Lake City he had raised a potato fund of $400. Mr. Herz crossed the bay in a launch. The boatman asked him how much money he had, and when he replied, with a mental reservation, $46.60, the boatman charged him $46.60 and collected the money in advance.

Worn by the exposure, hardships, and terrors of a two days’ effort to escape from the stricken city, Mrs. D. M. Johnson of Utica, N. Y., and Miss Martha Stibbals of Erie, Pa., passed through Denver.

“The first that we knew of the earthquake was when we were awakened in our room at the Randolph Hotel by a terrific shaking which broke loose fragments of the ceiling,” said Miss Stibbals. “There followed a tremendous shock which shook the building sideways and tossed it about with something like a spiral motion. When we reached the street people were running hither and thither.

“Fire was breaking out in hundreds of places over the city and the streets were becoming crowded with hurrying refugees. Where they were unable to procure horses, men and women had harnessed themselves to carriages and were drawing their belongings to places of safety. As we passed through the residence district where wealthy people lived we saw automobiles drawn up and loaded down before houses. Their owners remaineduntil the flames came too near, and then, getting into the machines, made for the hills.

“We saw one man pay $2,000 for an automobile in which to take his family to a place of safety.”

“I climbed over bodies, picked my way around flaming debris, and went over almost insurmountable obstacles to get out of San Francisco,” said C. C. Kendall, a retired Omaha capitalist, upon his arrival home.

“I arrived in San Francisco the night previous to the earthquake. I was awakened about 5:15 in the morning by being thrown out of my bed in the Palace Annex. I rushed to the window and looked out. The houses were reeling and tumbling like playthings. I hurried on clothing and ran into the street. Here I saw many dead and the debris was piled up along Market street.

“I went to the office of the Palace Hotel and there men, women, and children were rushing about, crazed and frantic in their night clothes. The first shock lasted only twenty-eight seconds, but it seemed to me two hours.

“A few minutes after I reached the Palace Hotel office the second shock came. It was light, compared with the first, but it brought to the ground many of the buildings that the first shock had unsettled.

“Fires were breaking out in every direction. Market street had sunk at least four feet. I started for the ferry. It is only a few blocks from the Palace Annex to the ferry, but it took me from 6 a. m. to 10:15 a. m. to cover the space.

“Men and women fought about the entrance of the ferry like a band of infuriated animals.

“I made my escape—I do not remember how, for I was as desperate as any of them. As the boat pulled over the bay the smoke and flame rose sky high and the roar of falling buildings and the cries of the people rent the air.”

J. C. Gill, of Philadelphia, told his experiences as follows:“Mrs. Gill and myself were in a room on the third floor of the hotel. We were awakened by the rocking of our beds. Then they seemed to be lifted from their legs, suspended in the air, and as suddenly dropped, while the plaster began cracking and falling. We arose and left our room after putting on a few clothes. We felt that with every step we were treading on glass and that the ten stories above us would fall, not allowing us to escape alive. But once outside the building and with our friends I began to realize what had happened.

“I made my way back to the room and carefully packed our suit cases. I came across a valuable necklace and pearls that my wife in her haste had left behind.

“With hundreds of others we roamed in the park in front of the hotel several hours. When we saw the fire was hemming in the lower part of the city we walked toward the outskirts. Early next morning we decided to leave the city, and started to the ferry. Policemen would stop us, and it was with difficulty and much trepidation that we walked through the burned district, and arrived at the wharf at 5:15, just fifteen minutes before the boat left.

“The scenes we passed through were sickening and indescribable. I fancy that scores of men, wharf rats, who had looted wholesale liquor houses and were maudlin drunk, were burned to death without being the wiser, because of their condition.”

“I had been stopping at the Metropole in Oakland,” said Frederick Lemon of New York, “and Tuesday night went to Frisco, where I stopped at the Terminal hotel, at the foot of Market street. The first shock threw all the loose articles around my room and I attempted to run unclad from the hotel. Just as I walked out the door I was struck by some heavy beams. I was stunned and while I lay there some one from the hotel brought me my clothing.

“At that time the streets were like bedlam. Soldiers were in control, and while the regulars were almost perfect in theirattempts to maintain order the militia men lost their heads. They shot some men without provocation, and never thought to cry ‘halt’ or ‘who comes there?’”

Henry Kohn of Chicago told of a horrible experience he had. “I had a room on the fifth floor of the Randolph Hotel, Mason and O’Farrell streets,” he said. “The first quake threw me out of bed. By the time I reached the second floor the building had ceased shaking, and I went back, got my clothes, and went into the street. In the building across the street twelve persons were killed. About 11 o’clock in the morning we were in the public square, with about 1,500 other refugees, when a severe shock was felt. People became panic stricken; some prayed, women fainted, and children shrieked and cried.

“The stream of people going up Nob and Telegraph hills all Wednesday was a pitiful sight. Many were barefooted and lightly clad. There was nothing to eat or drink.”

Sol Allenberg, a New York bookmaker, was with Kohn at the St. Francis Hotel. “I was sick in my room when the shock struck us,” he said, “and my friend helped me out to a boarding house on the hill. There I had to pay $7 for a room for the rest of the day.

“It was two miles from the fire and I thought I was safe enough when I got into my bed at noon, but about two hours later they awoke me to tell me that the fire was only two blocks away, and we got out only a short time before the house went up in flames.

“No exaggeration of the horrible scenes on the street is possible. There was one poor fellow pinned to earth with a great iron girder across his chest. It in turn was weighted down by a mass of wreckage that could not be moved. He could not be saved from the flames that were sweeping toward him, and begged a policeman to shoot him.

“The officer fired at him and missed him, and then an old man crawled through the debris and cut the arteries in the man’s wrists. The crowd hurried on and left him to die alone.”

A Graphic Pen Picture of San Francisco in Flames and in Ruins—Scenes and Stories of Human Interest where Millionaires and Paupers Mingled in a Common Brotherhood—A Harrowing Trip in an Automobile.

AMONG the most graphic and interesting pen pictures of scenes within and without the stricken city were those of Harry C. Carr, a newspaper photographer and correspondent of Los Angeles. This is his personal narrative:

I started from Los Angeles for the stricken city on that pitiful first train whose passengers were nearly all San Francisco men trying frantically to get back to their wives and children, whose fate they could only imagine.

All one terrible day I walked about through the lanes of the charred ruins that had once been San Francisco. I was one of the hungry who robbed grocery stores for their food; one of the parched thousands who eagerly drank water out of the gutter leakage of the fire engines.

After hours of discouraging failure, of being turned back by the sentries, with the sound of dynamited houses ringing in my ears, I managed at last to join the long caravan of homeless families carrying all the property left to them in the world in sheets.

Sometimes I walked with the daughter of a Van Ness avenue millionaire lugging a bundle over her shoulder, and again with a Chinaman moaning piteously over the loss of his laundry.

I came out of San Francisco on that broken-hearted first train carrying refugees, whose faces streamed with tears as they tookthe last look from the Pullman windows at the weirdly beautiful red fringe of fire creeping along the ridges of the distant hills, burning the remnants of San Francisco.

An hour after the first word reached Los Angeles on that fateful Wednesday morning our train pulled out of the depot. There was an ominous number of reservations for Santa Barbara on the chair car. Most of the San Francisco men came on board there.

Beyond San Luis Obispo, two big freight trains were stalled by a cave-in caused by the earthquake. They crawled out just in time—before every one went mad.

At Salinas, about dark, the conductor came back, shaking his head; a freight train ahead at Pajaro had been completely buried by a mountain of earth hurled in the quake.

The men said it was likely to be a week before any train went through.

Three or four of us hurried into the town looking for an automobile. One of the passengers on the train was Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, and the news had been kept from her until this delay.

Strange to say, there were a number of automobiles in town, but none were to be had. One man was hurrying through from Los Angeles in his own touring car with his three boys to find his wife, their mother, who was somewhere in the burning city.

We were getting ready to hire saddle horses when the twin lights of an automobile came glaring down the street. There were two New England spinsters aboard. They had been in the Palace Hotel when the clerk telephoned to their rooms to tell them the city was burning and that the hotel was about to be blown up by dynamite by the soldiers of the Engineer Corps.

They hired an auto to San Jose at an outrageous price and paid $75 to be taken from there to Salinas. Had it not been for a bridge which kind Heaven smashed, I guess they would have been going yet. As it was, we persuaded them that the trainwas the place for them and managed to hire the automobile back to San Jose. The cost was $20 a seat.

Men came to us and begged like frightened children to be taken; but we dared not risk a breakdown and had to refuse. But never shall I forget the look that was in their eyes.

We started at 10:30 and rode all night. It was bitterly cold and we suffered terribly, not having overcoats. The chauffeur had been using his auto all that morning taking medicines to the demolished insane asylum at Agnews.

His story of the scenes there was horrible. Scores of dead were lying stretched on the lawns and others were walking about hideously wounded. Amid this scene an insane woman was wandering, blithely singing little songs of her own improvision about the earthquake and the killing.

One giant maniac had broken his shackles and rescued one of the guards from the building. He had just one sane moment; long enough to be a hero. Then he fled howling into the hills.

It was just dawn when we got to San Jose. Sentries from the militia and special officers were patrolling the streets. A dead line had been established to keep persons away from wrecked buildings. There were jewelry stores whose fronts had been entirely torn off; these would have been plundered.

All through the city we saw people seated on beds on their front lawns, their houses having tumbled. On the front lawn of the Hotel Vendome was a bonfire about which were gathered twenty or thirty people. Every guest of the house had spent the night there with a blanket apiece.

We were just in time to catch the first train to go through to San Francisco. All along the route through such towns as Palo Alto and Belmont, we saw shattered buildings, warehouses with whole sides neatly cut off as though with a knife. One big warehouse of brick had completely buried a freight train standing on a siding.

During the night we could see the dull red glow that camefrom the burning city. Now we could see the huge copper-colored clouds that almost hid the sun. As we came nearer the city we could hear the distant explosions of the dynamite with which the soldiers were wrecking the buildings. They came to us in dull but quick thumps.

The train got no further than Valencia street. As soon as we got off we saw the first stragglers of the great army of the homeless and ruined.

Sentries stopped us before we had gone a block, so a cheerful good-looking young fellow, who had seen first his home and his tailor shop utterly destroyed that morning, offered to be our guide.

He took us past the Hotel Valencia, which was the worst sufferer from the earthquake. The big building had been literally poured out into the street in a stream of splintered wood. No one knows how many people perished in it.

On the corner next the Valencia was a new set of three-story flats, just completed, and most of the flats not yet occupied. As though some one had struck it on top with a giant hammer, the entire building had sunk one story into the ground; you could walk right in at the second story.

Turning down into Steiner street, we were caught in the flood of the strangest tide the world ever saw. There never was anything like this before.

These were people warned to leave their homes from some district newly doomed to the Fire God.

They were trekking, in a long, motley procession, to find some park not already crowded to overflowing.

One of the first that I met was a little family beginning life over again. What they had been able to rescue before the flames came was packed in a little express wagon. The elderly husband was drawing this. Behind him came his wife. With the forethought of a woman, she had either bought or stolen two packages of breakfast food—all that stood between them and starvation.They looked drawn and anxious; and were rather peculiar in this regard.

Most of the refugees leaving their homes were cheerful.

I saw a pretty “tailor-made girl” meeting her friend on the street. One of them had a little bundle of things tied in a handkerchief.

“That’s everything I own in this world,” she said, grinning—positively grinning.

“That’s nothing,” said the other girl, smiling back, “I haven’t a rag to my back or a cent of money, and I’ve lost track of my family somewhere in this crowd.”

“Oh, well, what’s the use of worrying?” And with that they parted.

Another touching little group was led by the father, who carried a sheet tied up with what he could carry. The young mother was dragging a child’s express wagon laden mostly with provisions. Behind her trooped two sweet little girls. One was wrapped up in a big shawl (this was just after sunrise.) A kitten, which she held in her arms, was poking its nose protestingly out from the shawl. Bringing up the rear was the other little tot, hugging a doll under each arm.

A fine looking young fellow in khaki trousers and a fashionable coat was packing an enormous clothes bundle. His young wife was clinging to his arm. It was everything they had left in the world, probably out of years of hard saving, but they were both almost going along with good spirits.

A little further up the street, I saw a refined looking young girl cooking breakfast in the gutter. She wore a handsomely made but badly torn skirt and had a remarkably fine bracelet on one wrist. Her oven was made of two bricks and a toasting grill. A young man was bringing her bits of fire wood and they were consulting together over the frying of bacon.

Further on were two other women doing the same thing and having fun out of it between themselves.

“Is it so very much farther?” was the only complaint that came from one tired little woman who looked ready to faint. She was staggering under the weight of a huge bundle. She looked unused to work and her lips were white and trembling with exhaustion. She rested just a minute, then staggered on without another word of complaint.

Men spoke kindly to her, but none offered to help her, because Woe was the great leveler and all were on the same footing. All the day I spent in San Francisco, I only heard one person speak unkindly to another. I wish I had that young man’s name, just as a curiosity. He had been hired by a woman to drag a big Roman chair filled with treasures up the street.

“There,” he said, insolently, “I have earned all the money I got for that; now take it along yourself.”

Without a word, the woman took the chair from him and wheeled it on herself.

One rather amusing group was wheeling an immense and very handsome dining-room table. The young man who was pulling from the front was protesting vigorously; but the two young girls who shoved from behind, digging their stubby fashionable little oxford ties in the dirt for foothold, urged him peremptorily on. Following them was a half-grown hobbledehoy boy, strong enough to have packed an ox, who was doing his heavy share by carrying a little glass vase.

In a doorway half way up the hill, I saw an old Chinaman sitting with his bundle, which was all he had been able to save. He was just saying, “Oh, oh, oh,” in a curious, half-sobbing moan that never seemed to cease.

The young tailor with me said the Chinaman had lost his laundry and was terror-stricken lest the white people should make him pay for their clothes.

While his own tailor shop was burning, the young tailor said that he was out trying to rescue the trapped victims in the burning Hotel Brunswick.

He could only get hold of one living man. He seemed to be caught in the wreckage, the smoke being too thick to permit one to see just how. Strong hands caught his feet and pulled desperately. When they dragged him out at last, they found that he had been caught under the chin. In pulling him out they cut his throat almost from ear to ear.

As we gained the top of the hill on Steiner street, a San Francisco man who came in with me on the train stopped dead still. “My God; look there!” he said, his voice catching with a sob.

Through the rift of the buildings we caught our first glimpse of the dying city.

“That was Market street,” said the San Francisco man, softly.

He pointed across a vast black plain, hundreds of acres in extent, to a row of haggard, gaunt specters that did seem to be in two lines like a street.

“There’s the City Hall,” he said, tremulously, pointing to a large dome surmounting a pile of ruins and surrounded like some hellish island with vast stretches of smouldering ashes and twisted iron girders.

The San Francisco man found a tottering, blackened pile of wall that he said was Mechanic’s Pavilion, and a sort of thin peak of brick that he said was the new Bell Theater. He would go over the town from the top of the hill and torture himself trying to locate San Francisco’s splendid landmarks in these acres of ash heaps.

Down in the middle of the city I found two young men in a violent argument over the location of Market street in the ashes.

At the pretty little park, Fell and Steiner streets, we came upon one of the strange little cities of refugees. I should pronounce this one of the most select residence districts of San Francisco now. It is the only home of hundreds upon hundreds of once well-to-do San Francisco people now ruined.

It was heart-rending to see the women tidying things up and trying to invent new ideas for attractive homes—trying to maketheir homes look better than their neighbors’, just as they did before.

Some women made odd little bowers of two blankets and a sheet tent.

I passed one tent where a young mother was lying at ease with her little girl, under a parasol. Just as I was going by, the little girl demanded “another.” The mother laughed happily and began, “Well, once upon a time——”

As though one of the stories of all the ages was not going on down the hill below her!

To one of the groups on the lawn came a young man grinning all over and positively swaggering. He was received with shrieks of joy. He had six cans of sardines. He brought them to people who would have been insulted at the idea two days ago.

The San Francisco man invited me into his house, where we saw the wreck of his cut glass and library. But he forgot it all over a rare piece of good fortune that had befallen. The maid had managed to get a whole tea kettle of water. It was vile and muddy; but it was water.

The young tailor told me that he had gone from daylight until 11:30, parching for a drink. The saloons were closed by order of Gen. Funston, but he managed to get beer from a saloon man.

In some parts of the city there is plenty of water. But I saw people rushing eagerly with buckets to catch the water out of gutters where it had leaked from a fire hose. In the first terrible water famine, the firemen broke into sewers and threw sewer water on the fires.

The dramatic moments came as one neighborhood after another was told to pack up and move out. It was the sounding of doom. I saw several of these sorrowful dramas.

One was in an old-fashioned street where old southern houses with iron dogs planted about the lawns had been pressed in upon by lodging-houses and corner groceries. It seemed mockery tothink how the people in the aristocratic old houses must have raged at the intrusion of the corner stores. How futile it seemed now!

Came a dapper young cavalry lieutenant into the street. From their porches people watched him with pathetic anxiety. They could see the sentry’s heels click together and his carbine snap down to a present. With a few words the officer would hurry on.

Making a megaphone of his hands, the sentry would turn and bawl these words up the otherwise silent street: “This street is going to be dynamited; if you want anything in the grocery store, go to it!”

The balance of his remarks, if there were any, would be lost in a shout of applause from the crowds that seemed to smell such things. A rush for the grocery store would follow.

Men would come out laden to staggering with loot—canned goods, flour, bacon, hams, coffee—as much as they could possibly pack.

I saw one little girl not over four. This was the day she always had been dreaming of. Hugged to her heart was an enormous jar of stick candy, big enough to give her stomach-ache for the rest of her life. She could hardly lift it; but she put it down to rest, then went panting on.

At the warning of the sentry, the whole family in each house would rush back through the front door to rescue whatever treasure lay nearest their hearts. They only had four or five minutes. Men would come dragging bureaus and lounges. Often a man would be pulling along the family pride, the woman shoving from behind.

In one thrilling rescue I had the distinction of participating. An elderly woman grabbed me excitedly by the arms and gasped, “Catch it.”

She pointed to a dejected canary perched on a window sill. I shinned gallantly up the side of a dead wall; just touched thecanary bird with the tips of my fingers. It flew and a lady caught it triumphantly like a baseball as it came down. She went away “mothering” it.

Presently, the sentry would shout another warning and the people would scurry away, peeking out from behind safe corners. As if by magic, the streets would be thick with soldiers. The engineers would place the dynamite and they would all hurry out of danger.

Bang! And the grocery store would go scattering into the air.

It must be confessed that the dynamiting did very little good. It seemed to provide fine splintered timber as kindling for fiercer flames which jumped the gap supposed to check them.

The sound of the explosions was to be heard all day long almost like minute guns.

Let a word be interjected here about those splendid boys in blue uniform hurried into the city from the forts about San Francisco. They make one proud of the army. No more superbly policed city ever existed than the burning and stricken San Francisco.

Soldiers seemed to be everywhere. Almost at every street corner with fixed bayonet and ominous cartridge belt. Infantry, cavalry (some mounted infantry) and engineers, all doing sentry duty.

Gen. Funston was in personal command—not from his office, either. He went plowing around the most perilous streets soaked to the skin from the fire engines.

San Francisco in this time of panic and distress was more quiet and orderly than ever before. I saw not a single disturbance of the peace. With it all, the soldiers were polite, and seemed to try in every way to show courtesy and consideration. When they had to order people back, they did it in a quiet and gentlemanly way.

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