THE SAN FRANCISCO CALAMITY BY EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE
A Complete and Accurate Account of the Fearful Disaster which
Visited the Great City and the Pacific Coast, the Reign of Panic
and Lawlessness, the Plight of 300,000 Homeless People and the
World-wide Rush to the Rescue.
TOLD BY EYE WITNESSES
INCLUDING GRAPHIC AND RELIABLE ACCOUNTS OF ALL GREAT EARTHQUAKES
AND VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY, AND SCIENTIFIC
EXPLANATIONS OF THEIR CAUSES.
EDITED BY
CHARLES MORRIS, LL. D.
PREFACE
Earthquake and famine, fire and sudden death--these are the
destroyers that men fear when they come singly; but upon the
unhappy people of California they came together, a hideous
quartette, to slay human beings, to blot from existence the wealth
that represented prolonged and strenuous effort, to bring hunger
and speechless misery to three hundred thousand homeless and
terror-stricken people.
The full measure of the catastrophe can probably never be taken.
The summary cannot be made amid the panic, the confusion, the
removal of ancient landmarks, the complete subversion of the
ordinary machinery of society. When chaos comes, as it did in San
Francisco, and all the channels of familiar life are closed, and
human anguish grows to be intolerable, compilation of statistics is
impossible, even if it were not repugnant to the feelings. And
when order is once more restored, after the lapse of many weeks,
months and perhaps years, the details of the calamity have merged
into one undecipherable mass of misery which defies the analyst and
the historian. It is the purpose of this book faithfully to record
the story of these awful days when years were lived in a moment and
to preserve an accurate chronicle of them, not only for the people
whose hearts yearn in sympathy to-day, but for their posterity.
Other frightful catastrophes the world has known. The earthquake
which dropped Lisbon into the sea in 1755, and in a moment
swallowed up twenty-five thousand people, was perhaps more awful
than the convulsion which has brought woe to San Francisco. When
Krakatoa Mountain, in the Straits of Sunda, in 1883, split asunder
and poured across the land a mighty wave, in which thirty-six
thousand human beings perished, the results also were more
terrible.
The whirlwind of fire which consumed St. Pierre, in the Island of
Martinique, and the devastation wrought by Vesuvius a few days
previous to that at San Francisco, need not be used for comparison
with the latter tragedy, but they may be referred to, that we may
recall the fact that this land of ours is not the only one which
has suffered.
But since the western hemisphere was discovered there has been in
this quarter of the globe no violence of natural forces at all
comparable in destructive fury with that which was manifested upon
the Pacific coast. The only other calamity at all equalling it, or
surpassing it, was the Civil War, and that was the work of the evil
passions of man inciting him to slay his brother, while Nature
would have had him live in peace.
The earthquake in San Francisco, which crumbled strong buildings as
if they were made of paper, would have been terrible enough; but
afterward came the horror of fire and of imprisoned men and women
burned alive, and now to it was added the suffering of multitudes
from hunger and exposure.
Public attention is fixed on the great city; but smaller cities had
their days and nights of destruction, horror and misery. Some were
almost destroyed. Others were partly ruined, and beyond their
borders, over a wide area, the trembling of the earth toppled
houses, annihilated property and transformed riches into poverty.
The cost in life can be reckoned. The money loss will never be
computed, for the appraised value of the wrecked property conveys
no notion of the consequences of the almost complete paralysis, for
a time, of the commercial operations by means of which men and
women earn their bread.
When the weakness and the folly and the sin of men bring woe upon
other men, there are plenty of texts for the preacher and no
scarcity of earnest preachers. But here is a vast and awful
catastrophe that befell from an act of Nature apparently no more
extraordinary than the shrinkage of hot metal in the process of
cooling. The consequences are terrifying in this case because they
involve the habitations of half a million people; but, no doubt,
the process goes on somewhere within the earth almost continuously,
and it no more involves the theory of malignant Nature than that of
an angry God.
If we contemplate it, possibly we may be helped to a profitable
estimate of our own relative insignificance. We think, with some
notion of our importance, of the thousand million men who live upon
the earth; but they are a mere handful of animate atoms in
comparison with the surface, to say nothing of the solid contents,
of the globe itself.
We are fond of boasting in this latter day of man's marvelous
success in subduing the forces of Nature; and, while we are in the
midst of exultation over our victories, Nature tumbles the rocks
about somewhere within the bowels of the earth, and we have to
learn the old lesson that our triumphs have not penetrated farther
than to the very outermost rim of the realms of Nature.
A few weak, almost helpless, creatures, we millions of men stand
upon the deck of a great ship, which goes rolling through space
that is itself incomprehensible, and usually we are so busy with
our paltry ambitions, our transgressions, our righteous labors, our
prides and hopes and entanglements that we forget where we are and
what is our destiny. A direct interposition from a Superior Power,
even if it be hurtful to the body, might be required to persuade us
to stop and consider and take anew our bearings, so that we may
comprehend in some larger degree our precise relations to things.
The wisest men have been the most ready to recognize the
beneficence of the discipline of affliction. If there were no
sorrow, we should be likely to find the school of life
unprofitable.
For one thing, the school wherein sorrow is a part of the
discipline is that in which is developed human sympathy, one of the
finest and most ennobling manifestations of the Love which is, in
its essence, divine. In human life there is much that is ignoble,
and the race has almost contemptible weakness and insignificance in
comparison with the physical forces of the universe.
But man is superior to all these forces in his possession of the
power of affection; and in almost the lowest and basest of the race
this power, if latent and half lost, may be found and evoked by the
spectacle of the suffering of a fellow-creature.
The human family looks on with pity while the homeless and hungry
and impoverished Californians endure pangs. Wherever the news
went, by the swift processes of electricity, there men and women,
some of them, perhaps, hardly knowing where California is, were
sorry and willing and eager to help. There are quarrels within the
family sometimes, when nation wars with nation, and all love seems
to have vanished; but the world is, in truth, akin. "God hath made
of one blood all the nations of the earth," and the blood "tells"
when suffering comes.
THE PUBLISHERS.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
SAN FRANCISCO AND ITS TERRIFIC EARTHQUAKE
CHAPTER II.
THE DEMON OF FIRE INVADES THE STRICKEN CITY
CHAPTER III.
FIGHTING FLAMES WITH DYNAMITE
CHAPTER IV.
THE REIGN OF DESTRUCTION AND DEVASTATION
CHAPTER V.
THE PANIC FLIGHT OF A HOMELESS HOST
CHAPTER VI.
FACING FAMINE AND PRAYING FOR RELIEF
CHAPTER VII.
THE FRIGHTFUL LOSS OF LIFE AND WEALTH
CHAPTER VIII.
WONDERFUL RECORD OF THRILLING ESCAPES
CHAPTER IX.
DISASTER SPREADS OVER THE GOLDEN STATE
CHAPTER X.
ALL AMERICA AND CANADA TO THE RESCUE
CHAPTER XI.
THE SAN FRANCISCO OF THE PAST
CHAPTER XII.
LIFE IN THE METROPOLIS OF THE PACIFIC
CHAPTER XIII.
PLANS TO REBUILD SAN FRANCISCO
CHAPTER XIV.
THE EARTHQUAKE WAVE FELT AROUND THE WORLD
CHAPTER XV.
VESUVIUS DEVASTATES THE REGION OF NAPLES
CHAPTER XVI.
THE GREAT LISBON AND CALABRIAN EARTHQUAKES
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CHARLESTON AND OTHER EARTHQUAKES OF THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE VOLCANO AND THE EARTHQUAKE, EARTH'S DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION
CHAPTER XIX.
THE THEORIES OF VOLCANIC AND EARTHQUAKE ACTION
CHAPTER XX.
THE ACTIVE VOLCANOES OF THE EARTH
CHAPTER XXI.
THE FAMOUS VESUVIUS AND THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII
CHAPTER XXII.
ERUPTIONS OF VESUVIUS, ETNA AND STROMBOLI
CHAPTER XXIII.
SKAPTER JOKULL AND HECLA, THE GREAT ICELANDIC VOLCANOES
CHAPTER XXIV.
VOLCANOES OF THE PHILIPPINES AND OTHER PACIFIC ISLANDS
CHAPTER XXV.
THE WONDERFUL HAWAIIAN CRATERS AND KILAUEA'S LAKE OF FIRE
CHAPTER XXVI.
POPOCATEPETL AND OTHER VOLCANOES OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE TERRIBLE ERUPTION OF KRAKATOA
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MONT PELEE AND ITS HARVEST OF DEATH IN 1902
CHAPTER XXIX.
ST. VINCENT ISLAND AND MONT SOUFRIERE IN 1812
CHAPTER XXX.
SUBMARINE VOLCANOES AND THEIR WORK OF ISLAND-BUILDING
CHAPTER XXXI.
MUD VOLCANOES, GEYSERS AND HOT SPRINGS
THE SAN FRANCISCO CALAMITY BY EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE
CHAPTER I.
San Francisco and Its Terrific Earthquake.
On the splendid Bay of San Francisco, one of the noblest harbors on
the whole vast range of the Pacific Ocean, long has stood, like a
Queen of the West on its seven hills, the beautiful city of San
Francisco, the youngest and in its own way one of the most
beautiful and attractive of the large cities of the United States.
Born less than sixty years ago, it has grown with the healthy
rapidity of a young giant, outvieing many cities of much earlier
origin, until it has won rank as the eighth city of the United
States, and as the unquestioned metropolis of our far Western
States.
It is on this great and rich city that the dark demon of
destruction has now descended, as it fell on the next younger of
our cities, Chicago, in 1872. It was the rage of the fire-fiend
that desolated the metropolis of the lakes. Upon the Queen City of
the West the twin terrors of earthquake and conflagration have
descended at once, careening through its thronged streets, its
marts of trade, and its abodes alike of poverty and wealth, and
with the red hand of devastation sweeping one of the noblest
centres of human industry and enterprise from the face of the
earth. It is this story of almost irremediable ruin which it is
our unwelcome duty to chronicle. But before entering upon this
sorrowful task some description of the city that has fallen a prey
to two of the earth's chief agents of destruction must be given.
San Francisco is built on the end of a peninsula or tongue of land
lying between the Pacific Ocean and the broad San Francisco Bay, a
noble body of inland water extending southward for about forty
miles and with a width varying from six to twelve miles. Northward
this splendid body of water is connected with San Pablo Bay, ten
miles long, and the latter with Suisun Bay, eight miles long, the
whole forming a grand range of navigable waters only surpassed by
the great northern inlet of Puget Sound. The Golden Gate, a
channel five miles long, connects this great harbor with the sea,
the whole giving San Francisco the greatest commercial advantages
to be found on the Pacific coast.
THE EARLY DAYS OF SAN FRANCISCO.
The original site of the city was a grant made by the King of Spain
of four square leagues of land. Congress afterwards confirmed this
grant. It was an uninviting region, with its two lofty hills and
its various lower ones, a barren expanse of shifting sand dunes
extending from their feet. The population in 1830 was about 200
souls, about equal to that of Chicago at the same date. It was not
much larger in 1848, when California fell into American hands and
the discovery of gold set in train the famous rush of treasure
seekers to that far land. When 1849 dawned the town contained
about 2,000 people. They had increased to 20,000 before the year
ended. The place, with its steep and barren hills and its sandy
stretches, was not inviting, but its ease of access to the sea and
its sheltered harbor were important features, and people settled
there, making it a depot of mining supplies and a point of
departure for the mines.
The place grew rapidly and has continued to grow. At first a city
of flimsy frame buildings, it became early a prey to the flames,
fire sweeping through it three times in 1850 and taking toll of the
young city to the value of $7,500,000. These conflagrations swept
away most of the wooden houses, and business men began to build
more substantially of brick, stone and iron. Yet to-day, for
climatic reasons, most of the residences continue to be built of
wood. But the slow-burning redwood of the California hillsides is
used instead of the inflammable pine, the result being that since
1850 the loss by fire in the residence section of the city has been
remarkably small. In 1900 the city contained 50,494 frame and only
3,881 stone and brick buildings, though the tendency to use more
durable materials was then growing rapidly.
Before describing the terrible calamity which fell upon this
beautiful city on that dread morning of April 18, 1906, some
account of the character of the place is very desirable, that
readers may know what San Francisco was before the rage of
earthquake and fire reduced it to what it is to-day.
THE CHARACTER OF THE CITY.
The site of the city of San Francisco is very uneven, embracing a
series of hills, of which the highest ones, known as the Twin
Peaks, reach to an elevation of 925 feet, and form the crown of an
amphitheatre of lower altitudes. Several of the latter are covered
with handsome residences, and afford a magnificent view of the
surrounding country, with its bordering bay and ocean, and the
noble Golden Gate channel, a river-like passage from ocean to bay
of five miles in length and one in width. This waterway is very
deep except on the bar at its mouth, where the depth of water is
thirty feet.
Since its early days the growth of the city has been very rapid.
In 1900 it held 342,782 people, and the census estimate made from
figures of the city directory in 1904 gave it then a population of
485,000, probably a considerable exaggeration. In it are mingled
inhabitants from most of the nations of the earth, and it may claim
the unenviable honor of possessing the largest population of
Chinese outside of China itself, the colony numbering over 20,000.
Of the pioneer San Francisco few traces remain, the old buildings
having nearly all disappeared. Large and costly business houses
and splendid residences have taken their place in the central
portion of the city, marble, granite, terra-cotta, iron and steel
being largely used as building material. The great prevalence of
frame buildings in the residence sections is largely due to the
popular belief that they are safer in a locality subject to
earthquakes, while the frequent occurrence of earth tremors long
restrained the inclination to erect lofty buildings. Not until
1890 was a high structure built, and few skyscrapers had invaded
the city up to its day of ruin. They will probably be introduced
more frequently in the future, recent experience having
demonstrated that they are in considerable measure earthquake
proof.
The city before the fire contained numerous handsome structures,
including the famous old Palace Hotel, built at a cost of
$3,000,000 and with accommodations for 1,200 guests; the nearly
finished and splendid Fairmount Hotel; the City Hall, with its
lofty dome, on which $7,000,000 is said to have been spent, much of
it, doubtless, political plunder; a costly United States Mint and
Post Office, an Academy of Science, and many churches, colleges,
libraries and other public edifices. The city had 220 miles of
paved streets, 180 miles of electric and 77 of cable railway, 62
hotels, 16 theatres, 4 large libraries, 5 daily newspapers, etc.,
together with 28 public parks.
Sitting, like Rome of old, on its seven hills, San Francisco has
long been noted for its beautiful site, clasped in, as it is,
between the Pacific Ocean and its own splendid bay, on a peninsula
of some five miles in width. Where this juts into the bay at its
northernmost point rises a great promontory known as Telegraph
Hill, from whose height homeless thousands have recently gazed on
the smoke rising from their ruined homes. In the early days of
golden promise a watchman was stationed on this hill to look out
for coming ships entering the Golden Gate from their long voyage
around the Horn and signal the welcome news to the town below.
From this came its name.
Cliffs rise on either side of the Golden Gate, and on one is
perched the Cliff House, long a famous hostelry. This stands so
low that in storms the surf is flung over its lower porticos,
though its force is broken by the Seal Rocks. A chief attraction
to this house was to see the seals play on these rocks, their
favorite place of resort. The Cliff House was at first said to
have been swept bodily by the earthquake into the sea, but it
proved to be very little injured, and stands erect in its old
picturesque location.
In the vicinity of Telegraph Hill are Russian and Nob Hills, the
latter getting its peculiar title from the fact that the wealthy
"nobs," or mining magnates, of bonanza days built their homes on
its summit level. Farther to the east are Mount Olympus and
Strawberry Hill, and beyond these the Twin Peaks, which really
embrace three hills, the third being named Bernal Heights. Farther
to the south and east is Rincan Hill, the last in the half moon
crescent of hills, within which is a spread of flat ground
extending to the bay. Behind the hills on the Pacific side
stretches a vast sweep of sand, at some places level, but often
gathered into great round dunes. Part of this has been transformed
into the beautiful Golden Gate Park, a splendid expanse of green
verdure which has long been one of San Francisco's chief
attractions.
Beneath the whole of San Francisco is a rock formation, but
everywhere on top of this extends the sand, the gift of the winds.
This is of such a character that a hole dug in the street anywhere,
even if only to the depth of a few feet, must be shored up with
planking or it will fill as fast as it is excavated, the sand
running as dry as the contents of an hour glass. When there is an
earthquake--or a "temblor," to use the Spanish name--it is the rock
foundation that is disturbed, not the sand, which, indeed, serves
to lessen the effect of the earth tremor.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CITY.
Leaving the region of the hills and descending from their crescent-
shaped expanse, we find a broad extent of low ground, sloping
gently toward the bay. On this low-lying flat was built all of San
Francisco's business houses, all its principal hotels and a large
part of its tenements and poorer dwellings. It was here that the
earthquake was felt most severely and that the fire started which
laid waste the city.
Rarely has a city been built on such doubtful foundations. The
greater part of the low ground was a bay in 1849, but it has since
been filled in by the drifting sands blown from the ocean side by
the prevailing west winds and by earth dumped into it. Much of
this land was "made ground." Forty-niners still alive say that
when they first saw San Francisco the waters of the bay came up to
Montgomery Street. The Palace Hotel was in Montgomery Street, and
from there to the ferry docks--a long walk for any man--the water
had been driven back by a "filling-in" process.
This is the district that especially suffered, that south of Market
and east of Montgomery Streets. Nearly all the large buildings in
this section are either built on piles driven into the sand and mud
or were raised upon wooden foundations. It is on such ground as
this that the costly Post Office building was erected, despite the
protests of nearly the entire community, who asserted that the
ground was nothing but a filled-in bog.
In none of the earthquakes that San Francisco has had was any
serious damage except to houses in this filled-in territory, and to
houses built along the line of some of the many streams which ran
from the hills down to the bay, and which were filled in as the
town grew--for instance, the Grand Opera House was built over the
bed of St. Anne's Creek. A bog, slough and marsh, known as the
Pipeville Slough, was the ground on which the City Hall was built,
and which was originally a burying ground. Sand from the western
shore had blown over and drifted into the marsh and hardened its
surface.
When the final grading scheme of the city was adopted in 1853, and
work went on, the water front of the city was where Clay Street now
is, between Montgomery and Sansome Streets. The present level area
of San Francisco of about three thousand acres is an average of
nine feet above or below the natural surface of the ground and the
changes made necessitated the transfer of 21,000,000 cubic yards
from hills to hollows. Houses to the number of thousands were
raised or lowered, street floors became subcellars or third stories
and the whole natural face of the ground was altered.
Through this infirm material all the pipes of the water and sewer
system of San Francisco in its business districts and in most of
the region south of Market street were laid. When the earthquake
came, the filled-in ground shook like the jelly it is. The only
firm and rigid material in its millions of cubic yards of surface
area and depth were the iron pipes. Naturally they broke, as they
would not bend, and San Francisco's water system was therefore
instantly disabled, with the result that the fire became complete
master of the situation and raged uncontrolled for three days and
nights.
Although the earthquake wrecked the business and residential
portions of the city alike, on the hills the land did not sink.
All "made ground" sank in consequence of the quaking, but on the
high ground the upper parts of the buildings were about the only
portions of the structures wrecked. Most of the damage on the
hills was done by falling chimneys. On Montgomery Street, half a
block from the main office of the Western Union Company, the middle
of the street was cracked and blown up, but during the shocks which
struck the Western Union building only the top stories were
cracked. Similar phenomena were experienced in other localities,
and the bulk of the disaster, so far as the earthquake was
concerned, was confined to the low-lying region above described.
THE BANE OF THE EARTHQUAKE.
From the origin of San Francisco the earthquake has been its bane.
During the past fifty years fully 250 shocks have been recorded,
while all California has been subject to them. But frequency
rather than violence of shocks has been the characteristic of the
seismic history of the State, there having been few shocks that
caused serious damage, and none since 1872 that led to loss of
life.
There was a violent shock in 1856, when the city was only a mining
town of small frame buildings. Several shanties were overthrown
and a few persons killed by falling walls and chimneys. There was
a severe shock also in 1865, in which many buildings were
shattered. Next in violence was the shock of 1872, which cracked
the walls of some of the public buildings and caused a panic.
There was no great loss of life. In April, 1898, just before
midnight, there was a lively shakeup which caused the tall
buildings to shake like the snapping of a whip and drove the
tourists out of the hotels into the streets in their nightclothes.
Three or four old houses fell, and the Benicia Navy Yard, which is
on made ground across the bay, was damaged to the extent of about
$100,000. The last severe shock was in January, 1900, when the St.
Nicholas Hotel was badly damaged.
These were the heaviest shocks. On the other hand, light shocks,
as above said, have been frequent. Probably the sensible quakes
have averaged three or four a year. These are usually tremblings
lasting from ten seconds to a minute and just heavy enough to wake
light sleepers or to shake dishes about on the shelves. Tourists
and newcomers are generally alarmed by these phenomena, but old
Californians have learned to take them philosophically. To one is
not afraid of them, the sensation of one of these little tremblers
is rather pleasant than otherwise, and the inhabitants grew so
accustomed to them as rarely to let them disturb their equanimity.
After 1900 the forces beneath the earth seemed to fall asleep. As
it proved, they were only biding their time. The era was at hand
when they were to declare themselves in all their mighty power and
fall upon the devoted city with ruin in their grasp. But all this
lay hidden in the secret casket of time, and the city kept up to
its record as one of the liveliest and in many respects the most
reckless and pleasure-loving on the continent, its people
squandering their money with thoughtless improvidence and enjoying
to the full all the good that life held out to them.
On the 17th of April, 1906, the city was, as usual, gay, careless,
busy, its people attending to business or pleasure with their
ordinary vim as inclination led them, and not a soul dreaming of
the horrors that lay in wait. They were as heedless of coming
peril and death as the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah before the
rain of fire from heaven descended upon their devoted heads. This
is not to say that they were doomed by God to destruction like
these "cities of the plains." We should more wisely say that the
forces of ruin within the earth take no heed of persons or places.
They come and go as the conditions of nature demand, and if man has
built one of his cities across their destined track, its doom comes
from its situation, not from the moral state of its inhabitants.
THE GREAT DISASTER OF 1906.
That night the people went, with their wonted equanimity, to their
beds, rich and poor, sick and well alike. Did any of them dream of
disaster in the air? It may be so, for often, as the poet tells
us, "Coming events cast their shadows before." But, forewarned by
dreams or not, doubtless not a soul in the great city was prepared
for the terrible event so near at hand, when, at thirteen minutes
past five o'clock on the dread morning of the 18th, they felt their
beds lifted beneath them as if by a Titan hand, heard the crash of
falling walls and ceilings, and saw everything in their rooms
tossed madly about, while through their windows came the roar of an
awful disaster from the city without.
It was a matter not of minutes, but of seconds, yet on all that
coast, long the prey of the earthquake, no shock like it had ever
been felt, no such sudden terror awakened, no such terrible loss
occasioned as in those few fearful seconds. Again and again the
trembling of the earth passed by, three quickly repeated shocks,
and the work of the demon of ruin was done. People woke with a
start to find themselves flung from their beds to the floor, many
of them covered with the fragments of broken ceilings, many lost
among the ruins of falling floors and walls, many pinned in
agonizing suffering under the ruins of their houses, which had been
utterly wrecked in those fatal seconds. Many there were, indeed,
who had been flung to quick if not to instant death under their
ruined homes.
Those seconds of the reign of the elemental forces had turned the
gayest, most careless city on the continent into a wreck which no
words can fitly describe. Those able to move stumbled in wild
panic across the floors of their heaving houses, regardless of
clothing, of treasures, of everything but the mad instinct for
safety, and rushed headlong into the streets, to find that the
earth itself had yielded to the energy of its frightful interior
forces and had in places been torn and rent like the houses
themselves. New terrors assailed the fugitives as fresh tremors
shook the solid ground, some of them strong enough to bring down
shattered walls and chimneys, and bring back much of the mad terror
of the first fearful quake. The heaviest of these came at eight
o'clock. While less forcible than that which had caused the work
of destruction, it added immensely to the panic and dread of the
people and put many of the wanderers to flight, some toward the
ferry, the great mass in the direction of the sand dunes and Golden
Gate Park.
The spectacle of the entire population of a great city thus roused
suddenly from slumber by a fierce earthquake shock and sent flying
into the streets in utter panic, where not buried under falling
walls or tumbling debris, is one that can scarcely be pictured in
words, and can be given in any approach to exact realization only
in the narratives of those who passed through its horrors and
experienced the sensations to which it gave rise. Some of the more
vivid of these personal accounts will be presented later, but at
present we must confine ourselves to a general statement of the
succession of events.
The earthquake proved but the beginning and much the least
destructive part of the disaster. In many of the buildings there
were fires, banked for the night, but ready to kindle the
inflammable material hurled down upon them by the shock. In others
were live electric wires which the shock brought in contact with
woodwork. The terror-stricken fugitives saw, here and there, in
all directions around them, the alarming vision of red flames
curling upward and outward, in gleaming contrast to the white light
of dawn just showing in the eastern sky. Those lurid gleams
climbed upward in devouring haste, and before the sun had fairly
risen a dozen or more conflagrations were visible in all sections
of the business part of the city, and in places great buildings
broke with startling suddenness into flame, which shot hotly high
into the air.
While the mass of the people were stunned by the awful suddenness
of the disaster and stood rooted to the ground or wandered
helplessly about in blank dismay, there were many alert and self-
possessed among them who roused themselves quickly from their
dismay and put their energies to useful work. Some of these gave
themselves to the work of rescue, seeking to save the injured from
their perilous situation and draw the bodies of the dead from the
ruins under which they lay. Those base wretches to whom plunder is
always the first thought were as quickly engaged in seeking for
spoil in edifices laid open to their plundering hands by the shock.
Meanwhile the glare of the flames brought the fire-fighters out in
hot haste with their engines, and up from the military station at
the Presidio, on the Golden Gate side of the city, came at double
quick a force of soldiers, under the efficient command of General
Funston, of Cuban and Philippine fame. These trained troops were
at once put on guard over the city, with directions to keep the
best order possible, and with strict command to shoot all looters
at sight. Funston recognized at the start the necessity of keeping
the lawless element under control in such an exigency as that which
he had to face. Later in the day the First Regiment of California
National Guards was called out and put on duty, with similar
orders.
RESCUERS AND FIRE-FIGHTERS.
The work of fighting the fire was the first and greatest duty to be
performed, but from the start it proved a very difficult, almost a
hopeless, task. With fierce fires burning at once in a dozen or
more separate places, the fire department of the city would have
been inadequate to cope with the demon of flame even under the best
of circumstances. As it was, they found themselves handicapped at
the start by a nearly total lack of water. The earthquake had
disarranged and broken the water mains and there was scarcely a
drop of water to be had, so that the engines proved next to
useless. Water might be drawn from the bay, but the centre of the
conflagration was a mile or more away, and this great body of water
was rendered useless in the stringent exigency.
The only hope that remained to the authorities was to endeavor to
check the progress of the flames by the use of dynamite, blowing up
buildings in the line of progress of the conflagration. This was
put in practice without loss of time, and soon the thunder-like
roar of the explosions began, blasts being heard every few minutes,
each signifying that some building had been blown to atoms. But
over the gaps thus made the flames leaped, and though the brave
fellows worked with a desperation and energy of the most heroic
type, it seemed as if all their labors were to be without avail,
the terrible fire marching on as steadily as if a colony of ants
had sought to stay its devastating progress.
THE HORROR OF THE PEOPLE.
It was with grief and horror that the mass of the people gazed on
this steady march of the army of ruin. They were seemingly half
dazed by the magnitude of the disaster, strangely passive in the
face of the ruin that surrounded them, as if stunned by despair and
not yet awakened to a realization of the horrors of the situation.
Among these was the possibility of famine. No city at any time
carries more than a few days' supply of provisions, and with the
wholesale districts and warehouse regions invaded by the flames the
shortage of food made itself apparent from the start. Water was
even more difficult to obtain, the supply being nearly all cut off.
Those who possessed supplies of food and liquids of any kind in
many cases took advantage of the opportunity to advance their
prices. Thus an Associated Press man was obliged to pay twenty-
five cents for a small glass of mineral water, the only kind of
drink that at first was to be had, while food went up at the same
rate, bakers frequently charging as much as a dollar for a loaf.
As for the expressmen and cabmen, their charges were often
practically prohibitory, as much as fifty dollars being asked for
the conveyance of a passenger to the ferry. Policemen were early
stationed at some of the retail shops, regulating the sale and the
price of food, and permitting only a small portion to be sold to
each purchaser, so as to prevent a few persons from exhausting the
supply.
The fire, the swaying and tottering walls, the frequent dynamite
explosions, each followed by a crashing shower of stones and
bricks, rendered the streets very unsafe for pedestrians, and all
day long the flight of residents from the city went on, growing
quickly to the dimensions of a panic. The ferryboats were crowded
with those who wished to leave the city, and a constant stream of
the homeless, carrying such articles as they had rescued from their
homes, was kept up all day long, seeking the sand dunes, the parks
and every place uninvaded by the flames. Before night Golden Gate
Park and the unbuilt districts adjoining on the ocean side
presented the appearance of a tented city, shelter of many kinds
being improvised from bedding and blankets, and the people settling
into such sparse comfort as these inadequate means provided.
A strange feature of the disaster was a rush to the banks by people
who wished to get their money and flee from the seemingly doomed
city. The fire front was yet distant from these institutions,
which were destined to fall a prey to the flames, and all that
morning lines of dishevelled and half-frantic men stood before the
banks on Montgomery and Sansome Streets, braving in their thirst
for money the smoke and falling embers and beating in wild anxiety
upon the doors. Their effort was vain; the doors remained closed;
finally the police drove these people away, and the banks went on
with the work of saving their valuables. As for the people who
wildly fled toward the ferries, in spite of the fact that ten
blocks of fire, as the day went on, stopped all egress in that
direction, it became necessary for them to be driven back by the
police and the troops, and they were finally forced to seek safety
in the sands. And thus, with incident manifold, went on that fatal
Wednesday, the first day of the dread disaster.
OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE EARTHQUAKE.
It is important here to give the official record of the earthquake
shocks, as given by the scientists. Professor George Davidson, of
the University of California, says of them:
"The earthquake came from north to south, and the only description
I am able to give of its effect is that it seemed like a terrier
shaking a rat. I was in bed, but was awakened by the first shock.
I began to count the seconds as I went towards the table where my
watch was, being able through much practice closely to approximate
the time in that manner. The shock came at 5.12 o'clock. The
first sixty seconds were the most severe. From that time on it
decreased gradually for about thirty seconds. There was then the
slightest perceptible lull. Then the shock continued for sixty
seconds longer, being slighter in degree in this minute than in any
part of the preceding minute and a half. There were two slight
shocks afterwards which I did not time. At 8.14 o'clock I recorded
a shock of five seconds' duration, and one at 4.15 of two seconds.
There were slight shocks which I did not record at 5.17 and at
5.27. At 6.50 P. M. there was a sharp shock of several seconds."
Professor A. O. Louschner, of the students' observatory of the
University of California, thus records his observations:
"The principal part of the earthquake came in two sections, the
first series of vibrations lasting about forty seconds. The
vibrations diminished gradually during the following ten seconds,
and then occurred with renewed vigor for about twenty-five seconds
more. But even at noon the disturbance had not subsided, as slight
shocks are recorded at frequent intervals on the seismograph. The
motion was from south-southeast to north-northwest.
"The remarkable feature of this earthquake, aside from its
intensity, was its rotary motion. As seen from the print, the sum
total of all displacements represents a very regular ellipse, and
some of the lines representing the earth's motion can be traced
along the whole circumference. The result of observation indicates
that our heaviest shocks are in the direction south-southeast to
north-northwest. In that respect the records of the three heaviest
earthquakes agree entirely. But they have several other features
in common. One of these is that while the displacements are very
large the vibration period is comparatively slow, amounting to
about one second in the last two big earthquakes."
If we seek to discover the actual damage done by the earthquake,
the fact stands out that the fire followed so close upon it that
the traces of its ravages were in many cases obliterated. So many
buildings in the territory of the severest shock fell a prey to the
flames or to dynamite that the actual work of the earth forces was
made difficult and in many places impossible to discover. This
fact is likely to lead to considerable dispute and delay when the
question of insurance adjustment comes up, many of the insurance
companies confining their risk to fire damage and claiming
exemption from liability in the case of damage due to earthquake.
Among the chief victims of the earth-shake was the costly and showy
City Hall, with its picturesque dome standing loftily above the
structure. This dome was left still erect, but only as a skeleton
might stand, with its flesh gone and its bare ribs exposed to the
searching air. Its roof, its smaller towers came tumbling down in
frightful disarray, and the once proud edifice is to-day a
miserable wreck, fire having aided earthquake in its ruin. The new
Post Office, a handsome government building, also suffered severely
from the shock, its walls being badly cracked and injury done by
earthquake and fire that it is estimated will need half a million
dollars to repair.
FREAKS OF THE EARTHQUAKE.
One observer states that the earthquake appeared to be very
irregular in its course. He tells us that "there are gas
reservoirs with frames all twisted and big factories thrown to the
ground, while a few yards away are miserable shanties with not a
board out of place. Wooden, steel and brick structures hardly felt
the earthquake in some parts of the city, while in other places all
were wrecked.
"Skirting the shore northwest from the big ferry building--which
was so seriously injured that it will have to be rebuilt--the first
thing observed was the extraordinary irregularity of the
earthquake's course. Pier No. 5, for instance, is nothing but a
mass of ruins, while Pier No. 3, on one side of it and Pier No. 7,
on the other side, similar in size and construction, are undamaged.
Farther on, the Kosmos Line pier is a complete wreck."
The big forts at the entrance to the Golden Gate also suffered
seriously from the great shake-up, and the emplacements of the big
guns were cracked and damaged. The same is the case with the
fortifications back of Old Fort Point, the great guns in these
being for the present rendered useless. It will take much time and
labor to restore their delicate adjustment upon their carriages.
The buildings that collapsed in the city were all flimsy wooden
buildings and old brick structures, the steel frame buildings, even
the score or more in course of construction, escaping injury from
the earthquake shock. Of the former, one of the most complete
wrecks was the Valencia Hotel, a four-story wooden building, which
collapsed into a heap of ruins, pinning many persons under its
splintered timbers.
SKYSCRAPERS EARTHQUAKE PROOF.
In fact, as the reports of damage wrought by the earthquake came
in, the conviction grew that one of the safest places during the
earthquake shock was on one of the upper floors of the skyscraper
office buildings or hotels. As a matter of fact, not a single
person, so far as can be learned, lost his or her life or was
seriously injured in any of the tall, steel frame structures in the
city, although they rocked during the quake like a ship in a gale.
The loss of life was caused in almost every case by the collapse of
frame structures, which the native San Franciscan believed was the
safest of all in an earthquake, or by the shaking down of portions
of brick or stone buildings which did not possess an iron
framework. The manner in which the tall steel structures withstood
the shock is a complete vindication of the strongest claims yet
made for them, and it is made doubly interesting from the fact that
this is the first occasion on which the effect of an earthquake of
any proportions on a tall steel structure could be studied.
The St. Francis Hotel, a sixteen-story structure, can be repaired
at an expenditure of about $400,000, its damage being almost wholly
by fire. The steel shell and the floors are intact. Although the
building rocked like a ship in a gale while the quake lasted, its
foundations are undamaged. Other steel buildings which are so
little damaged as to admit of repairs more or less extensive are
the James Flood, the Union Trust, the CALL building, the Mutual
Savings Bank, the Crocker-Woolworth building and the Postal
building. All of these are modern buildings of steel construction,
from sixteen to twenty stories.
A peculiar feature of the effect of the earthquake on structures of
this kind is reported in the case of the Fairmount Hotel, a
fourteen-story structure. The first two stories of the Fairmount
are found to be so seriously damaged that they will have to be
rebuilt, while the other twelve stories are uninjured.
Various explanations are being made of the surprising resistance
shown by the skyscrapers. The great strength and binding power of
the steel frame, combined with a deep-seated foundation and great
lightness as compared with buildings of stone, are the main reasons
given. The iron, it is said, unlike stone, responded to the
vibratory force and passed it along to be expended in other
directions, while brick or stone offered a solid and impenetrable
front, with the result that the seismic force tended to expend
itself by shaking the building to pieces.
Whether there is any scientific basis for the latter theory or not,
it seems reasonable enough, in view of the descriptions given us of
the manner in which the steel buildings received the shock. All
things considered, the modern steel building has afforded in the
San Francisco earthquake the most convincing evidence of its
strength.
From Golden Gate Park came news of the total destruction of the
large building covering a portion of the children's playground.
The walls were shattered beyond repair, the roof fell in, and the
destruction was complete. The pillars of the new stone gates at
the park entrance were twisted and torn from their foundations,
some of them, weighing nearly four tons, being shifted as though
they were made of cork. It is a little singular that the monuments
and statues in the city escaped without damage except in the case
of the imposing Dewey Monument, in Union Square Park, which
suffered what appears to be a minor injury.
In this connection an incident of extraordinary character is
narrated. Among the statues on the buildings of the Leland
Stanford, Jr., University, all of which were overthrown, was a
marble statue of Carrara in a niche on the building devoted to
zoology and physiology. This in falling broke through a hard
cement pavement and buried itself in the ground below, from which
it was dug. The singular fact is that when recovered it proved to
be without a crack or scratch. This university seemed to be a
central point in the disturbance, the destruction of its buildings
being almost total, though they had been built with the especial
design of resisting earthquake shocks.
Such was the general character of the earthquake at San Francisco
and in its vicinity. It may be said farther that all, or very
nearly all, the deaths and injuries were due to it directly or
indirectly, even those who perished by fire owing their deaths to
the fact of their being pinned in buildings ruined by the
earthquake shock, while others were killed by falling walls
weakened by the same cause.
On the night of April 23d the earth tremor returned with a slight
shock, only sufficient to cause a temporary alarm. On the
afternoon of the 25th came another and severer one, strong enough
to shake down some tottering walls and add another to the list of
victims. This was a woman named Annie Whitaker, who was at work in
the kitchen of her home at the time. The chimney, which had been
weakened by the great shock, now fell, crashing through the roof
and fracturing her skull. Thus the earth powers claimed a final
human sacrifice before their dread visitation ended.
CHAPTER II.
The Demon of Fire Invades the Stricken City.
The terrors of the earthquake are momentary. One fierce, levelling
shock and usually all is over. The torment within the earth has
passed on and the awakened forces of the earth's crust sink into
rest again, after having shaken the surface for many leagues.
Rarely does the dread agent of ruin leave behind it such a terrible
follower to complete its work as was the case in the doomed city of
San Francisco. All seemed to lead towards such a carnival of ruin
as the earth has rarely seen. The demon of fire followed close
upon the heels of the unseen fiend of the earth's hidden caverns,
and ran red-handed through the metropolis of the West, kindling a
thousand unhurt buildings, while the horror-stricken people stood
aghast in terror, as helpless to combat this new enemy as they were
to check the ravages of the earthquake itself.
Why not quench the fire at its start with water? Alas! there was
no water, and this expedient was a hopeless one. The iron mains
which carried the precious fluid under the city streets were broken
or injured so that no quenching streams were to be had. In some
cases the engine houses had been so damaged that the fire-fighting
apparatus could not be taken out, though even if it had it would
have been useless. A sweeping conflagration and not an ounce of
water to throw upon it! The situation of the people was a
maddening one. They were forced helplessly and hopelessly to gaze
upon the destruction of their all, and it is no marvel if many of
them grew frantic and lost their reason at the sight. Thousands
gathered and looked on in blank and pitiful misery, their strong
hands, their iron wills of no avail, while the red-lipped fire
devoured the hopes of their lives.
In a dozen, a hundred, places the flames shot up redly. Huge,
strong buildings which the earthquake had spared fell an
unresisting prey to the flames. The great, iron-bound, towering
Spreckles building, a steeple-like structure, of eighteen stories
in height, the tallest skyscraper in the city, had resisted the
earthquake and remained proudly erect. But now the flames gathered
round and assailed it. From both sides came their attack. A broad
district near by, containing many large hotels and lodging houses,
was being fiercely burnt out, and soon the windows of the lofty
building cracked and splintered, the flames shot triumphantly
within, and almost in an instant the vast interior was a seething
furnace, the wild flames rushing and leaping within until only the
blackened walls remained.
THE RESISTLESS MARCH OF THE FLAMES.
This was the region of the newspaper offices, and they quickly
succumbed. The Examiner, standing across Third Street from
Spreckles, collapsed from the earthquake shock. A flimsy edifice,
it had long been looked upon as dangerous. Another building in the
rear of this alone resisted both flames and smoke. Across Market
Street from the Examiner stood the Chronicle building, a dozen
stories high. Firmly built, it had borne the earthquake assault
unharmed, but the flames were an enemy against which it had no
defense, and it was quickly added to the victims of the fire-fiend.
Farther down Market Street, the chief business thoroughfare of the
city, stood that great caravansary, the Palace Hotel, which for
thirty years had been a favorite hostelry, housing the bulk of the
visitors to the Californian metropolis. Its time had come. Doom
hovered over it. Its guests had fled in good season, as they saw
the irresistible approach of the conquering flames. Soon it was
ablaze; quickly from every window of its broad front the tongues of
flame curled hotly in the air; it became a thrice-heated furnace,
like so many of the neighboring structures, adding its quota to the
vast cloud of smoke that hung over the burning city, and rapidly
sinking in red ruin to the earth.
All day Wednesday the fire spread unchecked, all efforts to stay
its devouring fury proving futile. In the business section of the
city everything was in ruins. Not a business house was left
standing. Theatres crumbled into smouldering heaps. Factories and
commission houses sank to red ruin before the devouring flames.
The scene was like that of ancient Babylon in its fall, or old Rome
when set on fire by Nero's command, as tradition tells. In modern
times there has been nothing to equal it except the conflagration
at Chicago, when the flames swept to ruin that queen city of the
Great Lakes.
When night fell and the sun withdrew his beams the spectacle was
one at once magnificent and awe-inspiring. The city resembled one
vast blazing furnace. Looking over it from a high hill in the
western section, the flames could be seen ascending skyward for
miles upon miles, while in the midst of the red spirals of flame
could be seen at intervals the black skeletons and falling towers
of doomed buildings. Above all this hung a dense pall of smoke,
showing lurid where the flames were reflected from its dark and
threatening surface. To those nearer the scene presented many
pathetic and distressing features, the fire glare throwing weird
shadows over the worn and panic-stricken faces of the woe-begone
fugitives, driven from their homes and wandering the streets in
helpless misery. Many of them lay sleeping on piles of blankets
and clothing which they had brought with them, or on the hard
sidewalks, or the grass of the open parks.
THE CARE OF THE WOUNDED.
Through all the streets ambulances and express wagons were
hurrying, carrying dead and injured to morgues and hospitals. But
these refuges for the wounded or receptacles for the dead were no
safer than the remainder of the city. In the morgue at the Hall of
Justice fifty bodies lay, but the approach of the flames rendered
it necessary to remove to Jackson Square these mutilated remnants
of what had once been men. Hospitals were also abandoned at
intervals, doctors and nurses being forced to remove their patients
in haste from the approaching flames.
There is an open park opposite City Hall. Here the Board of
Supervisors met, and, with fifty substantial citizens who joined
them, formed a Committee of Safety, to take in hand the direction
of affairs and to seek safe quarters for the dying and the dead.
Strangely enough, Mechanics' Pavilion, opposite City Hall, had
escaped injury from the earthquake, though it was only a wooden
building. It had the largest floor in San Francisco, and was
pressed into service at once. The police and the troops, working
in harmony together, passed the word that the dead and injured
should be brought there, the hospitals and morgue having become
choked, and the order was quickly obeyed, until about 400 of the
hurt, many of them terribly mangled, were laid in improvised cots,
attended by all the physicians and trained nurses who could be
obtained.
The corpses were much fewer, the workers being too busy in fighting
the fire and caring for the wounded to give time and attention as
yet to the dead. But one of the first wagons to arrive brought a
whole family--father, mother and three children--all dead except
the baby, which had a broken arm and a terrible cut across the
forehead. They had been dragged from the ruins of their house on
the water front. A large consignment of bodies, mostly of
workingmen, came from a small hotel on Eddy Street, through the
roof of which the upper part of a tall building next door had
fallen, crushing all below.
FIRE ATTACKS THE MINT.
To return to the story of the conflagration, the escape of the
United States Mint was one of the most remarkable incidents.
Within the vaults of this fine structure was the vast sum of
$300,000,000 in gold and silver coin and a value of $8,000,000 in
bullion, and toward this mighty sum of wealth the flames swept on
all sides, as if eager to add the reservoir of the precious metals
to their spoils. The Mint building passed through the earthquake
with little damage, though its big smokestacks were badly shaken.
The fire seemed bent on making it its prey, every building around
it being burned to the ground, and it remaining the only building
for blocks that escaped destruction.
Its safety was due to the energy and activity of its employees.
Superintendent Leach reached it shortly after the shock and found a
number of men already there, whom he stationed at points of vantage
from roof to basement. The fire apparatus of the Mint was brought
into service and help given by the fire department, and after a
period of strenuous labor the flames were driven back. The peril
for a time was critical, the windows on Mint Avenue taking fire and
also those on the rear three stories, and the flames for a time
pouring in and driving back the workers. The roof also caught
fire, but the men within fought like Titans, and efficient aid was
given by a squad of soldiers sent to them. In the end the fire
fiend was vanquished, though considerable damage was done to the
adjusting rooms and the refinery, while the heavy stone cornice on
that side of the building was destroyed. The total loss to the
Mint was later estimated at $15,000.
Late on Wednesday evening the fire front crept close up to
Mechanics' Pavilion, where a corps of fifty physicians and numerous
nurses were active in the work of relief to the wounded.
Ambulances and automobiles were busy unloading new patients rescued
from the ruins when word came that the building would have to be
vacated in haste. Every available vehicle was at once pressed into
service and the patients removed as rapidly as possible, being
taken to hospitals and private houses in the safer parts of the
city. Hardly had the last of the injured been carried through the
door when the roof was seen to be in a blaze, and shortly afterward
the whole building burst into a whirlwind of flame.
At midnight the fire was raging and roaring with unslacked rage,
and at dawn of Thursday its fury was undiminished. The work of
destruction was already immense. In much of the Hayes Valley
district, south of McAllister and north of Market Street, the
destruction was complete. From the Mechanics' Pavilion and St.
Nicholas Hotel opposite down to Oakland Ferry the journey was
heartrending, the scene appalling. On each side was ruin, nothing
but ruin, and hillocks of masonry and heaps of rubbish of every
description filled to its middle the city's greatest thoroughfare.
Across an alley from the Post Office stood the Grant Building, one
of the headquarters of the army. Of this only the smoke-darkened
walls were left. On Market Street opposite this building the
beautiful front of the Hibernian Savings Bank, the favorite
institution of the middle and poorer classes, presented a hideous
aspect of ruin. At eleven o'clock of Wednesday night the north
side of Market Street stood untouched, and hopes were entertained
that the great Flood, Crocker, Phelan and other buildings would be
spared, but the hunger of the fire fiend was not yet satiated, and
the following day these proud structures had only their blackened
ruins to show. On both sides of Market Street, down to the ferry,
the tale was the same. The handsome and gigantic St. Francis
Hotel, on Powell Street, fronting on Union Square, was left a
ruined shell. This was one of the lofty steel structures that bore
unharmed the earthquake shock, but quickly succumbed to the flames.
Among the other skyscrapers north of Market Street that perished
were the fourteen-story Merchants' Exchange, and the great Mills
Building, occupying almost an entire block.
One section of the city that went without pity, as it had long
stood with reprobation, was that group of disreputable buildings
known as Chinatown, the place of residence of many thousands of
Celestials. The flames made their way unchecked in this direction,
and by noon on Thursday the whole section was a raging furnace, the
denizens escaping with what they could carry of their simple
possessions. On the farther western side the flames cut a wide
swath to Van Ness Avenue, a wide thoroughfare, at which it was
hoped the march of the fire in this direction might be checked,
especially as the water mains here furnished a weak supply.
In the Missouri district, to the south of Market Street, the zone
of ruin extended westward toward the extreme southern portion, but
was checked at Fourteenth and Missouri Streets by the wholesale use
of dynamite. At this point were located the Southern Pacific
Hospital, the St. Francis Hospital and the College of Physicians
and Surgeons. In order to save these institutions, buildings were
blown up all around them, and by noon the danger was averted. It
later became necessary to destroy the Southern Pacific Hospital
with dynamite, the patients having been removed to places of
safety.
THE PALACES ON NOB'S HILL.
In the centre of San Francisco rises the aristocratic elevation
known as Nob's Hill, on which the early millionaires built their
homes, and on which stood the city's most palatial residences. It
ascends so abruptly from Kearney Street that it is inaccessible to
any kind of vehicle, the slope being at any angle little short of
forty-five degrees. It is as steep on the south side, and the only
approach by carriage is from the north. To this hill is due the
pioneer cable railway, built in the early '70's.
Here the "big four" of the railroad magnates--Stanford, Hopkins,
Huntington and Crocker--had put millions in their mansions, the
Mark Hopkins residence being said to have cost $2,500,000. These
men are all dead, and the last named edifice has been converted
into the Hopkins Art Institute, and at the time of the fire was
well filled with costly art treasures. The Stanford Museum, which
also contains valuable objects of art, is now the property of the
Leland Stanford University. The Flood mansion, which cost more
than $1,000,000, was one of the showy residences on this hill, west
of it being the Huntington home and farther west the Crocker
residence, with its broad lawns and magnificent stables. Many
other beautiful and costly houses stood on this hill, and opposite
the Stanford and Hopkins edifices the great Fairmount Hotel had for
two years past been in process of construction and was practically
completed. On the northeastern slope of this hill stood the famous
Chinatown, through which it was necessary to pass to ascend Nob's
Hill from the principal section of the wholesale district.
This region of palaces was the next to fall a prey to the
insatiable flames. Early Thursday morning a change in the wind
sent the fire westward, eating its way from the water front north
of Market Street toward Nob's Hill. Steadily but surely it climbed
the slope, and the Stanford and Hopkins edifices fell victims to
its fury. Others of the palaces of millionairedom followed. Huge
clouds of smoke enveloped the beautiful white stone Fairmount
Hotel, and there was a general feeling of horror when this
magnificent structure seemed doomed. To it the Committe of Safety
had retreated, but the flames from the burning buildings opposite
reached it, and the committee once more migrated in search of safe
quarters. Fortunately, it escaped with little damage, its walls
remaining intact and much of the interior being left in a state of
preservation, warranting its managers to offer space within it to
the committees whose aim it was to help the homeless or to store
supplies. Some of the woodwork of the building was destroyed by
the fire, but the structure was in such good condition that work on
it was quickly resumed, with the statement that its completion
would not be delayed more than three months beyond the date set,
which was November, 19O6.
In the district extending northwestwardly from Kearney Street and
Montgomery Avenue, untouched during the first day, the fire spread
freely on the second. This district embraces the Latin quarter,
peopled by various nationalities, the houses being of the flimsiest
construction. Once it had gained a foothold there, the fire swept
onward as though making its way through a forest in the driest
summer season.
An apochryphal incident is told of the fire in this quarter, which
may be repeated as one example of the fables set afloat. It is
stated that water to fight the fire here was sadly lacking, the
only available supply being from an old well. At a critical moment
the pump sucked dry, the water in the well being exhausted. The
residents were not yet conquered. Some of them threw open their
cellar doors and, calling for assistance, began to roll out barrels
of red wine. Barrel after barrel appeared, until fully five
hundred gallons were ready for use. Then the barrel heads were
smashed in and the bucket brigade turned from water to wine. Sacks
were dipped in the wine and used for fighting the fire. Beds were
stripped of their blankets and these soaked in the wine and hung
over exposed portions of the cottages, while men on the roofs
drenched the shingles and sides of the houses with wine. The
postscript to this queer story is that the wine won and the
firefighters saved their homes. The story is worth retelling,
though it may be added that wine, if it contained much alcohol,
would serve as a feeder rather than as an extinguisher of flame.
A striking description of the aspect of the city on that terrible
Wednesday is told by Jerome B. Clark, whose home was in Berkeley,
but who did business in San Francisco. He left for the city early
Wednesday morning, after a minor shake-up at home, which he thus
describes:
A VIVID FIRE PICTURE.
"I was asleep and was awakened by the house rocking. With the
exception of water in vases, and milk in pans being spilled, and
one of our chimneys badly cracked, we escaped with nothing but a
bad scare, but I can assure you it was a terrific and terrifying
experience to feel that old house rocking, jolting and jumping
under us, with the most terrible roar, dull, deep and nerve-
racking. It calmed down after that and we went back to bed, only
to get up at six o'clock to find that neighbors had suffered by
having vases knocked from tables, bric-a-brac knocked around, tiles
knocked out of grates and scarcely a chimney left standing. We
thought that we had had the worst of it, so I started over to the
city as usual, reaching there about eight o'clock, and it is just
impossible to describe the scenes that met my eyes.
"In every direction from the ferry building flames were seething,
and as I stood there, a five-story building half a block away fell
with a crash, and the flames swept clear across Market Street and
caught a new fireproof building recently erected. The streets in
places had sunk three or four feet, in others great humps had
appeared four or five feet high. The street car tracks were bent
and twisted out of shape. Electric wires lay in every direction.
Streets on all sides were filled with brick and mortar, buildings
either completely collapsed or brick fronts had just dropped
completely off. Wagons with horses hitched to them, drivers and
all, lying on the streets, all dead, struck and killed by the
falling bricks, these mostly the wagons of the produce dealers, who
do the greater part of their work at that hour of the morning.
Warehouses and large wholesale houses of all descriptions either
down, or walls bulging, or else twisted, buildings moved bodily two
or three feet out of a line and still standing with walls all
cracked.
"The Call building, a twelve-story skyscraper, stood, and looked
all right at first glance, but had moved at the base two feet at
one end out into the sidewalk, and the elevators refused to work,
all the interior being just twisted out of shape. It afterward
burned as I watched it. I worked my way in from the ferry,
climbing over piles of brick and mortar and keeping to the centre
of the street and avoiding live wires that lay around on every
side, trying to get to my office. I got within two blocks of it
and was stopped by the police on account of falling walls. I saw
that the block in which I was located was on fire, and seemed
doomed, so turned back and went up into the city.
"Not knowing San Francisco, you would not know the various
buildings, but fires were blazing in all directions, and all of the
finest and best of the office and business buildings were either
burning or surrounded. They pumped water from the bay, but the
fire was soon too far away from the water front to make any efforts
in this direction of much avail. The water mains had been broken
by the earthquake, and so there was no supply for the fire engines
and they were helpless. The only way out of it was to dynamite,
and I saw some of the finest and most beautiful buildings in the
city, new modern palaces, blown to atoms. First they blew up one
or two buildings at a time. Finding that of no avail, they took
half a block; that was no use; then they took a block; but in spite
of them all the fire kept on spreading.
"The City Hall, which, while old, was quite a magnificent building,
occupying a large square block of land, was completely wrecked by
the earthquake, and to look upon reminded one of the pictures of
ancient ruins of Rome or Athens. The Palace Hotel stood for a long
time after everything near it had gone, but finally went up in
smoke as the rest. You could not look in any direction in the city
but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get
about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth
in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street,
it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent
business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have
withstood the shock better than any others, except well-built frame
buildings. The former lost some of the outside shell, but the
frame stood all right, and in some cases after fire had eaten them
all to pieces, the steel skeleton, although badly twisted and
warped, still stood.
"When I finally left the city, it was all in flames as far as
Eighth Street, which is about a mile and a quarter or half from the
water front. I had to walk at least two miles around in order to
get to the ferry building, and when I got there you could see no
buildings standing in any direction. Nearly all the docks caved in
or sheds were knocked down, and all the streets along the water
front were a mass of seams, upheavals and depressions, car tracks
twisted in all shapes. Cars that had stood on sidings were all in
ashes and still burning."
Wednesday's conflagration continued unabated throughout Thursday,
and it was not until late on Friday that the fire-fighters got it
safely under control. They worked like heroes, struggling almost
without rest, keeping up the nearly hopeless conflict until they
fairly fell in their tracks from fatigue. Handicapped by the lack
of water, they in one case brought it from the bay through lines of
hose well on to a mile in length. Yet despite all they could do
block after block of San Francisco's greatest buildings succumbed
to the flames and sank in red ruin before their eyes.
THE LANDMARKS CONSUMED.
On all sides famous landmarks yielded to the fury of the flames.
For three miles along the water front the ground was swept clean of
buildings, the blackened beams and great skeletons of factories,
warehouses and business edifices standing silhouetted against a
background of flames, while the whole commercial and office quarter
of Market Street suffered a similar fate. We may briefly instance
some of these victims of the flames.
Among them were the Occidental Hotel, on Montgomery Street, for
years the headquarters for army officers; the old Lick House, built
by James Lick, the philanthropist; the California Hotel and
Theatre, on Bush Street; and of theatres, the Orpheum, the Alcazar,
the Majestic, the Columbia, the Magic, the Central, Fisher's and
the Grand Opera House, on Missouri Street, where the Conried Opera
Company had just opened for a two weeks' opera season.
The banks that fell were numerous, including the Nevada National
Bank, the California, the Canadian Bank of Commerce, the First
National, the London and San Francisco, the London, Paris and
American, the Bank of British North America, the German-American
Savings Bank and the Crocker-Woolworth Bank building. A large
number of splendid apartment houses were also destroyed, and the
tide of destruction swept away a host of noble buildings far too
numerous to mention.
At Post Street and Grant Avenue stood the Bohemian Club, one of the
widest known social organizations in the world. Its membership
included many men famous in art, literature and commerce. Its
rooms were decorated with the works of members, many of whose names
are known wherever paintings are discussed and many of them
priceless in their associations. Most of these were saved. There
were on special exhibition in the "Jinks" room of the Bohemian Club
a dozen paintings by old masters, including a Rembrandt, a Diaz, a
Murillo and others, probably worth $100,000. These paintings were
lost with the building, which went down in the flames.
One of the great losses was that of St. Ignatius' Church and
College, at Van Ness Avenue and Hayes Street, the greatest
Jesuitical institution in the west, which cost a couple of millions
of dollars. The Merchants' Exchange building, a twelve-story
structure, eleven of whose floors were occupied as offices by the
Southern Pacific Railroad Company, was added to the sum of losses.
THE FIRE UNDER CONTROL.
For three long days the terrible fire fiend kept up his work, and
the fight went on until late on Friday, when the sweep of the
flames was at length checked and the fire brought under control.
The principal agent in this victory was dynamite, which was freely
used. To its work a separate chapter will be devoted. When at
length the area of the conflagration was limited the wealthiest
part of the city lay in embers and ashes, one of the principal
localities to escape being Pacific Heights, a mile west from Nob's
Hill, on which stood many costly homes of recent construction.
On Friday night the fire that had worked its way from Nob's Hill to
North Beach Street, sweeping that quarter clean of buildings,
veered before a fierce wind and made its way southerly to the great
sea wall, with its docks and grain warehouses. The flames reached
the tanks of the San Francisco Gas Company, which had previously
been pumped out, and on Saturday morning the grain sheds on the
water front, about half a mile north of the ferry station, were
fiercely burning. But the fire here was confined to a small area,
and, with the work of fireboats in the bay and of the firemen on
shore, who used salt water pumped into their engines, it was
prevented from reaching the ferry building and the docks in that
vicinity.
The buildings on a high slope between Van Ness and Polk Streets,
Union and Filbert Streets, were blazing fiercely, fanned by a high
wind, but the blocks here were so thinly settled that the fire had
little chance of spreading widely from this point. In fact, it was
at length practically under control, and the entire western
addition of the city west of Van Ness Avenue was safe from the
flames. The great struggle was fairly at an end, and the brave
force of workers were at length given some respite from their
strenuous labors.
During the height of the struggle and the days of exhaustion and
depression that followed, exaggerated accounts of the losses and of
the area swept by the flames were current, some estimate making the
extent of the fire fifteen square miles out of the total of twenty-
five square miles of the city's area. It was not until Friday, the
27th, that an official survey of the burned district, made by City
Surveyor Woodward, was completed, and the total area burned over
found to be 2,500 acres, a trifle less than four square miles.
This, however, embraced the heart of the business section and many
of the principal residence streets, much of the saved area being
occupied by the dwellings of the poorer people, so that the money
loss was immensely greater than the percentage of ground burned
over would indicate.
CHAPTER III.
Fighting the Flames With Dynamite.
Shaken by earthquake, swept by flames, the water supply cut off by
the breaking of the mains, the authorities of the doomed city for a
time stood appalled. What could be done to stay the fierce march
of the flames which were sweeping resistlessly over palace and
hovel alike, over stately hall and miserable hut? Water was not to
be had; what was to take its place? Nothing remained but to meet
ruin with ruin, to make a desert in the path of the fire and thus
seek to stop its march. They had dynamite, gunpowder and other
explosives, and in the frightful exigency there was nothing else to
be used. Only for a brief interval did the authorities yield to
the general feeling of helplessness. Then they aroused themselves
to the demands of the occasion and prepared to do all in the power
of man in the effort to arrest the conflagration.
While the soldiers under General Funston took military charge of
the city, squads of cavalry and troops of infantry patrolling the
streets and guarding the sections that had not yet been touched by
the flames, Mayor Schmitz and Chief of Police Dinan sprang into the
breach and prepared to make a desperate charge against the platoons
of the fire. This was not all that was needed to be done. From
the "Barbary Coast," as the resort of the vicious and criminal
classes was called, hordes of wretches poured out as soon as night
fell, seeking to slip through the guards and loot stores and rob
the dead in the burning section. Orders were given to the soldiers
to kill all who were engaged in such work, and these orders were
carried out. An associated Press reporter saw three of these
thieves shot and fatally wounded, and doubtless others of them were
similarly dealt with elsewhere.
A band of fire-fighters was quickly organized by the Mayor and
Chief of Police, and the devoted firemen put themselves in the face
of the flames, determined to do their utmost to stay them in their
course. Cut off from the use of their accustomed engines and water
streams, which might have been effective if brought into play at
the beginning of the struggle, there was nothing to work with but
the dynamite cartridge and the gunpowder mine, and they set bravely
to work to do what they could with these. On every side the roar
of explosions could be heard, and the crash of falling walls came
to the ear, while people were forced to leave buildings which still
stood, but which it was decided must be felled. Frequently a crash
of stone and brick, followed by a cloud of dust, gave warning to
pedestrians that destruction was going on in the forefront of the
flames, and that travel in such localities was unsafe.
FIGHTING THE FLAMES.
All through the night of Wednesday and the morning of Thursday this
work went on, hopelessly but resolutely. During the following day
blasts could be heard in different sections at intervals of a few
minutes, and buildings not destroyed by fire were blown to atoms,
but over the gaps jumped the live flames, and the disheartened
fire-fighters were driven back step by step; but they continued the
work with little regard for their own safety and with unflinching
desperation.
One instance of the peril they ran may be given. Lieutenant
Charles O. Pulis, commanding the Twenty-fourth Company of Light
Artillery, had placed a heavy charge of dynamite in a building at
Sixth and Jesse Streets. For some reason it did not explode, and
he returned to relight the fuse, thinking it had become
extinguished. While he was in the building the explosion took
place, and he received injuries that seemed likely to prove fatal,
his skull being fractured and several bones broken, while he was
injured internally. In the early morning, when the fire reached
the municipal building on Portsmouth Square, the nurses, with the
aid of soldiers, got out fifty bodies which were in the temporary
morgue and a number of patients from the receiving hospital. Just
after they reached the street with their gruesome charge a building
was blown up, and the flying bricks and splinters came falling upon
them. The nurses fortunately escaped harm, but several of the
soldiers were hurt, and had to be taken with the other patients to
the out-of-doors Presidio hospital.
The Southern Pacific Hospital, at Fourteenth and Missouri Streets,
was among the buildings destroyed by dynamite, the patients having
been removed to places of safety, and the Linda Vista and the
Pleasanton, two large family hotels on Jones Street, in the better
part of the city, were also among those blown up to stay the
progress of the conflagration.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FIRE.
The fire had continued to creep onward and upward until it reached
the summit of Nob Hill, a district of splendid residences, and
threatened the handsome Fairmount Hotel, then the headquarters of
the Municipal Council, acting as a Committee of Public Safety. As
day broke the flames seized upon this beautiful structure, and the
Council was forced to retreat to new quarters. They finally met in
the North End Police Station, on Sacramento Street, and there
entered actively upon their duties of seeking to check the progress
of the flames, maintain order in the city and control and direct
the host of fugitives, many of whom, still in a state of semi-
panic, were moving helplessly to and fro and sadly needed wise
counsels and a helping hand.
The fire-fighters meanwhile kept up their indefatigable work under
the direction of the Mayor and the chief of their department. The
engines almost from the start had proved useless from lack of
water, and were either abandoned or moved to the outlying
districts, in the vain hope that the water mains might be repaired
in time to permit of a final stand against the whirlwind march of
the flames. The cloud of despair grew darker still as the report
spread that the city's supply of dynamite had given out.
"No more dynamite! No more dynamite!" screamed a fireman as he ran
up Ellis Street past the doomed Flood building at two o'clock on
Friday morning, tears standing in his smoke-smirched eyes.
"No more dynamite! O God! no more dynamite! We are lost!" moaned
the throng that heard his despairing words.
A NEW SUPPLY OF EXPLOSIVES.
So, at that hour, the supply of the explosive exhausted, and not a
dozen streams of water being thrown in the entire fire zone, the
stunned firemen and the stupefied people stood helpless with their
eyes fixed in despair upon the swiftly creeping flames.
Had all been like these the entire city would have been doomed, but
there were those at the head of affairs who never for a moment gave
up their resolution. Dynamite and giant powder were to be had in
the Presidio military reservation, and a requisition upon the army
authorities was made. The louder reverberations as the day
advanced and night came on showed that a fresh supply had been
obtained, and that a new and determined campaign against the
conflagration had been entered upon. Hitherto much of the work had
been ignorantly and carelessly done, and by the hasty and premature
use of explosives more harm than good had been occasioned.
As the fire continued to spread in spite of the heroic work of the
fighting corps, the Committee of Safety called a meeting at noon on
Friday and decided to blow up all the residences on the east side
of Van Ness Avenue, between Golden Gate and Pacific Avenues, a
distance of one mile. Van Ness Avenue is one of the most
fashionable streets of the city and has a width of 125 feet, a fact
which led to the idea that a safety line might be made here too
broad for the flames to cross.
The firemen, therefore, although exhausted from over twenty-four
hours' work and lack of food, determined to make a desperate stand
at this point. They declared that should the fire cross Van Ness
Avenue and the wind continue its earlier direction toward the west,
the destruction of San Francisco would be virtually complete. The
district west of Van Ness Avenue and north of McAllister
constitutes the finest part of the metropolis. Here are located
all of the finer homes of the well-to-do and wealthier classes, and
the resolution to destroy them was the last resort of desperation.
Hundreds of police, regiments of soldiers and scores of volunteers
were sent into the doomed district to warn the people to flee.
They heroically responded to the demand of law and went bravely on
their way, leaving their loved homes and trudging painfully over
the pavements with the little they could carry away of their
treasured possessions.
The reply of a grizzled fire engineer standing at O'Farrell Street
and Van Ness Avenue, beside a blackened engine, may not have been
as terse as that of Hugo's guardsman at Waterloo, but the pathos of
it must have been as great. In answer to the question of what they
proposed to do, he said:
"We are waiting for it to come. When it gets here we will make one
more stand. If it crosses Van Ness Avenue the city is gone."
THE SAVERS OF THE CITY.
Yet the work now to be done was much too important to be left to
the hands of untrained volunteers. Skilled engineers were needed,
men used to the scientific handling of explosives, and it was men
of this kind who finally saved what is left to-day of the city.
Three men saved San Francisco, so far as any San Francisco existed
after the fire had worked its will, these three constituting the
dynamite squad who faced and defied the demon at Van Ness Avenue.
When the burning city seemed doomed and the flames lit the sky
farther and farther to the west, Admiral McCalla sent a trio of his
most trusted men from Mare Island with orders to check the
conflagration at any cost of property. With them they brought a
ton and a half of guncotton. The terrific power of the explosive
was equal to the maniac determination of the fire. Captain
MacBride was in charge of the squad, Chief Gunner Adamson placed
the charges and the third gunner set them off.
Stationing themselves on Van Ness Avenue, which the conflagration
was approaching with leaps and bounds from the burning business
section of the city, they went systematically to work, and when
they had ended a broad open space, occupied only by the dismantled
ruins of buildings, remained of what had been a long row of
handsome and costly residences, which, with all their treasures of
furniture and articles of decoration, had been consigned to hideous
ruin.
The thunderous detonations, to which the terrified city listened
all that dreadful Friday night, meant much to those whose ears were
deafened by them. A million dollars' worth of property, noble
residences and worthless shacks alike, were blown to drifting dust,
but that destruction broke the fire and sent the raging flames back
over their own charred path. The whole east side of Van Ness
Avenue, from the Golden Gate to Greenwich, a distance of twenty-two
blocks, or a mile and a half, was dynamited a block deep, though
most of the structures as yet had stood untouched by spark or
cinder. Not one charge failed. Not one building stood upon its
foundation.
Unless some second malicious miracle of nature should reverse the
direction of the west wind, by nine o'clock it was felt that the
populous district to the west, blocked with fleeing refugees and
unilluminated except by the disastrous glare on the water front,
was safe. Every pound of guncotton did its work, and though the
ruins burned, it was but feebly. From Golden Gate Avenue north the
fire crossed the wide street in but one place. That was at the
Claus Spreckels place, on the corner of California Street.
There the flames were writhing up the walls before the dynamiters
could reach the spot. Yet they made their way to the foundations,
carrying their explosives, despite the furnace-like heat. The
charge had to be placed so swiftly and the fuse lit in such a hurry
that the explosion was not quite successful from the trained
viewpoint of the gunners. But though the walls still stood, it was
only an empty victory for the fire, as bare brick and smoking ruins
are poor food for flames.
Captain MacBride's dynamiting squad had realized that a stand was
hopeless except on Van Ness Avenue, their decision thus coinciding
with that of the authorities. They could have forced their
explosives farther in the burning section, but not a pound of
guncotton could be or was wasted. The ruined blocks of the wide
thoroughfare formed a trench through the clustered structures that
the conflagration, wild as it was, could not leap. Engines pumping
brine through Fort Mason from the bay completed the little work
that the guncotton had left, but for three days the haggard-eyed
firemen guarded the flickering ruins.
The desolate waste straight through the heart of the city remained
a mute witness to the most heroic and effective work of the whole
calamity. Three men did this, and when their work was over and
what stood of the city rested quietly for the first time, they
departed as modestly as they had come. They were ordered to save
San Francisco, and they obeyed orders, and Captain MacBride and his
two gunners made history on that dreadful night.
They stayed the march of the conflagration at that critical point,
leaving it no channel to spread except along the wharf region, in
which its final force was spent. One side of Van Ness Avenue was
gone; the other remained, the fire leaping the broad open space
only feebly in a few places, where it was easily extinguished.
In this connection it is well to put on record an interesting
circumstance. This is that there is one place within pistol shot
of San Francisco that the earthquake did not touch, that did not
lose a chimney or feel a tremor. That spot is Alcatraz Island.
Despite the fact that the island is covered with brick buildings,
brick forts and brick chimneys, not a brick was loosened nor a
crack made nor a quiver felt. When the scientist comes to write he
will have his hands full explaining why Alcatraz did not have any
physical knowledge of the event. It was as if New York were to be
shaken to its foundation, and Governor's Island, quietly pursuing
its military routine, should escape without a qualm.
CHAPTER IV.
The Reign of Destruction and Devastation
Rarely, in the whole history of mankind, has a great city been
overwhelmed by destruction so suddenly and awfully as was San
Francisco. One minute its inhabitants slept in seeming safety and
security. Another minute passed and the whole great city seemed
tumbling around them, while sights of terror met the eyes of the
awakened multitude and sounds of horror came to their ears. The
roar of destruction filled the air as the solid crust of the earth
lifted and fell and the rocks rose and sank in billowing waves like
those of the open sea.
Not all, it is true, were asleep. There was the corps of night
workers, whose duties keep them abroad till day dawns. There were
those whose work calls them from their homes in the early morn.
People of this kind were in the streets and saw the advent of the
reign of devastation in its full extent. From the story of one of
these, P. Barrett, an editor on the Examiner, we select a thrilling
account of his experience on that morning of awe.
AN EDITOR'S NARRATIVE.
"I have seen this whole, great horror. I stood with two other
members of the Examiner staff on the corner of Market Street,
waiting for a car. Newspaper duties had kept us working until five
o'clock in the morning. Sunlight was coming out of the early
morning mist. It spread its brightness on the roofs of the
skyscrapers, on the domes and spires of churches, and blazed along
up the wide street with its countless banks and stores, its
restaurants and cafes. In the early morning the city was almost
noiseless. Occasionally a newspaper wagon clattered up the street
or a milk wagon rumbled along. One of my companions had told a
funny story. We were laughing at it. We stopped--the laugh
unfinished on our lips.
"Of a sudden we had found ourselves staggering and reeling. It was
as if the earth was slipping gently from under our feet. Then came
a sickening swaying of the earth that threw us flat upon our faces.
We struggled in the street. We could not get on our feet.
"I looked in a dazed fashion around me. I saw for an instant the
big buildings in what looked like a crazy dance. Then it seemed as
though my head were split with the roar that crashed into my ears.
Big buildings were crumbling as one might crush a biscuit in one's
hand. Great gray clouds of dust shot up with flying timbers, and
storms of masonry rained into the street. Wild, high jangles of
smashing glass cut a sharp note into the frightful roaring. Ahead
of me a great cornice crushed a man as if he were a maggot--a
laborer in overalls on his way to the Union Iron Works, with a
dinner pail on his arm.
"Everywhere men were on all fours in the street, like crawling
bugs. Still the sickening, dreadful swaying of the earth
continued. It seemed a quarter of an hour before it stopped. As a
matter of fact, it lasted about three minutes. Footing grew firm
again, but hardly were we on our feet before we were sent reeling
again by repeated shocks, but they were milder. Clinging to
something, one could stand.
"The dust clouds were gone. It was quite dark, like twilight. But
I saw trolley tracks uprooted, twisted fantastically. I saw wide
wounds in the street. Water flooded out of one. A deadly odor of
gas from a broken main swept out of the other. Telegraph poles
were rocked like matches. A wild tangle of wires was in the
street. Some of the wires wriggled and shot blue sparks.
"From the south of us, faint, but all too clear, came a horrible
chorus of human cries of agony. Down there in a ramshackle section
of the city the wretched houses had fallen in upon the sleeping
families. Down there throughout the day a fire burned the great
part of whose fuel it is too gruesome a thing to contemplate.
"That was what came next--the fire. It shot up everywhere. The
fierce wave of destruction had carried a flaming torch with it--
agony, death and a flaming torch. It was just as if some fire
demon was rushing from place to place with such a torch."
WRECK AND RUIN.
The magnitude of the calamity became fully apparent after the sun
had risen and began to shine warmly and brightly from the east over
the ruined city. Old Sol, who had risen and looked down upon this
city for thousands of times, had never before seen such a spectacle
as that of this fateful morning. Where once rose noble buildings
were now to be seen cracked and tottering walls, fallen chimneys,
here and there fallen heaps of brick and mortar, and out of and
above all the red light of the mounting flames. From the middle of
the city's greatest thoroughfare ruin, only ruin, was to be seen on
all sides. To the south, in hundreds of blocks, hardly a building
had escaped unscathed. The cracked walls of the new Post Office
showed the rending power of the earthquake. A part of the splendid
and costly City Hall collapsed, the roof falling to the courtyard
and the smaller towers tumbling down. Some of the wharves, laden
with goods of every sort, slid into the bay. With them went
thousands of tons of coal. On the harbor front the earth sank from
six to eight inches, and great cracks opened in the streets.
San Francisco's famous Chinatown, the greatest settlement of the
Celestials on this continent, went down like a house of cards.
When the earthquake had passed this den of squalor and infamy was
no more. The Chinese theatres and joss-houses tumbled into ruins,
rookery after rookery collapsed, and hundreds of their inhabitants
were buried alive. Panic reigned supreme among the fugitives, who
filled the streets in frightened multitudes, dragging from the
wreck whatever they could save of their treasured possessions.
Much the same was the case with the Japanese quarter, which fire
quickly invaded, the people fleeing in terror, carrying on their
backs what few of their household effects they were able to rescue.
As for the people of Chinatown, however, no one knows or will ever
know the extent of the dread fate that overcame them, for no one
knows the secrets of that dark abode of infamy and crime, whose
inhabitants burrowed underground like so many ants; and hid their
secrets deep in the earth.
THE RUIN OF CHINATOWN.
W. W. Overton, of Los Angeles, thus describes the Chinatown dens
and the revelations made by the earthquake and the flames:
"Strange is the scene where San Francisco's Chinatown stood. No
heap of smoking ruins marks the site of the wooden warrens where
the Orientals dwelt in thousands. Only a cavern remains, pitted
with deep holes and lined with dark passageways, from whose depths
come smoke wreaths. White men never knew the depth of Chinatown's
underground city. Many had gone beneath the street level two and
three stories, but now that the place had been unmasked, men may
see where its inner secrets lay. In places one can see passages a
hundred feet deep.
"The fire swept this Mongolian quarter clean. It left no shred of
the painted wooden fabric. It ate down to the bare ground, and
this lies stark, for the breezes have taken away the light ashes.
Joss houses and mission schools, groceries and opium dens, gambling
resorts and theatres, all of them went. These buildings blazed up
like tissue paper.
"From this place I saw hundreds of crazed yellow men flee. In
their arms they bore opium pipes, money bags, silks and children.
Beside them ran the trousered women and some hobbled painfully.
These were the men and women of the surface. Far beneath the
street levels in those cellars and passageways were other lives.
Women, who never saw the day from their darkened prisons, and their
blinking jailors were caught and eaten by the flames."
Devastation spread widely on all sides, ruining the homes of the
rich as well as of the poor, of Americans as well as of Europeans
and Asiatics, the marts of trade, the haunts of pleasure, the
realms of science and art, the resorts of thousands of the gay
population of the Golden State metropolis. To attempt to tell the
whole story of destruction and ruin would be to describe all for
which San Francisco stood. Science suffered in the loss of the San
Francisco Academy of Sciences, which was destroyed with its
invaluable contents. This building, erected fifteen years ago at a
cost of $500,000, was a seven-story building with a rich collection
of objects of science. Much of the academy's contents can never be
replaced. It represented the work of many years. There was a rare
collection of Pacific Sea birds which was the most valuable of its
kind in the world. In fact, the entire collection of birds ranked
very high, was visited by ornithologists from every country, and
was the pride of the city. The academy was founded in 1850, James
Lick, the same man who endowed the Lick Observatory, giving it
$1,000,000, so it was on a prosperous footing. It will take many
years of active labor to replace the losses of an hour or two of
the reign of fire in this institution, while much that it held is
gone beyond restoration.
LOSS TO ART AND SCIENCE.
Art suffered as severely as science, the valuable collections in
private and public buildings being nearly all destroyed. We have
spoken of the rare paintings burned in the Bohemian Club building.
The collections on Nob's Hill suffered as severely. When the
mansions here, the Fairmount Hotel and Mark Hopkins Institute were
approached by the flames, many attempts were made to remove some of
the priceless works of art from the buildings. A crowd of soldiers
was sent to the Flood and the Huntington mansions and the Hopkins
Institute to rescue the paintings. From the Huntington home and
the Flood mansion canvases were cut from the framework with knives.
The collections in the three buildings, valued in the hundreds of
thousands, in great part were destroyed, few being saved from the
ravages of the fire.
The destruction of the libraries, with their valuable collections
of books, was also a very serious loss to the city and its people.
Of these there were nine of some prominence, the Sutro Library
containing many rare books among its 200,000 volumes, while that of
the Mechanics Institute possessed property valued at $2,000,000.
The Public Library occupied a part of the City Hall, the new
building proposed by the city, with aid to the extent of $750,000
by Andrew Carnegie, being fortunately still in embryo.
In the burning of the banks the losses were limited to the
buildings, their money and other valuables being securely locked in
fireproof vaults. But these became so heated by the flames that it
was necessary to leave them to a gradual cooling for days, during
which their treasures were unavailable, and those with deposits,
small or large, were obliged to depend on the benevolence of the
nation for food, such wealth as was left to them being locked up
beyond their reach. It was the same with the United States Sub-
Treasury, which was entirely destroyed by fire, its vaults, which
contained all the cash on hand, being alone preserved. Guards were
put over these to protect their contents against possible loss by
theft.
One serious effect of the conflagration was the general
disorganization of the telegraph system. News items were sent over
the wires, but private messages inquiring about missing friends for
days failed to reach the parties concerned or to bring any return.
That the world received news of the San Francisco disaster during
the dread day after the earthquake is due in part to the courage of
the telegraph operators, who stuck to their posts and, continued to
send news and other messages in spite of great personal danger.
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 it because of the danger of the dynamite explosions
in the immediate vicinity. The men proceeded to Oakland, across
the bay, and took possession of the office there. That night the
company operated seven wires from Oakland, all messages from the
city being taken across the bay in boats. As the days passed on
the service gradually improved, but a week or more passed away
before the general service of the company became satisfactory.
THE DANGER FROM THIRST.
Such news as came from the city was full of tales of horror. For a
number of days one of the chief sources of trouble was from thirst.
Although the earthquake shocks had broken water mains in probably
hundreds of places, strange to say, no water, or very little at
least, appeared on the surface of the ground. Public fountains on
Market Street gave out no relief to the thirsty thousands. At
Powell and Market Streets a small stream of water spurted up
through the cobblestones and formed a muddy pool, at which the
thirsty were glad enough to drink. The soldiers, disregarding the
order not to let people move about, permitted bucket brigades to go
forth and bring back water to relieve the women and the crying
children. To reach the water it was necessary sometimes to go a
mile to one of the four reservoirs which top the hills.
Here is a story told by one observer of incidents in the city
during the fire:
"I talked to one man who slept in Alta Plaza. The fire was going
on in the district south of them, and at intervals all night
exhausted fire-fighters made their way to the plaza and dropped,
with the breath out of them, among the huddled people and the
bundles of household goods. The soldiers, who are administering
affairs with all the justice of judges and all the devotion of
heroes, kept three or four buckets of water, even from the women,
for these men, who kept coming all night long. There was a little
food, also kept by the soldiers for these emergencies, and the
sergeant had in his charge one precious bottle of whisky, from
which he doled out drinks to those who were utterly exhausted.
"Over in a corner of the plaza a band of men and women were
praying, and one fanatic, driven crazy by horror, was crying out at
the top of his voice:
"'The Lord sent it, the Lord!'
"His hysterical crying got in the nerves of the soldiers and bade
fair to start a panic among the women and children, so the sergeant
went over and stopped it by force. All night they huddled together
in this hell, with the fire making it bright as day on all sides;
and in the morning the soldiers, using their sense again,
commandeered a supply of bread from a bakery, sent out another
water squad, and fed the refugees with a semblance of breakfast.
"There was one woman in the crowd who had been separated from her
husband in a rush of the smoke and did not know whether he was
living. The women attended to her all night and in the morning the
soldiers passed her through the lines in her search. A few Chinese
made their way into the crowd. They were trembling, pitifully
scared and willing to stop wherever the soldiers placed them. This
is only a glimpse of the horrible night in the parks and open
places.
"We learn here that many of the well-to-do people in the upper
residence district have gathered in the strangers from the highways
and byways and given them shelter and comfort for the night in
their living rooms and drawing rooms. Shelter seems to have come
more easily than food. Not an ounce of supplies, of course, has
come in for two days, and most of the permanent stores are in the
hands of the soldiers, who dole them out to all comers alike. But
the hungry cannot always find the military stores and the news has
not gotten about, since there are no newspapers and no regular
means of communication.
"An Italian tells me that he was taken in by a family living in a
three-story house in the fashionable Pacific Avenue. There were
twenty refugees who passed the night in the drawing room of that
house, whose mistress took down hangings to make them comfortable.
In the morning all the food that was left over in that home of
wealth was enough flour and baking powder to shake together a
breakfast for the refugees. They were hardly ready to leave that
house when the fire came their way, and the people of the house,
together with the refugees, who included two Chinese, made their
way to the open ground of the Presidio. With them streamed a
procession of folks carrying valuables in bundles.
"There came out, too, tales of both heroism and crime. The firemen
had been at it for thirty-six hours under such conditions as
firemen never before faced, and they do little more than give
directions, while the volunteers, thousands of young Western men
who have remained to see it through, do the work. The troops have
all that they can do to handle the crowds in the streets and
prevent panics. The work of dynamiting, tearing down and rescuing
is in the hands of the volunteers.
"This morning an eddy of flame from the edge of the burning
wholesale district ran up the slope of Russian Hill, the highest
eminence in the city. All along the edge of that hill and up the
slopes are little frame houses which hold Italians and Mexicans. A
corps of volunteer aides ran along the edge of the fire, warning
people out of the houses. But the flames ran too fast and three
women were caught in the upper story of an old frame house. A
young man tore a rail from a fence, managed to climb it, and
reached the window. He bundled one woman out and slid her down the
rail; then the roof caught fire. He seized another woman and
managed to drop her on the rail, down which she slid without
hurting herself a great deal. But the roof fell while he was
struggling with another woman and they fell together into the
flames. There must have been hundreds of such heroisms and dozens
of such catastrophes. We are so drunken and dulled by horror that
we take such stories calmly now. We are saturated."
HOW LOOTING WAS HINDERED.
One thing to be strictly guarded against in those days of
destruction was the outbreak of lawlessness. A city as large as
San Francisco is sure to hold a large number of the brigands of
civilization, a horde who need to be kept under strict discipline
at all times, and especially when calamity lets down for the time
being the bars of the law, at which time many of the usually law-
abiding would join their ranks if any license were allowed. The
authorities made haste to guard against this and certain other
dangers, Mayor Schmitz issuing on Wednesday the following
proclamation:
"The Federal troops, the members of the regular police force and
special police officers have been authorized to kill any and all
persons engaged in looting or in the commission of any other crime.
"I have directed all the gas and electric lighting companies not to
turn on gas or electricity until I order them to do so. You may,
therefore, expect the city to remain in darkness for an indefinite
time.
"I request all citizens to remain at home from darkness until
daylight every night until order is restored.
"I warn all citizens of the danger of fire from damaged or
destroyed chimneys, broken or leaking gas pipes or fixtures or any
like causes."
He also ordered that no lights should be used in the houses and no
fires built in the houses until the chimneys had been inspected and
repaired.
There was need of vigilance in this direction, for the vandals were
quickly at work. Routed out from their dens along the wharves, the
rats of the waterfront, the drifters on the back eddy of
civilization, crawled out intent on plunder. Early in the day a
policeman caught one of these men creeping through the window of a
small bank on Montgomery Street and shot him dead. But the police
were kept too busy at other necessary duties to devote much time to
these wretches, and for a time many of them plundered at will,
though some of them met with quick and sure retribution.
STORIES BY SIGHTSEERS.
One onlooker says: "Were it not for the fact that the soldiers in
charge of the city do not hesitate in shooting down the ghouls the
lawless element would predominate. Not alone do the soldiers
execute the law. On Wednesday afternoon, in front of the Palace
Hotel, a crowd of workers in the mines discovered a miscreant in
the act of robbing a corpse of its jewels. Without delay he was
seized, a rope obtained, and he was strung up to a beam that was
left standing in the ruined entrance of the hotel. No sooner had
he been hoisted up and a hitch taken in the rope than one of his
fellow-criminals was captured. Stopping only to obtain a few yards
of hemp, a knot was quickly tied, and the wretch was soon adorning
the hotel entrance by the side of the other dastard.
"These are the only two instances I saw, but I heard of many that
were seen by others. The soldiers do all they can, and while the
unspeakable crime of robbing the dead is undoubtedly being
practiced, it would be many times as prevalent were it not for the
constant vigilance on all sides, as well as the summary justice."
Another observer tells of an instance of this summary justice that
came under his eyes:
"At the corner of Market and Third Streets on Wednesday I saw a man
attempting to cut the fingers from the hand of a dead woman in
order to secure the rings which adorned the stiffened fingers.
Three soldiers witnessed the deed at the same time and ordered the
man to throw up his hands. Instead of obeying the command he drew
a revolver from his pocket and began to fire at his pursuer without
warning. The three soldiers, reinforced by half a dozen uniformed
patrolmen, raised their rifles to their shoulders and fired. With
the first shots the man fell, and when the soldiers went to the
body to dump it into an alley nine bullets were found to have
entered it."
The warning this severity gave was accentuated in one instance in a
most effective manner. On a pile of bricks, stones and rubbish was
thrown the body of a man shot through the heart, and on his chest
was pinned this placard:
"Take warning!"
Those of the ghouls who saw this were likely to desist from their
detestable work, unless they valued spoils more than life.
Willis Ames, a Salt Lake City man, tells of the kind of justice
done to thieves, as it came under his observation:
"I saw man after man shot down by the troops. Most of these were
ghouls. One man made the trooper believe that one of the dead
bodies lying on a pile of rocks was his mother, and he was
permitted to go up to the body. Apparently overcome by grief, he
threw himself across the corpse. In another instant the soldiers
discovered that he was chewing the diamond earrings from the ears
of the dead woman. 'Here is where you get what is coming to you,'
said one of the soldiers, and with that he put a bullet through the
ghoul. The diamonds were found in the man's mouth afterward."
Others were shot to save them from the horror of being burned
alive. Max Fast, a garment worker, tells of such an instance. He
says:
"When the fire caught the Windsor Hotel at Fifth and Market Streets
there were three men on the roof, and it was impossible to get them
down. Rather than see the crazed men fall in with the roof and be
roasted alive the military officer directed his men to shoot them,
which they did in the presence of 5,000 people."
He further states: "At Jefferson Square I saw a fatal clash between
the military and the police. A policeman ordered a soldier to take
up a dead body to put it in the wagon, and the soldier ordered the
policeman to do it. Words followed, and the soldier shot the
policeman dead."
Among the many stories of this character on record is that of a
concerted effort to break into and rob the Mint, which led to the
death of fourteen men, who were shot down by the guard in charge.
They had disregarded the command of the officer in charge to
desist. They disobeyed, and the death of nearly the whole of them
followed.
DEATH FOR SLIGHT OFFENSE.
As may well be imagined, the privilege given to fire at will was
very likely to lead to examples of unjustifiable haste in the use
of the rifle. Such haste is not charged against the United States
troops, but the militia and volunteer guards showed less judgment
in the use of their weapons. Thus we are told that one man was
shot for the minor offense of washing his hands in drinking water
which had been brought with great trouble for the thirsty people
gathered in Columbia Park. It is also said that a bank clerk,
searching the ruins of his bank under orders, was killed by a
soldier who thought he was looting. More than one seems to have
been shot as looters for entering their own homes.
Among the reports there is one that two men were shot through the
windows of their houses because they disobeyed the general orders
and lit candles, and one woman because she lighted a fire in her
cook stove. Yet, if such unwarranted acts existed, there were
others better deserved. It is said that three men were lined up
and shot before ten thousand people. One was caught taking the
rings from a woman who had fainted, another had stolen a piece of
bread from a hungry child, and the third, little more than a boy,
was found in the act of robbing tents. One thief who escaped the
bullet richly deserved it. He came upon a Miss Logan when lying
unconscious on the floor of the St. Francis Hotel after the
earthquake, and, rather than take the time to wrench some valuable
rings from her hand, cut off the finger bearing them, and left her
to the horrors of the coming fire.
The climax in the too free use of the rifle came on the 23d, when
Major H. C. Tilden, a prominent member of the General Relief
Committee, was shot and killed in his automobile by members of the
citizens' patrol. Two others in the car were struck by bullets.
The automobile had been used as an ambulance and the Red Cross flag
was displayed on it. The excuse of the shooters was that they did
not see the flag and that the car did not stop when challenged.
This act led to an order forbidding the carrying of firearms by the
citizens' committees and to stricter regulation of the soldiers in
the use of their weapons.
Later on looting took a new form different from that at first shown
and was practiced by a different class of people. These were the
sightseers, many of them people of prominence, who entered upon a
crusade of relic hunting in Chinatown, gathering and carrying off
from the ashes of this quarter valuable pieces of chinaware, bronze
ornaments, etc. It became necessary to put a stop to this, and on
April 30th four militiamen were arrested while digging in the ruins
of the Chinese bazaars, and others were frightened away by shots
fired over their heads. A strong military line was then drawn
around the district, and this last resource of the looter came to
an end.
CHAPTER V.
The Panic Flight of a Homeless Host.
The scene that was visible in the streets of San Francisco on that
dread Wednesday morning was one to make the strongest shudder with
horror. Those three minutes of devastating earth tremors were
moments never to be forgotten. In such a time it is the human
instinct to get into the open air, and the people stumbled from
their heaving and quivering houses to find even the solid earth was
swaying and rising and falling, so that here and there great rents
opened in the streets. To the panic-stricken people the minutes
that followed seemed years of terror. Doubtless some among them
died of sheer fright and more went mad with terror. There was a
roar in the air like a burst of thunder, and from all directions
came the crash of falling walls. They would run forward, then
stop, as another shock seemed to take the earth from under their
feet, and many of them flung themselves face downward on the ground
in an agony of fear.
Two or three minutes seemed to pass before the fugitives found
their voices. Then the screams of women and the wild cries of men
rent the air, and with one impulse the terror-stricken host fled
toward the parks, to get themselves as far as possible from the
tottering and falling walls. These speedily became packed with
people, most of them in the night clothes in which they had leaped
or been flung from their beds, screaming and moaning at the little
shocks that at intervals followed the great one. The dawn was just
breaking. The gas and electric mains were gone and the street
lamps were all out. The sky was growing white in the east, but
before the sun could fling his early rays from the horizon there
came another light, a lurid and threatening one, that of the flames
that had begun to rise in the warehouse district.
The braver men and those without families to watch over set out for
this endangered region, half dressed as they were. In the early
morning light they could see the business district below them, many
of the buildings in ruins and the flames showing redly in five or
six places. Through the streets came the fire engines, called from
the outlying districts by a general alarm. The firemen were not
aware as yet that no water was to be had.
THE PANIC IN THE SLUMS.
On Portsmouth Square the panic was indescribable. This old tree
plaza, about which the early city was built, is now in the centre
of Chinatown, of the Italian district and of the "Barbary Coast,"
the "Tenderloin" of the Western metropolis. It is the chief slum
district of the city. The tremor here ran up the Chinatown hill
and shook down part of the crazy buildings on its southern edge.
It brought ruin also to some of the Italian tenements. Portsmouth
Square became the refuge of the terrified inhabitants. Out from
their underground burrows like so many rats fled the Chinese,
trembling in terror into the square, and seeking by beating gongs
and other noise-making instruments to scare off the underground
demons. Into the square from the other side came the Italian
refugees. The panic became a madness, knives were drawn in the
insanity of the moment, and two Chinamen were taken to the morgue,
stabbed to death for no other reason than pure madness. Here on
one side dwelt 20,000 Chinese, and on the other thousands of
Italians, Spaniards and Mexicans, while close at hand lived the
riff-raff of the "Barbary Coast."
Seemingly the whole of these rushed for that one square of open
ground, the two streams meeting in the centre of the square and
heaping up on its edges. There they squabbled and fought in the
madness of panic and despair, as so many mad wolves might have
fought when caught in the red whirl of a prairie fire, until the
soldiers broke in and at the bayonet's point brought some semblance
of order out of the confusion of panic terror.
This scene in Portsmouth Square but illustrated the madness of fear
everywhere prevailing. On every side thousands were fleeing from
the roaring furnace that minute by minute seemed to extend its
boundaries.
THE FLIGHT FOR SAFETY.
In the awful scramble for safety the half-crazed survivors
disregarded everything but the thought of themselves and their
property. In every excavation and hole throughout the north beach
householders buried household effects, throwing them into ditches
and covering the holes. Attempts were made to mark the graves of
the property so that it could be recovered after the flames were
appeased.
The streets were filled with struggling people, some crying and
weeping and calling for missing loved ones. Crowding the sidewalks
were thousands of householders attempting to drag some of their
effects to places of safety. In some instances men with ropes were
dragging trunks, tandem style, while others had sewing machines
strapped to the trunks. Again, women were rushing for the hills,
carrying on their arms only the family cat or a bird cage.
There were two ideas in the minds of the fugitives, and in many
cases these two only. One of these was to escape to the open
ground of Golden Gate Park and the Presidio reservation; the other
was to reach the ferry and make their way out of the seemingly
doomed city.
At the ferry building a crowd numbering thousands gathered, begging
for food and transportation across the bay. Hundreds had not even
the ten cents fare to Oakland. Most of the refugees at this point
were Chinamen and Italians, who had fled from their burned
tenements with little or no personal property.
Residents of the hillsides in the central portion of the city
seemingly were safe from the inferno of flames that was consuming
the business section. They watched the towering mounds of flames,
and speculated as to the extent of the territory that was doomed.
Suddenly there was whispered alarm up and down the long line of
watchers, and they hurried away to drag clothing, cooking utensils
and scant provisions through the streets. From Grant Avenue the
procession moved westward. Men and women dragged trunks, packed
huge bundles of blankets, boxes of provisions--everything. Wagons
could not be hired except by paying the most extortionate rates.
"Thank Heaven for the open space of the Presidio and for Golden
Gate Park!" was the unspoken thank-offering of many hearts. The
great park, with its thousand and more acres of area, extending
from the thinly populated part of the city across the sand dunes to
the Pacific, seemed in that awful hour a God-given place of refuge.
Near it and extending to the Golden Gate channel is the Presidio
military reservation, containing 1,480 acres, and with only a few
houses on its broad extent. Here also was a place of safety,
provided that the forests which form a part of its area did not
burn.
THE EXODUS FROM THE BURNING CITY.
To these open spaces, to the suburbs, in every available direction,
the fugitives streamed, in thousands, in tens of thousands, finally
in hundreds of thousands, safety from those towering flames, from
the tottering walls of their dwellings, from a possible return of
the earthquake, their one overmastering thought. There were many
persons with scanty clothing, women in underskirts and thin waists
and men in shirt sleeves. Many women carried children, while
others wheeled baby carriages. It was a strange and weird
procession, that kept up unceasingly all that dreadful day and
through the night that followed, as the all-conquering flames
spread the area of terror.
At intervals news came of what was doing behind the smoke cloud.
The area of the flames spread all night. People who had decided
that their houses were outside of the dangerous area and had
decided to pass the night, even after the terrible experience of
the shake-up, under their roofs, hourly gave up the idea and
struggled to the parks. There they lay in blankets, their choicest
valuables by their sides, and the soldiers kept watch and order.
Many lay on the bare grass of the park, with nothing between them
and the chill night air. Fortunately, the weather was clear and
mild, but among those who lay under the open sky were men and women
who were delicately reared, accustomed all their lives to luxurious
surroundings, and these must have suffered severely during that
night of terror.
The fire was going on in the district south of them, and at
intervals all night exhausted fire-fighters made their way to the
plaza and dropped, with the breath out of them, among the huddled
people and the bundles of household goods. The soldiers, who were
administering affairs with all the justice of judges and all the
devotion of heroes, kept three or four buckets of water, even from
the women, for these men, who continued to come all the night long.
There was a little food, also kept by the soldiers for these
emergencies, and the sergeant had in his charge one precious bottle
of whisky, from which he doled out drinks to those who were utterly
exhausted.
But there was no panic. The people were calm, stunned. They did
not seem to realize the extent of the calamity. They heard that
the city was being destroyed; they told each other in the most
natural tone that their residences were destroyed by the flames,
but there was no hysteria, no outcry, no criticism.
The trip to the hills and to the water front was one of terrible
hardship. Famishing women and children and exhausted men were
compelled to walk seven miles around the north shore in order to
avoid the flames and reach the ferries. Many dropped to the street
under the weight of their loads, and willing fathers and husbands,
their strength almost gone, strove to pick up and urge them forward
again.
In the panic many mad things were done. Even soldiers were obliged
in many instances to prevent men and women, made insane from the
misfortune that had engulfed them, from rushing into doomed
buildings in the hope of saving valuables from the ruins. In
nearly every instance such action resulted in death to those who
tried it. At Larkin and Sutter Streets, two men and a woman broke
from the police and rushed into a burning apartment house, never to
reappear.
The rush to the parks and the dunes was followed in the days that
followed by as wild a rush to the ferries, due to the mad desire to
escape anywhere, in any way, from the burning city.
THE WILD RUSH TO THE FERRIES.
At the ferry station on Wednesday night there was much confusion.
Mingled in an inextricable mass were people of every race and class
on earth. A common misfortune and hunger obliterated all
distinctions. Chinese, lying on pallets of rags, slept near
exhausted white women with babies in their arms. Bedding,
household furniture of every description, pet animals and trinkets,
luggage and packages of every sort packed almost every foot of
space near the ferry building. Men spread bedding on the pavement
and calmly slept the sleep of exhaustion, while all around a bedlam
of confusion reigned.
Many of those who sought the ferry on that fatal Wednesday met a
solid wall of flames extending for squares in length and utterly
impassable. In their half insane eagerness to escape some of them
would have rushed into fatal danger but for the soldiers, who
guarded the fire line and forced them back. Only those reached the
ferry who had come in precedence of the flames, or who made a long
detour to reach that avenue of flight. When the news came to the
camps of refugees that it was safe to cross the burned area a
procession began from the Golden Gate Park across the city and down
Market Street, the thoroughfare which had long been the pride of
the citizens, and a second from the Presidio, along the curving
shore line of the north bay, thence southward along the water
front. Throughout these routes, eight miles long, a continuous
flow of humanity dragged its weary way all day and far into the
night amidst hundreds of vehicles, from the clumsy garbage cart to
the modern automobile. Almost every person and every vehicle
carried luggage. Drivers of vehicles were disregardful of these
exhausted, hungry refugees and drove straight through the crowd.
So dazed and deadened to all feeling were some of them that they
were bumped aside by carriage wheels or bumped out of the way by
persons.
SCENES OF HUMOR AND PATHOS.
As already stated, the scene had its humorous as well as its
pathetic side, and various amusing stories are told by those who
were in a frame of mind to notice ludicrous incidents in the
horrors of the situation. Two race track men met in the drive.
"Hello, Bill; where are you living now?" asked one.
"You see that tree over there--that big one?" said Bill. "Well,
you climb that. My room is on the third branch to the left," and
they went away laughing.
Another observer tells these incidents of the flight: "I saw one
big fat man calmly walking up Market Street, carrying a huge bird
cage, and the cage was empty. He seemed to enjoy looking at the
wrecked buildings. Another man was leading a huge Newfoundland dog
and carrying a kitten in his arms. He kept talking to the kitten.
On Fell Street I noticed an old woman, half dressed, pushing a
sewing machine up the hill. A drawer fell out, and she stopped to
gather the fallen spools. Poor little seamstress, it was now her
all."
A more amusing instance of the spirit of saving is that told by
another narrator, who says that he saw a lone woman patiently
pushing an upright piano along the pavement a few inches at a time.
Evidently in this case, too, it was the poor soul's one great
treasure on earth.
He also tells of a guest berating the proprietor of a hotel, a few
minutes after the shock, because he had not obeyed orders to call
him at five o'clock. He vowed he would never stop at that house
again, a vow he might well keep, as the house is no more.
In one room where two girls were dressing the floor gave way and
one of them disappeared.
"Where are you, Mary?" screamed her companion.
"Oh, I'm in the parlor," said Mary calmly, as she wriggled out of
the mass of plaster and mortar below.
At the handsome residence of Rudolph Spreckels, the wealthy
financier, the lawn was riven from end to end in great gashes,
while the ornamental Italian rail leading to the imposing entrance
was a battered heap. But the family, with a philosophy notable for
the occasion, calmly set up housekeeping on the sidewalk, the women
seated in armchairs taken from the mansion and wrapped in rugs and
coverlets, the silver breakfast service was laid out on the stone
coping and their morning meal spread out on the sidewalk. This,
scene was repeated at other houses of the wealthy, the families too
fearful of another shock to venture within doors.
Another story of much interest in this connection is told. On
Friday afternoon, two days and some hours after the scene just
narrated, Mrs. Rudolph Spreckels presented her husband with an heir
on the lawn in front of their mansion, while the family were
awaiting the coming of the dynamite squad to blow up their
magnificent residence. An Irish woman who had been called in to
play the part of midwife at a birth elsewhere on Saturday, made a
pertinent comment after the wee one's eyes were opened to the walls
of its tent home.
"God sends earthquakes and babies," she said, "but He might, in His
mercy, cut out sending them both together."
There were many pathetic incidents. Families had been sadly
separated in the confusion of the flight. Husbands had lost their
wives--wives had lost their husbands, and anxious mothers sought
some word of their children--the stories were very much the same.
One pretty looking woman in an expensive tailor-made costume badly
torn, had lost her little girl.
"I don't think anything has happened to her," said she, hopefully.
"She is almost eleven years old, and some one will be sure to take
her in and care for her; I only want to know where she is. That is
all I care about now."
A well-known young lady of good social position, when asked where
she had spent the night, replied: "On a grave."
"I thank God, I thank Uncle Sam and the people of this nation,"
said a woman, clad in a red woolen wrapper, seated in front of a
tent at the Presidio nursing one child and feeding three others
from a board propped on two bricks. "We have lost our home and all
we had, but we have never been hungry nor without shelter."
The spirit of '49 was vital in many of the refugees. One man
wanted to know whether the fire had reached his home. He was
informed that there was not a house standing in that section of the
city. He shrugged his shoulders and whistled.
"There's lots of others in the same boat," as he turned away.
"Going to build?" repeated one man, who had lost family and home
inside of two hours. "Of course, I am. They tell me that the
money in the banks is still all right, and I have some insurance.
Fifteen years ago I began with these," showing his hands, "and I
guess I'm game to do it over again. Build again, well I wonder."
Among the many pathetic incidents of the disaster was that of a
woman who sat at the foot of Van Ness Avenue on the hot sands on
the hillside overlooking the bay east of Fort Mason, with four
little children, the youngest a girl of three, the eldest a boy of
ten years. They were destitute of water, food and money.
The woman had fled, with her children, from a home in flames in the
Mission Street district, and tramped to the bay in the hope of
sighting the ship which she said was about due, of which her
husband was the captain.
"He would know me anywhere," she said. And she would not move,
although a young fellow gallantly offered his tent, back on a
vacant lot, in which to shelter her children.
THE GOLDEN GATE CAMP.
In the Golden Gate Park there was the most woefully grotesque camp
of sufferers imaginable. There was no caste, no distinction of
rich and poor, social lines had been obliterated by the common
misfortune, and the late owners of property and wealth were glad to
camp by the side of the day laborer. As for shelter, there were a
few army tents and some others which afforded a fair degree of
comfort, but nine out of ten are the poorest suggestions of tents
made out of bedclothes, rugs, raincoats and in some cases of lace
curtains. None of the tents or huts has a floor, and it is
impossible to see how a large number of women and children can
escape the most disastrous physical effects.
The unspeakable chaos that prevailed was apparent in no way more
than in the system, or lack of system, of registration and
location. At the entrance to Golden Gate Park stands a billboard,
twenty feet high and a hundred feet long. Originally it bore the
praises of somebody's beer. Covering this billboard, to a height
of ten or twelve feet, were slips of paper, business cards, letter
heads and other notices, addressed to "Those interested," "Friends
and relatives," or to some individual, telling of the whereabouts
of refugees.
One notice read: "Mrs. Rogers will find her husband in Isidora
Park, Oakland. W. H. Rogers." Another style was this: "Sue, Harry
and Will Sollenberger all safe. Call at No. 250 Twenty-seventh
Avenue."
There were thousands of these dramatic notices on this billboard,
and one larger than the others read: "Death notices can be left
here; get as many as possible."
Another method of finding friends and relatives was by printing
notices on vehicles. On the side curtains of a buggy being driven
to Golden Gate Park was the following sign: "I am looking for I. E.
Hall."
That searchers for lost ones might have the least trouble, all the
tents, here known as camps, were tagged with the names or numbers.
For instance, one tent of bed quilts carried this sign: "No. 40
Bush Street camp."
Most of the tents were merely named for the family name of the
occupants, the former streets number usually being given. But
these tent tags told a wonderful story of human nature. A small
army tent bore the name, "Camp Thankful," the one next to it was
placarded "Camp Glory" and a few feet farther on an Irishman had
posted the sign "Camp Hell."
The cooking was all done on a dozen bricks for a stove, with such
utensils as may usually be picked up in the ordinary residential
alley. But in all of the camps the badge of the eternal feminine
was to be found in the form of small pieces of broken mirrors, or
hand mirrors fastened to trees or tent walls, in some cases the
polished bottom of a tomato can serving the purposes of the
feminine toilet.
One woman, in whose improvised tent screeched a parrot, sat
ministering to the wounds of the other family pet, a badly singed
cat. The number of canaries, parrots, dogs and cats was one of the
amusing features of the disaster.
Among the interesting and thrilling incidents of the disaster is
that connected with the telegraph service. For many hours
virtually all the news from San Francisco came over the wires of
the Postal Telegraph Company. The Postal has about fifteen wires
running into San Francisco. They go under the bay in cables from
Oakland, and thence run underground for several blocks down Market
Street to the Postal building. About forty operators are employed
to handle the business, but evidently there was only about one on
duty when the earthquake began.
What became of him nobody knows. But he seems to have sent the
first word of the disaster. It came over the Postal wires about
nine o'clock, just when the day's business had started in the East.
It will long be preserved in the records of the company. This was
the dispatch:
"There was an earthquake hit us at 5.13 this morning, wrecking
several buildings and wrecking our offices. They are carting dead
from the fallen buildings. Fire all over town. There is no water
and we lost our power. I'm going to get out of office, as we have
had a little shake every few minutes, and it's me for the simple
life."
"R., San Francisco, 5.50 A. M."
"Mr. R." evidently got out, for there was nothing doing for a brief
interval after that. The operator in the East pounded and pounded
at his key, but San Francisco was silent. The Postal people were
wondering if it was all the dream of some crazy operator or a
calamity, when the wire woke up again. It was the superintendent
of the San Francisco force this time.
"We're on the job, and are going to try and stick," was the way the
first message came from him.
This was what came over the wire a little later:
"Terrific earthquake occurred here at 5.13 this morning. A number
of people were killed in the city. None of the Postal people were
killed. They are now carting the dead from the fallen buildings.
There are many fires, with no one to fight them. Postal building
roof wrecked, but not entire building."
The fire got nearer and nearer to the Postal building. All of the
water mains had been destroyed around the building, the operators
said, and there was no hope if the fire came on. They also said
that they could hear the sound of dynamite blowing up buildings.
All this time the operators were sticking to their posts and
sending and receiving all the business the wires could stand. At
12.45 the wire began to click again with a message for the little
group of waiting officials.
This message came in jerks: "Fire still coming up Market Street.
It's one block from the Post Office now; back of the Palace Hotel
is a furnace. I am afraid that the Grand Hotel and the Palace
Hotel will get it soon. The Southern Pacific offices on California
Street are safe, so far, but can't tell what will happen.
California Street is on fire. Almost everything east of Montgomery
Street and north of Market Street is on fire now."
There was a pause, then: "We are beginning to pack up our
instruments."
"Instruments are all packed up, and we are ready to run," was
another message. It was evident that just one instrument had been
left connected with the world outside. In about ten minutes it
began to click. Those who knew the telegraphers' language caught
the word "Good-bye," and then the ticks stopped.
At the end of an hour the instrument in the office began to click
again. It was from an electrician by the name of Swain.
"I'm back in the building, but they are dynamiting the building
next door, and I've got to get out," was the way his message was
translated. Dynamite ended the story, and the Postal's domicile in
San Francisco ceased to exist.
CHAPTER VI.
Facing Famine and Praying for Relief.
Frightful was the emergency of the vast host of fugitives who fled
in terror from the blazing city of San Francisco to the open gates
of Golden Gate Park and the military reservation of the Presidio.
Food was wanting, scarcely any water was to be had, death by hunger
and thirst threatened more than a quarter million of souls thus
driven without warning from their comfortable and happy homes and
left without food or shelter. Provisions, shelter tents, means of
relief of various kinds were being hurried forward in all haste,
but for several days the host of fugitives had no beds but the bare
ground, no shelter but the open heavens, scarcely a crumb of bread
to eat, scarcely a gill of water to drink. Those first days that
followed the disaster were days of horror and dread. Rich and poor
were mingled together, the delicately reared with the rough sons of
toil to whom privation was no new experience.
Those who had food to sell sought to take advantage of the
necessities of the suffering by charging famine prices for their
supplies, but the soldiers put a quick stop to this. When Thursday
morning broke, lines of buyers formed before the stores whose
supplies had not been commandeered. In one of these, the first man
was charged 75 cents for a loaf of bread. The corporal in charge
at that point brought his gun down with a slam.
"Bread is 10 cents a loaf in this shop," he said.
It went. The soldier fixed the schedule of prices a little higher
than in ordinary times, and to make up for that he forced the
storekeeper to give free food to several hungry people in line who
had no money to pay. In several other places the soldiers used the
same brand of horse sense.
A man with a loaf of bread in his hand ran up to a policeman on
Washington Street. "Here," he said, "this man is trying to charge
me a dollar for this loaf of bread. Is that fair?"
"Give it to me," said the policeman. He broke off one end of it
and stuck it in his mouth. "I am hungry myself," he said when he
had his mouth clear. "Take the rest of it. It's appropriated."
As an example of the prices charged for food and service by the
unscrupulous, we may quote the experience of a Los Angeles
millionaire named John Singleton, who had been staying a day or two
at the Palace Hotel. On Wednesday he had to pay $25 for an express
wagon to carry himself, his wife and her sister to the Casino, near
Golden Gate Park, and on Thursday was charged a dollar apiece for
eggs and a dollar for a loaf of bread. Others tell of having to
pay $50 for a ride to the ferry.
One of the refugees on the shores of Lake Herced Thursday morning
spied a flock of ducks and swans which the city maintained there
for the decoration of the lake. He plunged into the lake, swam out
to them and captured a fat drake. Other men and boys saw the point
and followed. The municipal ducks were all cooking in five
minutes.
The soldiers were prompt to take charge of the famine situation,
acting on their own responsibility in clearing out the supplies of
the little grocery stores left standing and distributing them among
the people in need. The principal food of those who remained in
the city was composed of canned goods and crackers. The refugees
who succeeded in getting out of San Francisco were met as soon as
they entered the neighboring towns by representatives of bakers who
had made large supplies of bread, and who immediately dealt them
out to the hungry people.
THE FOOD QUESTION URGENT.
But the needs of the three hundred thousand homeless and hungry
people in the city could not be met in this way, and immediate
supplies in large quantities were necessary to prevent a reign of
famine from succeeding the ravages of the fire. Danger from thirst
was still more insistent than that from hunger. There was some
food to be had, bakeries were quickly built within the military
reservation there, and General Funston announced that rations would
soon reach the city and the people would be supplied from the
Presidio. But there was scarcely any water to relieve the thirst
of the suffering. Water became the incessant cry of firemen and
people alike, the one wanting it to fight the fire, the other to
drink, but even for the latter the supply was very scant. There
was water in plenty in the reservoirs, but they were distant and
difficult to reach, and all night of the day succeeding the earth
shock wagons mounted with barrels and guarded by soldiers drove
through the park doling out water. There was a steady crush around
these wagons, but only one drink was allowed to a person.
Toward midnight a black, staggering body of men began to weave
through the entrance. They were volunteer fire-fighters, looking
for a place to throw themselves down and sleep. These men dropped
out all along the line, and were rolled out of the driveways by the
troops. There was much splendid unselfishness here. Women gave up
their blankets and sat up or walked about all night to cover the
exhausted men who had fought fire until there was no more fight in
them.
The common destitution and suffering had, as we have said, wiped
out all social, financial and racial distinctions. The man who
last Tuesday was a prosperous merchant was obliged to occupy with
his family a little plot of ground that adjoined the open-air home
of a laborer. The white man of California forgot his antipathy to
the Asiatic race, and maintained friendly relations with his new
Chinese and Japanese neighbors. The society belle who Tuesday
night was a butterfly of fashion at the grand opera performance now
assisted some factory girl in the preparation of humble daily
meals. Money had little value. The family that had had foresight
to lay in the largest stock of foodstuffs on the first day of
disaster was rated highest in the scale of wealth.
A few of the families that could secure wagons were possessors of
cook stoves, but over 95 per cent. of the refugees did their
cooking on little campfires made of brick or stone. Battered
kitchen utensils that the week before would have been regarded as
useless had become articles of high value. In fact, man had come
back to nature and all lines of caste had been obliterated, while
the very thought of luxury had disappeared. It was, in the
exigency of the moment, considered good fortune to have a scant
supply of the barest necessaries of life.
As for clothing, it was in many cases of the scantiest, while
numbers of the people had brought comfortable clothing and bedding.
Many others had fled in their night garbs, and comparatively few of
these had had the self-possession to return and don their daytime
clothes. As a result there had been much improvisation of garments
suitable for life in the open air, and as the days went on many of
the women arrayed themselves in home-made bloomer costumes, a
sensible innovation under the circumstances and in view of the
active outdoor work they were obliged to perform.
The grave question to be faced at this early stage was: How soon
would an adequate supply of food arrive from outside points to
avert famine? Little remained in San Francisco beyond the area
swept by the fire, and the available supply could not last more
than a few days. Fresh meat disappeared early on Wednesday and
only canned foods and breadstuffs were left. All the foodstuffs
coming in on the cars were at once seized by order of the Mayor and
added to the scanty supply, the names of the consignees being taken
that this material might eventually be paid for. The bakers agreed
to work their plants to their utmost capacity and to send all their
surplus output to the relief committee. By working night and day
thousands of loaves could be provided daily. A big bakery in the
saved district started its ovens and arranged to bake 50,000 loaves
before night. The provisions were taken charge of by a committee
and sent to the various depots from which the people were being
fed. Instructions were issued by Mayor Schmitz on Thursday to
break open every store containing provisions and to distribute them
to the thousands under police supervision. A policeman reported
that two grocery stores in the neighborhood were closed, although
the clerks were present. "Smash the stores open," ordered the
Mayor, "and guard them." In towns across the bay the master bakers
have met and fixed the price of bread at 5 cents the loaf, with the
understanding that they will refuse to sell to retailers who
attempt to charge famine prices. The committee of citizens in
charge of the situation in the stricken city proposed to use every
effort to keep food down to the ordinary price and check the
efforts of speculators, who in one instance charged as much as
$3.50 for two loaves of bread and a can of sardines. Orders were
issued by the War Department to army officers to purchase at Los
Angeles immediately 200,000 rations and at Seattle 300,000 rations
and hurry them to San Francisco. The department was informed that
there were 120,000 rations at the Presidio, that thousands of
refugees were being sheltered there and that the army was feeding
them. One million rations already had been started to San
Francisco by the department. But in view of the fact that there
were 300,000 fugitives to be fed the supply available was likely to
be soon exhausted.
FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY.
Such was the state of affairs at the end of the second day of the
great disaster. But meanwhile the entire country had been aroused
by the tidings of the awful calamity, the sympathetic instinct of
Americans everywhere was awakened, and it was quickly made evident
that the people of the stricken city would not be allowed to suffer
for the necessaries of life. On all sides money was contributed in
large sums, the United States Government setting the example by an
immediate appropriation of $1,000,000, and in the briefest possible
interval relief trains were speeding toward the stricken city from
all quarters, carrying supplies of food, shelter tents and other
necessaries of a kind that could not await deliberate action.
Shelter was needed almost as badly as food, for a host of the
refugees had nothing but their thin clothing to cover them, and,
though the weather at first was fine and mild, a storm might come
at any time. In fact, a rain did come, a severe one, early in the
week after the disaster, pouring nearly all night long on the
shivering campers in the parks, wetting them to the skin and
soaking through the rudely improvised shelters which many of the
refugees had put up. A few days afterward came a second shower,
rendering still more evident the need of haste in providing
suitable shelter.
All this was foreseen by those in charge, and the most strenuous
efforts were made to provide the absolute necessities of life.
Huge quantities of supplies were poured into the city. From all
parts of California trainloads of food were rushed there in all
haste. A steamer from the Orient laden with food reached the city
in its hour of need; another was dispatched in all haste from
Tacoma bearing $25,000 worth of food and medical supplies, ordered
by Mayor Weaver, of Philadelphia, as a first installment of that
city's contribution. Money was telegraphed from all quarters to
the Governor of California, to be expended for food and other
supplies, and so prompt was the response to the insistent demand
that by Saturday all danger of famine was at an end; the people
were being fed.
WATER FOR THE THIRSTY.
The broken waterpipes were also repaired with all possible haste,
the Spring Valley Water Company putting about one thousand men at
work upon their shattered mains, and in a very brief time water
began to flow freely in many parts of the residence section and the
great difficulty of obtaining food and water was practically at an
end. Never in the history of the country has there been a more
rapid and complete demonstration of the resourcefulness of
Americans than in the way this frightful disaster was met.
Food, water and shelter were not the only urgent needs. At first
there was absolutely no sanitary provision, and the danger of an
epidemic was great. This was a peril which the Board of Health
addressed itself vigorously to meet, and steps for improving the
sanitary conditions were hastily taken. Quick provision for
sheltering the unfortunates was also made. Eight temporary
structures, 150 feet in length by 28 feet wide and 13 feet high,
were erected in Golden Gate Park, and in these sheds thousands
found reasonably comfortable quarters. This was but a beginning.
More of these buildings were rapidly erected, and by their aid the
question of shelter was in part solved. The buildings were divided
into compartments large enough to house a family, each compartment
having an entrance from the outside. This work was done under the
control of the engineering department of the United States army,
which had taken steps to obtain a full supply of lumber and had put
135 carpenters to work. Those of the refugees who were without
tents were the first to be provided for in these temporary
buildings.
THE CAMPS IN THE PARKS.
To those who made an inspection of the situation a few days after
the earthquake, the hills and beaches of San Francisco looked like
an immense tented city. For miles through the park and along the
beaches from Ingleside to the sea wall at North Beach the homeless
were camped in tents--makeshifts rigged up from a few sticks of
wood and a blanket or sheet. Some few of the more fortunate
secured vehicles on which they loaded regulation tents and were,
therefore, more comfortably housed than the great majority. Golden
Gate Park and the Panhandle looked like one vast campaign ground.
It is said that fully 100,000 persons, rich and poor alike, sought
refuge in Golden Gate Park alone, and 200,000 more homeless ones
located at the other places of refuge.
At the Presidio military reservation, where probably 50,000 persons
were camped, affairs were conducted with military precision. Water
was plentiful and rations were dealt out all day long. The
refugees stood patiently in line and there was not a murmur. This
characteristic was observable all over the city. The people were
brave and patient, and the wonderful order preserved by them proved
of great assistance. In Golden Gate Park a huge supply station had
been established and provisions were dealt out.
Six hundred men from the Ocean Shore Railway arrived on Saturday
night with wagons and implements to work on the sewer system.
Inspectors were kept going from house to house, examining chimneys
and issuing permits to build fires. In fact, activity manifested
itself in all quarters in the attempt to bring order out of
confusion, and in an astonishingly short time the tented city was
converted from a scene of wretched disorder into one of order and
system.
At Jefferson Park were camped thousands of people of every class in
life. On the western edge of this park is the old Scott house,
where Mrs. McKinley lay sick for two weeks in 1901. Three times a
day the people all gathered in line before the provision wagons for
their little handouts. "Yesterday," says an observer, "I saw, in
order before the wagons, a Lascar sailor in his turban, about as
low a Chinatown bum as I ever set eyes on, a woman of refined
appearance, a barefooted child, two Chinamen, and a pretty girl.
They were squeezed up together by the line, which extended for a
quarter of a mile. It is civilization in the bare bones.
"The great and rich are on a level with the poor in the struggle
for bare existence, and over them all is the perfect, unbroken
discipline of the soldiery. They came into the city and took
charge on an hour's notice, they saved the city from itself in the
three days of hell, and but for them the city, even with enough
provisions to feed them in the stores and warehouses, must have
gone hungry for lack of distributive organization."
COMEDY AND PATHOS IN THE BREAD LINE.
At one of the parks on Tuesday morning a handsomely dressed woman
with two children at her skirts stood in a line of many hundreds
where supplies were being given out. She took some uncooked bacon,
and as she reached for it jewels sparkled on her fingers. One of
the tots took a can of condensed milk, the other a bag of cakes.
"I have money," she said, "'if I could get it and use it. I have
property, if I could realize on it. I have friends, if I could get
to them. Meantime I am going to cook this piece of bacon on bricks
and be happy."
She was only one of thousands like her.
In a walk through the city this note of cheerfulness of the people
in the face of an almost incredible week of horror was to a
correspondent the mitigating element to the awfulness of disaster.
In the streets of the residential district in the western addition,
which the fire did not reach, women of the houses were cooking
meals on the pavement. In most cases they had moved out the family
ranges, and were preparing the food which they had secured from the
Relief Committee.
Out on Broderick street, near the Panhandle, a piano sounded. It
was nigh ten o'clock and the stars were shining after the rain.
Fires gleamed up and down through the shrubbery and the refugees
sat huddled together about the flames, with their blankets about
their heads, Apache-like, in an effort to dry out after the wetting
of the afternoon. The piano, dripping with moisture, stood on the
curb, near the front of a cottage which had been wrecked by the
earthquake.
A youth with a shock of red hair sat on a cracker box and pecked at
the ivories. "Home Ain't Nothing Like This" was thrummed from the
rusting wires with true vaudeville dash and syncopation. "Bill
Bailey," "Good Old Summer Time," "Dixie" and "In Toyland" followed.
Three young men with handkerchiefs wrapped about their throats in
lieu of collars stood near the pianist and with him lifted up their
voices in melody. The harmony was execrable, the time without
excuse, but the songs ran through the trees of the Panhandle, and
the crows, forgetting their misery for a time, joined the strange
chorus.
The people had their tales of comedy, one being that on the morning
of the fire a richly dressed woman who lived in one of the
aristocratic Sutter Street apartments came hurrying down the
street, faultlessly gowned as to silks and sables, save that one
dainty foot was shod with a high-heeled French slipper and the
other was incased in a laborer's brogan. They say that as she
walked she careened like a bark-rigged ship before a typhoon.
An hour spent behind the counter of the food supply depot in the
park tennis court yielded rich reward to the seeker after the
outlandish. The tennis court was piled high with the plunder of
several grocery stores and the cargoes of many relief cars. A
square cut in the wire screen permitted of the insertion of a
counter, behind which stood members of the militia acting as food
dispensers. Before the improvised window passed the line of
refugees, a line which stretched back fully 300 yards to Speedway
track.
"I want a can of condensed cream, so I can feed my baby and my
dog," said a large, florid-faced woman in a gaudy kimono, "and I
don't care for crackers, but you can throw in some potted chicken
if you have it."
"What's in that bottle over there?" queried the next applicant.
"Tomato ketchup? Well, of all the luck! Say, young man, just give
me three."
A little gray-haired woman in an India shawl peered timorously
through the window. "Just a little bit of anything you may have
handy, please," she whispered, and she cast a careful eye about to
see of any of her neighbors had recognized her standing there in
the "bread line."
"Yesterday, at the Western Union office," says one writer, "I saw a
woman drive up in a large motor car and beg that the telegram on
which a boy had asked a delivery fee of twenty-five cents be handed
to her. She said she had not a penny and did not know when she
would have any money, but that as soon as she had any she would pay
for the message. It was given to her, and the manager told me that
there were hundreds of similar cases."
Many weddings resulted from the disaster. Women driven out of
their homes and left destitute, appealed to the men to whom they
were engaged, and immediate marriages took place. After the first
day of the disaster an increase in the marriage licenses issued was
noticed by County Clerk Cook. This increase grew until seven
marriage licenses were issued in an hour.
"I don't live anywhere," was the answer given in many cases when
the applicant for a license was asked the locality of his
residence. "I used to live in San Francisco."
Births seem to have been about as common as marriages, in one night
five children being born in Golden Gate Park. In Buena Vista Park
eight births were recorded and others elsewhere, the population
being thus increased at a rate hardly in accordance with the
exigencies of the situation.
THE EXODUS FROM SAN FRANCISCO.
We have spoken only of the camps of refugees within the municipal
limits of San Francisco. But in addition to these was the
multitude of fugitives who made all haste to escape from that city.
This was with the full consent of the authorities, who felt that
every one gone lessened the immediate weight upon themselves, and
who issued a strict edict that those who went must stay, that there
could be no return until a counter edict should be made public.
From the start this was one of the features of the situation. Down
Market Street, once San Francisco's pride, now leading through
piles of tottering walls, piles of still hot bricks and twisted
iron and heaps of smouldering debris, poured a huge stream of
pedestrians. Men bending under the weight of great bundles pushed
baby carriages loaded with bric-a-brac and children. Women toiled
along with their arms full, but a large proportion were able to
ride, for the relief corps had been thoroughly organized and wagons
were being pressed into service from all sides.
In constant procession they moved toward the ferry, whence the
Southern Pacific was transporting them with baggage free wherever
they wished to go. Automobiles meanwhile shot in all directions,
carrying the Red Cross flag and usually with a soldier carrying a
rifle in the front seat. They had the right of way everywhere,
carrying messages and transporting the ill to temporary hospitals
and bearing succor to those in distress.
Oakland, the nearest place of resort, on the bay shore opposite San
Francisco, soon became a great city of refuge, fugitives gathering
there until 50,000 or more were sheltered within its charitable
limits. Having suffered very slightly from the earthquake that had
wrecked the great city across the bay, it was in condition to offer
shelter to the unfortunate. All day Wednesday and Thursday a
stream of humanity poured from the ferries, every one carrying
personal baggage and articles saved from the conflagration.
Hundreds of Chinese men, women and children, all carrying baggage
to the limit of their strength, made their way into the limited
Chinatown of Oakland.
Multitudes of persons besieged the telegraph offices, and the crush
became so great that soldiers were stationed at the doors to keep
them in line and allow as many as possible to find standing room at
the counters. Messages were stacked yards high in the offices
waiting to be sent throughout the world. Every boat from San
Francisco brought hundreds of refugees, carrying luggage and
bedding in large quantities. Many women were bareheaded and all
showed fatigue as the result of sleeplessness and exposure to the
chill air. Hundreds of these persons lined the streets of Oakland,
waiting for some one to provide them with shelter, for which the
utmost possible provision was quickly made. No one was allowed to
go hungry in Oakland and few lacked shelter. At the Oakland First
Presbyterian Church 1,800 were fed and 1,000 people were provided
with sleeping accommodations. Pews were turned into beds. Cots
stood in the aisles, in the gallery and in the Sunday school room.
Every available inch of space was occupied by some substitute for a
bed.
As the days wore on the number of refugees somewhat decreased.
Although they still came in large numbers, many left on every train
for different points. Requests for free transportation were
investigated as closely as possible and all the deserving were sent
away. Women and children and married men who wished to join their
families in different parts of the State were given preference.
The transportation bureau was on a street corner, where a man stood
on a box and called the names of those entitled to passes.
Along the principal streets of Oakland there was a picturesque
pilgrimage of former householders, who dragged or carried the
meagre effects they had been able to save. The refugees who could
not be cared for in Oakland made an exodus to Berkeley and other
surrounding cities, where relief committees were actively at work.
Utter despair was pictured on many faces, which showed the effects
of sleepless days and nights, and the want of proper food.
Oakland was only one of the outside camps of refuge. At Berkeley
over 6,000 refugees sought quarters, the big gymnasium of the State
University being turned into a lodging house, while hundreds were
provided with blankets to sleep in the open air under the
University oaks. The students and professors of the University did
all they could for their relief, and the Citizens' Relief Committee
supplied them with food.
The same benevolent sympathy was manifested at all the places near
the ruined city which had escaped disaster, this aid materially
reducing that needed within San Francisco itself.
WORSHIP IN THE OPEN AIR.
Sunday dawned in San Francisco; Sunday in the camp of the refugees.
On a green knoll in Golden Gate Park, between the conservatory and
the tennis courts, a white-haired minister of the Gospel gathered
his flock. It was the Sabbath day and in the turmoil and confusion
the minister did not forget his duty. Two upright stakes and a
cross-piece gave him a rude pulpit, and beside him stood a young
man with a battered brass cornet. Far over the park stole a melody
that drew hundreds of men and women from their tents. Of all
denominations and all creeds, they gathered on that green knoll,
and the men uncovered while the solemn voice repeated the words of
a grand old hymn, known wherever men and women meet to worship the
Lord:
"Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
Leave, oh, leave me not alone, still support and comfort me!"
A moment before there had been shouting and confusion in the
driveway where some red-striped artillerymen were herding a squad
of gesticulating Chinamen as men herd sheep. The shouting died
away as the minister's voice rose and fell and out of the stillness
came the sobs of women. One little woman in blue was making no
sound, but the tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her husband,
a sturdy young fellow in his shirt sleeves, put his arm about her
shoulders and tried to comfort her as the reading went on.
"All my trust on Thee is stayed; all my help from Thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head with the shadow of Thy wing."
Then the cornet took up the air again and those helpless persons
followed it in quivering tones, the white-haired man of God leading
them with closed eyes. When the last verse was over, the minister
raised his hands.
"Let us pray," said he, and his congregation sank down in the grass
before him. It was a simple prayer, such a prayer as might be
offered by a man without a home or a shelter over his head--and
nothing left to him but an unshaken faith in his Creator.
"Oh, Lord, Thy ways are past finding out, but we still have faith
in Thee. We know not why Thou hast visited these people and left
them homeless. Thou knowest the reason of this desolation and of
our utter helplessness. We call on Thee for help in the hour of
our great need. Bless the people of this city, the sorrowing ones,
the bereaved, gather them under Thy mighty wing and soothe aching
hearts this day."
The women were crying again, and one big man dug his knuckles into
his eyes without shame. The man who could have listened to such a
prayer unmoved was not in Golden Gate Park that day.
CHAPTER VII.
The Frightful Loss of Life and Wealth.
While multitudes escaped from toppling buildings and crashing walls
in the dread disaster of that fatal Wednesday morning of April 18th
in San Francisco, hundreds of the less fortunate met their death in
the ruins, and horrifying scenes were witnessed by the survivors.
Many of those who escaped had tales of terror to tell. Mr. J. P.
Anthony, as he fled from the Ramona Hotel, saw a score or more of
people crushed to death, and as he walked the streets at a later
hour saw bodies of the dead being carried in garbage wagons and all
kinds of vehicles to the improvised morgues, while hospitals and
storerooms were already filled with the injured. Mr. G. A.
Raymond, of Tomales, Cal., gives evidence to the same effect. As
he rushed into the street, he says that the air was filled with
falling stones and people around him were crushed to death on all
sides.
Others gave testimony to the same effect. Samuel Wolf, of Salt
Lake City, tells us that he saved one woman from death in the
hotel. She was rushing blindly toward an open window, from which
she would have fallen fifty feet to the stone pavement below. "On
my way down Market Street," he says, "the whole side of a building
fell out and came so near me that I was covered and blinded by the
dust. Then I saw the first dead come by. They were piled up in an
automobile like carcasses in a butcher's wagon, all bloody, with
crushed skulls, broken limbs and bloody faces."
These are frightful stories, exaggerated probably from the nervous
excitement of those terrible moments, as are also the following
statements, which form part of the early accounts of the disaster.
Thus we are told that "from a three-story lodging house at Fifth
and Minna Streets, which collapsed Wednesday morning, more than
seventy-five bodies were taken to-day. There are fifty other
bodies in sight in the ruins. This building was one of the first
to take fire on Fifth Street. At least 100 persons are said to
have been killed in the Cosmopolitan, on Fourth Street. More than
150 persons are reported dead in the Brunswick Hotel, at Seventh
and Mission Streets."
Another statement is to the effect that "at Seventh and Howard
Streets a great lodging house took fire after the first shock,
before the guests had escaped. There were few exits and nearly all
the lodgers perished. Mrs. J. J. Munson, one of those in the
building, leaped with her child in her arms from the second floor
to the pavement below and escaped unhurt. She says she was the
only one who escaped from the house. Such horrors as this were
repeated at many points. B. Baker was killed while trying to get a
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."
ESTIMATES OF THE DEATH LIST.
The questionable point in those statements is that the numbers of
dead spoken of in these few instances exceed the whole number given
in the official records issued two weeks after the disaster. Yet
they go to illustrate the actual horrors of the case, and are of
importance for this reason. As regards the whole number killed, in
fact, there is not, and probably never will be, a full and accurate
statement. While about 350 bodies had been recovered at the end of
the second week, it was impossible to estimate how many lay buried
under the ruins, to be discovered only as the work of excavation
went on, and how many more had been utterly consumed by the flames,
leaving no trace of their existence. The estimates of the probable
loss of life ran up to 1,500 and more, while the injured were very
numerous.
The shock of the earthquake, the pulse of deep horror to which it
gave rise, the first wild impulse to flee for life, gave way in the
minds of many to a feeling of intense sympathy as agonized cries
came from those pinned down to the ruins of buildings or felled by
falling bricks or stones, and as the sight of dead bodies
incrimsoned with blood met the eyes of the survivors in the
streets. From wandering aimlessly about, many of these went
earnestly to work to rescue the wounded and recover the bodies of
the slain. In this merciful work the police and the soldiers lent
their aid, and soon there was a large corps of rescuers actively
engaged.
BURYING THE DEAD.
Soon numbers were taken, alive or dead, from the ruins, passing
vehicles were pressed into the service, and the labor of mercy went
on rapidly, several buildings being quickly converted into
temporary hospitals, while the dead were conveyed to the Mechanics'
Pavilion and other available places. Portsmouth Square became for
a time a public morgue. Between twenty and thirty corpses were
laid side by side upon the trodden grass in the absence of more
suitable accommodations. It is said that when the flames
threatened to reach the square, the dead, mostly unknown, were
removed to Columbia Square, where they were buried when danger
threatened that quarter. Others were taken to the Presidio, and
here the soldiers pressed into service all men who came near and
forced them to labor at burying the dead, a temporary cemetery
being opened there. So thick were the corpses piled up that they
were becoming a menace, and early in the day the order was issued
to bury them at any cost. The soldiers were needed for other work,
so, at the point of rifles, the citizens were compelled to take to
the work of burying. Some objected at first, but the troops stood
no trifling, and every man who came within reach was forced to
work. Rich men, unused to physical exertion, labored by the side
of the workingmen digging trenches in which to bury the dead. The
able-bodied being engaged in fighting the flames, General Funston
ordered that the old men and the weaklings should take the work in
hand. They did it willingly enough, but had they refused the
troops on guard would have forced them. It was ruled that every
man physically capable of handling a spade or a pick should dig for
an hour. When the first shallow graves were ready the men, under
the direction of the troops, lowered the bodies, several in a
grave, and a strange burial began. The women gathered about
crying. Many of them knelt while a Catholic priest read the burial
service and pronounced absolution. All Thursday afternoon this
went on.
In this connection the following stories are told:
Dr. George V. Schramm, a young medical graduate, said:
"As I was passing down Market Street with a new-found friend, an
automobile came rushing along with two soldiers in it. My doctor's
badge protected me, but the soldiers invited my companion, a husky
six-footer, to get into the automobile. He said:
"'I don't want to ride, and have plenty of business to attend to.'
"Once more they invited him, and he refused. One of the soldiers
pointed a gun at him and said:
"'We need such men as you to save women and children and to help
fight the fire.'
"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 pass 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,
damn you, hustle!' The soldiers took delight in picking out the
best dressed men and keeping them at the brick piles for long
terms. I passed them in the shelter of a provision wagon, afraid
that even my pass 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 basement, 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 grass.
There was nothing to be done. Injured lay groaning. Tender hands
were willing, but of water there was none. "Water, water, for
God'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 scrape 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 pass 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 accumulation 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 passed 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.
Special personal losses were in many cases great. Thus the Palace
Hotel was built at a cost of $6,000,000, and the St. Francis, which
originally cost $4,000,000, was being enlarged at great expense.
Several of the great mansions on Nob's Hill cost a million or more,
the City Hall was built at a cost of $7,000,000, the new Post
Office was injured to the extent of half a million, while a large
number of other buildings might be named whose value, with their
contents, was measured in the millions.
It was not until May 3d that news came over the wires of another
serious item of loss. The merchants had waited until then for
their fire-proof safes and vaults to cool off before attempting to
open them. When this was at length done the results proved
disheartening. Out of 576 vaults and safes opened in the district
east of Powell and north of Market Street, where the flames had
raged with the greatest fury, it was found that fully forty per
cent. had not performed their duty. When opened they were found to
contain nothing but heaps of ashes. The valuable account books,
papers and in some cases large sums of money had vanished, the loss
of the accounts being a severe calamity in a business sense. As
all the banks were equipped with the best fire-proof vaults, no
fear was felt for the safety of their contents.
LOOTERS IN CHINATOWN.
Chinatown suffered severely, the merchants of that locality
possessing large stocks of valuable goods, many of which were
looted by seemingly respectable sightseers after the ruins had
cooled off, bronze, porcelain and other valuable goods being taken
from the ruins. One example consisted in a mass of gold and silver
valued at $2,500, which had been melted by the fire in the store of
Tai Sing, a Chinese merchant. This was found by the police on May
3d in a place where it had been hidden by looters.
But with all its losses San Francisco does not despair. The spirit
of its citizens is heroic, and there are some hopeful signs in the
air. The insurances due are estimated to approximate $175,000,000,
and there are other moneys likely to be spent on building during
the coming year, making a total of over $200,000,000. Eastern
capitalists also talk of investing $100,000,000 of new capital in
the rebuilding of the city, while the San Francisco authorities
have a project of issuing $200,000,000 of municipal bonds, the
payment to be guaranteed by the United States Government. Thus,
two weeks after the earthquake, daylight was already showing
strongly ahead and hope was fast beginning to replace despair.
CHAPTER VIII.
Wonderful Record of Thrilling Escapes.
Shuddering under the memories of what seems more like a nightmare
than actual reality to the survivors of this frightful calamity,
they have tried to picture in words far from adequate the days of
terror and the nights of horror that fell to the lot of the people
of the Golden Gate city and their guests.
They recount the roar of falling structures and the groans and
pitiful cries of those pinned beneath the timbers of collapsing
buildings. They speak of their climbing over dead bodies heaped in
the streets, and of following tortuous ways to find the only avenue
of escape--the ferry, where men and women fought like infuriated
animals, bent on escape from a fiery furnace.
These refugees tell of the great caravan composed of homeless
persons in its wild flight to the hills for safety, and in that
great procession women, harnessed to vehicles, trudging along and
tugging at the shafts, hauling all that was left of their earthly
belongings, and a little food that foresight told them would be
necessary to stay the pangs of hunger in the hours of misery that
must follow.
We give below an especially accurate picture from the description
of the well-known writer, Jane Tingley, who, an eye-witness of it
all, did so much to help the sufferers, and who, with all the
unselfishness of true American womanhood, sacrificed her own
comfort and needs for those of others.
"May God be merciful to the women and children in this land of
desolation and despair!" she wrote on April 21st.
"Men have done, are doing such deeds of sublime self-sacrifice, of
magnificent heroism, that deserve to make the title of American
manhood immortal in the pages of history. The rest lies with the
Almighty.
"I spent all of last night and to-day in that horror city across
the bay. I went from this unharmed city of plenty, blooming with
abounding health, thronged with happy mothers and joyous children,
and spent hours among the blackened ruins and out on the windswept
slopes of the sand hills by the sea, and I heard the voice of
Rachel weeping for her children in the wilderness and mourning
because she found them not.
"I climbed to the top of Strawberry Hill, in Golden Gate Park, and
saw a woman, half naked, almost starving, her hair dishevelled and
an unnatural lustre in her eyes, her gaze fixed upon the waters in
the distance, and her voice repeating over and over again: 'Here I
am, my pretties; come here, come here.'
"I took her by the hand and led her down to the grass at the foot
of the hill. A man--her husband--received her from me and wept as
he said: 'She is calling our three little children. She thinks the
sounds of the ocean waves are the voices of our lost darlings.'
"Ever since they became separated from their children in that first
terrific onrush of the multitude when the fire swept along Mission
Street these two had been tramping over the hills and parks without
food or rest, searching for their little ones. To all whom they
have met they have addressed the same pitiful question: 'Have you
seen anything of our lost babies?' They will not know what has
become of them until order has been brought out of chaos; until the
registration headquarters of the military authorities has secured
the names of all who are among the straggling wanderers around the
camps of the homeless. Perhaps then it will be found that these
children are in a trench among the corpses of the weaklings who
have succumbed to the frightful rigors of the last three days.
"Last night a soldier seized me by the arm and cried: 'If you are a
woman with a woman's heart, go in there and do whatever you can.'
"'In there' meant behind a barricade of brush, covered with a
blanket that had been hastily thrown together to form a rude
shelter. I went in and saw one of my own sex lying on the bare
grass naked, her clothing torn to shreds; scattered over the green
beside her. She was moaning pitifully, and it needed no words to
tell a woman what the matter was, I bade my man escort to find a
doctor, or at least send more women at once. He ran off and soon
two sympathetic ladies hastened into the shelter. In an hour my
escort returned with a young medical student. Under the best
ministrations we could find, a new life was ushered into this hell,
which, a few hours before, was the fairest among cities.
"'There have been many such cases,' said the medical student.
"Many of the mothers have died--few of the babies have lived. I,
personally, know of nine babies that have been born in the park to-
day. There must have been many others here, among the sand hills,
and at the Presidio."
"Think of it, you happy women who have become mothers in
comfortable homes, attended with every care that loving hands can
bestow. Think of the dreadful plight of these poor members of your
sex. The very thought of it is enough to make the hearts of women
burst with pity.
"To-day I walked among the people crowded on the Panhandle.
Opposite the Lyon Street entrance, on the north side, I saw a young
woman sitting tailor-fashion in the roadway, which, in happier
days, was the carriage boulevard. She held a dishpan and was
looking at her reflection in the polished bottom, while another
girl was arranging her hair. I recognized a young wife, whose
marriage to a prominent young lawyer eight months ago was a gala
event among that little handful of people who clung to the old-time
fashionable district of Valencia Street, like the Phelan and Dent
families, and refused to move from that aristocratic section when
the new-made, millionaires began to build their palaces on Nob Hill
and Pacific Heights. I spoke to the young woman about the
disadvantages of making her toilet under such untoward
circumstances.
"'Ah, Julia, dear, you must stay to luncheon,' she said, extending
her fingers just as though she stood in her own drawing-room.
MISERY DRIVES SOME INSANE.
"I looked at the maid in astonishment, for I had never met the
young society woman before. The maid shook her head and whispered
when she got the chance:
"'My mistress is not in her right mind.'
"'Where is her husband?' I asked.
"'He has gone to try to get some food,' said the girl. 'She
imagines that she is in her own home, before her dressing table,
and is having me do up her hair against some of her friends
dropping in.'
"'She must have suffered,' I said, 'to cause such a mental
derangement.'
"The girl's eyes filled with tears. She told me that her mistress
had seen her brother killed by falling timbers while they were
hurrying to a place of safety. A little farther on I saw two women
concealed as best they might be behind a tuft of sand brush, one
lying face down on the ground, while the other vigorously massaged
her bare back. I asked if I might help, and learned that the
ministering angel was the unmarried daughter of one of the city's
richest merchants, and that the girl whom she succored had been
employed as a servant in her father's household. The girl's back
had been injured by a fall, and her mistress' fair hands were
trying to make her well again.
"Thus has this overwhelming common woe levelled all barriers of
caste and placed the suffering multitude on a basis of democracy.
On a rock behind a manzanita bush near the edge of Stow Lake I saw
a Chinaman making a pile of broken twigs in the early morning. The
man felt inside his blouse and swore a gibbering, unintelligible
Asiatic oath as his hand came forth empty. Observing my escort,
the Chinaman approached and said:
"'Bosse, alle same, catchee match?'
"My escort gave him the desired article, and the Chinaman made a
fire of his pile of twigs. 'Why are you making a fire, John?' I
asked.
"'Bleakfast,' he replied laconically.
"I asked him where his food might be, and he gave us a quick glance
of suspicion as he said briefly, 'No sabbe.'
"We stood watching him, evidently to his great distress, and
finally he made bold to say, 'You no stand lound, bosse. You go
'way.'
"We left him, but after making the tour around the lake came back
to the same place. There sat four people on the ground eating
fried pork, potatoes and Chinese cakes. In a young woman of the
group I recognized one whom I had seen dancing at one of Mr.
Greenway's Friday Night Cotillion balls in the Palace Hotel's maple
room during the winter. They offered to share their meal with us,
but we told them that we had just come from breakfast in Oakland.
I told them about the strange conduct of their Chinaman, who was
traveling back and forth from his fire to the 'table' with the food
as it became ready to serve.
"The father of the family laughed.
SOCIETY FOLKS COMPELLED TO CAMP.
'Yes,' he said, 'that is Charlie's way. He has been with us many
years, and when our home was destroyed he came out here with us in
preference to seeking refuge among his countrymen in Chinatown.
Yesterday we were without food, and Charlie disappeared. I thought
he had deserted us, but toward dark he came back with a bamboo pole
over his shoulder and a Chinese market gardener's basket suspended
from either end. In one of the baskets he had a pile of blankets
and a lot of canvas. In the other was an assortment of pork,
flour, Chinese cakes and vegetables, besides a half-dozen chickens
and a couple of bagfuls of rice.
"'Charlie had been foraging in Chinatown for us before the fire
reached that quarter. He made a tent and improvised beds for us,
and he has the food concealed somewhere in the vicinity, but where
he will not tell us, for fear that we will give some of it to
others and reduce our own supply. Charlie boils rice for himself.
He will not touch the other food. Without him we should have been
starving.'"
G. A. Raymond, who was in the Palace Hotel when the earthquake
occurred, says:
"I had $600 in gold under my pillow. I awoke as I was thrown out
of bed. Attempting to walk, the floor shook so that I fell. I
grabbed my clothing and rushed down into the office, where dozens
were already congregated. Suddenly the lights went out, and every
one rushed for the door.
"Outside I witnessed a sight I never want to see again. It was
dawn and light. I looked up. The air was filled with falling
stones. People around me were crushed to death on all sides. All
around the huge buildings were shaking and waving. Every moment
there were reports like 100 cannon going off at one time. Then
streams of fire would shoot out, and other reports followed.
"I asked a man standing by me what had happened. Before he could
answer a thousand bricks fell on him and he was killed. A woman
threw her arms around my neck. I pushed her away and fled. All
around me buildings were rocking and flames shooting. As I ran
people on all sides were crying, praying and calling for help. I
thought the end of the world had come.
"I met a Catholic priest, and he said: 'We must get to the ferry.'
He knew the way, and we rushed down Market Street. Men, women and
children were crawling from the debris. Hundreds were rushing down
the street, and every minute people were felled by falling debris.
"At places the streets had cracked and opened. Chasms extended in
all directions. I saw a drove of cattle, wild with fright, rushing
up Market Street. I crouched beside a swaying building. As they
came nearer they disappeared, seeming to drop into the earth. When
the last had gone I went nearer and found they had indeed been
precipitated into the earth, a wide fissure having swallowed them.
I worked my way around them and ran out to the ferry. I was crazy
with fear and the horrible sights.
"How I reached the ferry I cannot say. It was bedlam, pandemonium
and hell rolled into one. There must have been 10,000 people
trying to get on that boat. Men and women fought like wild cats to
push their way aboard. Clothes were torn from the backs of men and
women and children indiscriminately. Women fainted, and there was
no water at hand with which to revive them. Men lost their reason
at those awful moments. One big, strong man, beat his head against
one of the iron pillars on the dock, and cried out in a loud voice:
'This fire must be put out! The city must be saved!' It was
awful.
TERRIBLE SCENE AT THE FERRY.
"When the gates were opened the mad rush began. All were swept
aboard in an irresistible tide. We were jammed on the deck like
sardines in a box. No one cared. At last the boat pulled out.
Men and women were still jumping for it, only to fall into the
water and probably drown."
The members of the Metropolitan Opera Company, of New York, were in
San Francisco at this time, and nearly all of these famous singers,
known all over the world, suffered from the great disaster.
All of the splendid scenery, stage fittings, costumes and musical
instruments were lost in the fire, which destroyed the Grand Opera
House, where the season had just opened to splendid audiences.
Many of the operatic stars have given very interesting accounts of
their experiences. Signor Caruso, the famous tenor and one of the
principals of the company, had one of the most thrilling
experiences. He and Signor Rossi, a favorite basso, and his
inseparable companion, had a suite on the seventh floor and were
awakened by the terrific shaking of the building. The shock nearly
threw Caruso out of bed. He said:
"I threw open the window, and I think I let out the grandest notes
I ever hit in all my life. I do not know why I did this. I
presume I was too excited to do anything else.
GREAT SINGERS ESCAPE.
"Looking out of the window, I saw buildings all around rocking like
the devil had hold of them. I wondered what was going on. Then I
heard Rossi come scampering into my room. 'My God, it's an
earthquake!' he yelled. 'Get your things and run!' I grabbed what
I could lay my hands on and raced like a madman for the office. On
the way down I shouted as loud as I could so the others would wake
up.
"When I got to the office I thought of my costumes and sent my
valet, Martino, back after them. He packed things up and carried
the trunks down on his back. I helped him take them to Union
Square."
It is said that ten minutes later he was seen seated on his valise
in the middle of the street. But to continue his story:
"I walked a few feet away to see how to get out, and when I came
back four Chinamen were lugging my trunks away. I grabbed one of
them by the ears, and the others jumped on me. I took out my
revolver and pointed it at them. They spit at me. I was mad, but
I hated to kill them, so I found a soldier, and he made them give
up the trunks.
"Ah, that soldier was a fine fellow. He went up to the Chinamen
and slapped them upon the face, once, twice, three times. They all
howled like the devil and ran away. I put my revolver back into my
pocket, and then I thanked the soldier. He said: "'Don't mention
it. Them Chinks would steal the money off a dead man's eyes.'"
They say that Rossi, though almost in tears, was heard trying his
voice at a corner near the Palace Hotel.
TEDDY'S PICTURE PROVES "OPEN SESAME."
"I went to Lafayette Square and slept on the grass. When I tried
to get into the square the soldiers pushed me back. I pleaded with
them, but they would not listen. I had under my arm a large
photograph of Theodore Roosevelt, upon which was written: 'With
kindest regards from Theodore Roosevelt.' I showed them this, and
one of them said: 'If you are a friend of Teddy, come in and make
yourself at home.'
"I put my trunks in the cellar of the Hotel St. Francis and thought
they would be safe. The hotel caught fire, and my trunks were all
burned up. To think I took so much trouble to save them!"
In spite of the news of all the woe and suffering which we hear, it
is cheering to learn also of the many thousands of heroic deeds by
brave men during the terrible scenes enacted through the four days
passing since the eventful morning when the earth began to demolish
splendid buildings of business and residence and fire sprang up to
complete the city's destruction. The Mayor and his forces of
police, the troops under command of General Funston, volunteer aids
to all these, and the husbands of terrified wives, and the sons,
brothers and other relatives who toiled for many consecutive hours
through smoke and falling walls and an inferno of flames and
explosions and traps of danger of all kinds, often without food or
water--toiling as men never toiled before to save life and relieve
distress of all kinds--all these were examples of heroism and
devotion to duty seldom witnessed in any scenes of terror in all
time. There are brave, unselfish men and heroic women yet in the
world, and all of the best of human nature has been exhibited in
large dimensions in the terrible disaster at San Francisco.
CHAPTER IX.
Disaster Spreads Over the Golden State
The first news that the world received of the earthquake came
direct from San Francisco and was confined largely to descriptions
of the disaster which had overwhelmed that city. It was so sudden,
so appalling, so tragic in its nature, that for the time being it
quite overshadowed the havoc and misery wrought in a number of
other California towns of lesser note.
As the truth, however, became gradually sifted out of the tangle of
rumors, the horror, instead of being diminished, was vastly
increased. It became evident that instead of this being a local
catastrophe, the full force of the seismic waves had travelled from
Ukiah in the north to Monterey in the south, a distance of about
180 miles, and had made itself felt for a considerable distance
from the Pacific westward, wrecking the larger buildings of every
town in its path, rending and ruining as it went, and doing
millions of dollars worth of damage.
THE DESTRUCTION OF SANTA ROSA.
In Santa Rosa, sixty miles to the north of San Francisco, and one
of the most beautiful towns of California, practically every
building was destroyed or badly damaged. The brick and stone
business blocks, together with the public buildings, were thrown
down. The Court House, Hall of Records, the Occidental and Santa
Rosa Hotels, the Athenaeum Theatre, the new Masonic Temple, Odd
Fellows' Block, all the banks, everything went, and in all the city
not one brick or stone building was left standing, except the
California Northwestern Depot.
In the residential portion of the city the foundations receded from
under the houses, badly wrecking about twenty of the largest and
damaging every one more or less; and here, as in San Francisco,
flames followed the earthquake, breaking out in a dozen different
places at once and completing the work of devastation. From the
ruins of the fallen houses fifty-eight bodies were taken out and
interred during the first few days, and the total of dead and
injured was close to a hundred. The money loss at this small city
is estimated at $3,000,000.
The destruction of Santa Rosa gave rise to general sorrow among the
residents of the interior of the State. It was one of the show
towns of California, and not only one of the most prosperous cities
in the fine county of Sonoma, but one of the most picturesque in
the State. Surrounding it there were miles of orchards, vineyards
and corn fields. The beautiful drives of the city were adorned
with bowers of roses, which everywhere were seen growing about the
homes of the people. In its vicinity are the famous gardens of
Luther Burbank, the "California wizard," but these fortunately
escaped injury.
At San Jose, another very beautiful city of over 20,000 population,
not a single brick or stone building of two stories or over was
left standing. Among those wrecked were the Hall of justice, just
completed at a cost of $300,000; the new High School, the
Presbyterian Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Numbers of people
were caught in the ruins and maimed or killed. The death list
appears to have been small, but the property damage was not less
than $5,000,000. The Agnew State Insane Asylum, in the vicinity of
San Jose, was entirely destroyed, more than half the inmates being
killed or injured.
THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
The Leland Stanford, Jr., University, at Palo Alto (about thirty
miles south of San Francisco), felt the full force of the
earthquake and was badly wrecked. Only two lives were lost as a
result of the earthquake, one of a student, the other of a fireman,
but eight students were injured more or less seriously. The damage
to the buildings is estimated by President Jordan to amount to
about $4,000,000.
The memorial church, with its twelve marble figures of the
apostles, each weighing two tons, was badly injured by the fall of
its Gothic spire, which crashed through the roof and demolished
much of the interior; the great entrance archway was split in twain
and wrecked; so, too, were the library, the gymnasium and the power
house. A number of other buildings in the outer quadrangle and
some of the small workshops were seriously damaged.
Encina Hall and the inner quadrangle were practically uninjured,
and the bulk of the books, collections and apparatus escaped
damage.
Sacramento, together with all the smaller cities and towns that dot
the great Sacramento Valley for a distance fifty miles south and
150 miles north of the capital, escaped without injury, not a
single pane of glass being broken or a brick displaced in
Sacramento and no injury done in the other places, they lying
eastward of the seat of serious earthquake activity.
Los Angeles and Santa Barbara escaped with a slight trembling;
Stockton, 103 miles north of San Francisco, felt a severe shock and
the Santa Fe bridge over the San Joaquin River at this point
settled several inches. The only place in Southern California that
suffered was Brawley, a small town lying 120 miles south of Los
Angeles, about 100 buildings in the town and the surrounding valley
being injured, though none of them were destroyed.
THE EARTHQUAKE AT OTHER CITIES.
At Alameda, on the bay opposite San Francisco, a score of chimneys
were shaken down and other injuries done. Railroad tracks were
twisted, and over 600 feet of track of the Oakland Transit
Company's railway sank four feet. The total damage done amounted
to probably $200,000, but no lives were lost. Tomales, a place of
350 inhabitants, was left a pile of ruins.
At Los Panos several buildings were wrecked, causing damage to the
extent of $75,000, but no lives were lost.
At Loma Prieta the earthquake caused a mine house to slip down the
side of a mountain, ten men being buried in the ruins.
Fort Bragg, one of the principal lumbering towns in Mendocino
County, was practically wiped out by fire following the earthquake,
but out of a population of 5,000 only one was killed, though scores
were injured.
The town of Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco, suffered
considerable damage from twisted structures, fallen walls and
broken chimneys, the greatest injury being in the collapse of the
town hall and the ruin of the deaf and dumb asylum. The University
of California, situated here, was fortunate in escaping injury, it
being reported that not a building was harmed in the slightest
degree. Another public edifice of importance and interest, in a
different section of the State, the famous Lick Astronomical
Observatory, was equally fortunate, no damage being done to the
buildings or the instruments.
AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY.
Salinas, a town down the coast near Monterey, suffered severely,
the place being to a large extent destroyed, with an estimated loss
of over $1,000,000. The Spreckels' sugar factory and a score of
other buildings were reported ruined and a number of lives lost.
During the succeeding week several other shocks of some strength
were reported from this town.
Thus the ruinous work of the earthquake stretched over a broad
track of prosperous, peaceful and happy country, embracing one of
the best sections of California, laying waste not only the towns in
its path, but doing much damage to ranch houses and country
residences. Strange manifestations of nature were reported from
the interior, where the ground was opened in many places like a
ploughed field. Great rents in the earth were reported, and for
many miles north from Los Angeles miniature geysers are said to
have spouted volcano-like streams of hot mud.
Railroad tracks in some localities were badly injured, sinking or
lifting, and being put out of service until repaired. In fact, the
ruinous effects of the earthquake immensely exceeded those of any
similar catastrophe ever before known in the United States, and
when the destruction done by the succeeding conflagration in San
Francisco is taken into account the California earthquake of 1906
takes rank with the most destructive of those recorded in history.
CHAPTER X.
All America and Canada to the Rescue
During the first three days after the terrible news had been
flashed over the world the relief fund from the nation had leaped
beyond the $5,000,000 mark. New York took the lead in the most
generous giving that the world has ever seen. From every town and
country village the people hastened to the Town Halls, the
newspaper offices and wherever help was to be found most quickly,
to add their savings and to sacrifice all but necessities for their
stricken fellow-countrymen. Never has there been such a practical
illustration of brotherly love. A perfect shower of gold and food
was poured out to the sufferers to give them immediate assistance
and to help them to a new start in life. All relief records were
broken within two days of the disaster, but still the purses of the
rich and poor alike continued to add to the huge contributions.
Though the relief records were broken, every succeeding dispatch
from the West told too plainly the terrible fact that all records
of necessity were also broken.
Over the entire globe Americans wherever they were hastened to
cable or telegraph their bankers to add their share to the great
work. A large fund was at once started in London, and with
contributions of from $2,000 to $12,000 the sum was soon raised to
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Individual contributions of $100,000 were common. In addition to
John D. Rockefeller's gift of this sum, his company, the Standard
Oil, gave another $100,000. The Steel Corporation and Andrew
Carnegie each gave $100,000. From London William Waldorf Astor
cabled his American representative, Charles A. Peabody, to place
$100,000 at once at the disposal of Mayor Schmitz, of San
Francisco, which was done. The Dominion Government of Canada made
a special appropriation of $100,000 and the Canadian Bank of
Commerce, at Toronto, gave $10,000. And two of the great steamship
companies owned in Germany sent $25,000 each.
RIGHT OF WAY FOR FOOD TRAINS.
On nearly a dozen roads, two days before the fire was over, great
trains of freight cars loaded with foodstuffs were hastening at
express speed to San Francisco. They had the right of way on every
line. E. H. Harriman, in addition to giving $200,000 for the Union
Pacific, Southern Pacific and other Harriman roads, issued orders
that all relief trains bound for the desolated city should have
Precedence over all other business of the roads.
Advices from many points indicated that at least 150 freight cars
loaded with the necessaries so eagerly awaited in San Francisco
were speeding there as fast as steam could drive them. In
addition, several steamers from other Pacific coast points, all
food-laden, were rushing toward the stricken city.
The rapidity with which the various relief funds in every city grew
was almost magical.
From corporations, firms, labor unions, religious societies,
individuals, rich and poor, money flowed. Even the children in the
schools gave their pennies. Every grade of society, every branch
of trade and commerce seemed inspired by a spirit of emulation in
giving.
The United States Government at once voted a contribution of
$1,000,000, and government supplies were rushed from every post in
the West.
The $1,000,000 government gift, which formed the nucleus of the
relief fund, was doubled on Saturday by a resolution appropriating
another, and a vote was taken on Monday to increase this sum to
$1,500,000, making a total government contribution of $2,500,000.
This was largely expended in supplies of absolute necessaries,
furnished from the stores of the War Department, and those first
sent being five carloads of army medical supplies from St. Louis.
A cargo of evaporated cream was also sent to use in the care of
little children, while the Red Cross Society shipped a carload of
eggs from Chicago. Dr. Edward Devine, special Red Cross agent in
San Francisco, was appointed to distribute these supplies.
CARGOES OF SUPPLIES.
Trainloads of other supplies were dispatched in all haste from
various points in the West and East, carrying provisions of all
kinds, tents, cots, clothing, bedding and a great variety of other
articles. A special train of twenty-six cars was dispatched from
Portland, Oregon, on Thursday night, conveying ten doctors, twenty
trained nurses and 800,000 pounds of provisions. Chicago sent
meat. Minneapolis sent flour, and, in fact, every part of the
country moved in the greatest haste for the relief of the stricken
city.
There was urgent need of haste. On Friday, while the flames were
still making their way onward, General Funston telegraphed: "Famine
seems inevitable." The people of the country took a more hopeful
view of it, and by Saturday night the spectre of famine was
definitely driven from the field and food for all the fugitives was
within reach.
THE SYMPATHY OF THE PEOPLE AWAKES.
On all sides the people were awake and doing. In all the great
cities agencies to receive contributions were opened, and many of
the newspapers undertook the task of collecting and forwarding
supplies. The smaller towns were equally alert in furnishing their
quota to the good work, and from countryside and village
contributions were forwarded until the fund accumulated to an
unprecedented amount. Collections were made in factories, in
stores, in offices, in the public schools; cash boxes or globes
stood in all frequented places and were rapidly filled with bank
notes; theatrical and musical entertainments were given for the
benefit of the earthquake sufferers; never had there been such an
awakening. As an instance of the spirit displayed, one man came
running into a banking house and threw a thousand dollar bill on
the counter.
"For San Francisco," he said, as he turned toward the door.
"What name?" asked the teller.
"Put it down to 'cash,'" he answered, as he vanished.
Rapidly the fund accumulated. A few days brought it up to
the $5,000,000 mark. Then it grew to $10,000,000. Within ten
days' time the relief fund was estimated at $18,000,000, and the
good work was still going on--in less profusion, it is true, but
still the spirit was alive.
FOREIGN OFFERS OF AID.
The generous impulse was not confined to the United States. From
all countries came offers of aid. Canada was promptly in the
field, and the chief nations of Europe were quick to follow, while
Japan made a generous offer, and in far Australia funds were
started at the various cities for the sufferers. No doubt a large
sum from foreign lands would have been available had not President
Roosevelt declined to accept contributions from abroad, as not
needed in view of America's abundant response. To the Hamburg-Line
which offered $25,000, the following letter was sent:
"The President deeply appreciates your message of sympathy, and
desires me to thank you heartily for the kind offer of outside aid.
Although declining, the President earnestly wishes you to
understand how much he appreciates your cordial and generous
sympathy."
All other offerings from abroad were in the same thankful spirit
declined, even those from our immediate neighbors, Canada and
Mexico. Some feeling was aroused by this, especially in the relief
committee at San Francisco, which felt that the need of that city
was so great and urgent that no offer of relief should have been
declined. In response the President explained that he only spoke
for the government, in his official capacity, and that San
Francisco was in no sense debarred from accepting any contributions
made directly to it.
It may justly be said for the people of this country that their
spontaneous generosity in the presence of a great calamity, either
at home or abroad, is always magnificent. It never waits for
solicitation. It does not delay even until the necessity is
demonstrated, but it assumes that where there is great destruction
of property and homes are swept away there must be distress which
calls for immediate relief.
There is one ray of light in the gloom caused by the calamity at
San Francisco. A truly splendid display of brotherly love and
sympathy has been shown by the people of this country, and a
similar display was ready to be shown by the people of the
civilized world had it been felt that the occasion demanded it and
that the exigency surpassed the power of our people to meet it.
ENTERPRISE IN SAN FRANCISCO.
In the face of an appalling and death-dealing disaster, rendering
an entire community dependent for the bare necessities of life and
putting it in imminent danger of greater horrors, the nation has
been stirred as it has rarely been before, and there have been
awakened those deeper feelings of brotherhood which are referred to
in the oft-quoted passage that "one touch of nature makes the whole
world akin."
The nature indicated in this instance is human nature in its
highest manifestation, the sympathetic sentiment that stirs deeply
in all our hearts and needs but the occasion to make itself warmly
manifested. There is something incomparably splendid in the
spectacle of an entire nation straining every nerve to send succor
to the helpless and the suffering, and this spectacle has warmed
the hearts of our people to the uttermost and inspired them to make
the most strenuous efforts to drive away the gaunt wolf of famine
from the ruined homes of our far Pacific brethren.
It may be said that San Francisco will be willing to accept this
relief only so long as stern necessity demands it. At this writing
only two weeks have passed since the dread calamity, and already
active steps are being taken to provide for themselves. As an
example of their enterprise, it may be said that their newspapers
hardly suspended at all, the Evening Post alone suspending
publication for a time from being unable to acquire a plant in the
vicinity of the city. When the conflagration made it apparent that
all plants would be destroyed, the Bulletin put at work a force in
its composing rooms, a hand-bill was set and some hundreds of
copies run off on the proof-press, giving the salient features of
the day's news.
The morning papers, the Call, Chronicle and Examiner, retired to
Oakland, on the other side of the bay, and there, on Thursday
morning, issued a joint paper from the office of the Oakland
Tribune. On Friday morning they split forces again, the Examiner
retaining the use of the Tribune plant and the Call and Chronicle
issuing from the office of the Oakland Herald. Two days later the
Call secured the service of the Oakland Enquirer plant. Meantime,
on Friday, the Bulletin, after a suspension of one day, made
arrangements for the use in the afternoon of the Oakland Herald
equipment, and from these sources and under such circumstances the
San Francisco papers have been issuing.
Offices were hurriedly opened on Fillmore Street, which today is
the main thoroughfare of San Francisco, and from these headquarters
the news of the day as it is gathered is transmitted by means of
automobiles and ferry service to the Oakland shore.
There also were accepted such advertisements as had been offered.
The number of these was, perhaps, the best visual sign of the
resurrection of the new city. It was noted that in a fourteen-page
paper printed within two weeks after the fire by the Examiner there
were over nine pages of advertisements, and in a sixteen-page paper
published by the Chronicle at least fifty per cent. of its space
was devoted to the same end.
Many of the larger factories left unharmed were also quick to start
work. At the Union Iron Works 2,300 men were promptly employed,
and the management expected within a fortnight to have the full
complement of its force, nearly 4,000 men, engaged. No damage was
done to the three new warships being built at these works for the
government, the cruisers California and Milwaukee and the
battleship South Dakota. The steamer City of Puebla, which was
sunk in the bay, has been raised and is being repaired. Workmen
are also engaged fixing the steamship Columbia, which was turned on
her side. The hulls of the new Hawaiian-American Steamship
Company's liners were pitched about four feet to the south, but
were uninjured and only need to be replaced in position.
As for the working people at large, those without funds for their
own support, abundant employment will quickly be provided for them
in the necessary work of clearing away the debris, thus opening the
way to a resumption of business and reducing the number requiring
relief. The ukase has already been issued that all able-bodied men
needing aid must go to work or leave the city.
This dictum of Chief of Police Dinan's will be strictly enforced.
The relief work and distribution of food and clothing are
attracting a certain element to the city which does not desire to
labor, while some already here prefer to live on the generosity of
others. Chief Dinan has determined that those who apply for relief
and refuse work when it is offered them shall leave the city or be
arrested for vagrancy. The police judges have suggested
establishing a chain gang and putting all vagrants and petty
offenders at work clearing up the ruins.
Perhaps never in the history of the city has there been so little
crime in San Francisco. With the saloons closed, Chinatown, the
Barbary Coast, and other haunts of criminals wiped out, and
soldiers and marines on almost every block in the residence
districts, there have been few crimes of any kind. It is the
opinion of the police that most of the criminal element has left
the city. The saloons, in all probability will remain closed for
two more months.
THE PROBLEM OF THE CHINESE.
In conclusion of this chapter it is advisable to refer to the
situation of one of the elements of San Francisco's population, the
people of Chinatown. One of the problems facing the relief
committees on both sides of the bay is the sheltering of the
Chinese. Many of them are destitute. It has long been a question
in San Francisco what should be done with Chinatown, and moving the
Chinese in the direction of Colma has been agitated. Now they are
without homes and without prospects of procuring any. They can get
no land. The limits of Oakland's Chinatown have already been
extended, and the strictest police regulations are in force to
prevent further enlargement. On this side of the bay they are
camping in open lots. Unless the government undertakes their
relief, they are in grave danger. Those who have money cannot
purchase property, as no one will sell to them. Few, however, even
of the wealthiest merchants in Chinatown, saved anything of value,
for their wealth was invested in the Oriental village which had
sprung up in the heart of the area burned.
Yet it is the desire of the municipality not to harass this portion
of its foreign population, and the vexatious problem of placing the
new Chinatown will probably be settled to the satisfaction of the
Chinese colony. This colony diverts an important part of the trade
of San Francisco to that city, and if its members are dealt with
unjustly there is danger of losing this trade. The question is one
that must be left for the future to decide, but no doubt care will
be taken that a new Chinatown with the unsavory conditions of the
old shall not arise.
CHAPTER XI.
San Francisco of the Past
The story of San Francisco's history and tragedy appeal with
extraordinary force to the imagination of all civilized men. For
several generations the city was looked upon as an Arabian Night's
dream--a place where gold lay in the streets and joy and happiness
were unlimited. Its settlement, or, rather, its real rise as a
city, was as by magic. It was first a city of tents, of shanties,
of "shacks," lying on the rim of a great, spacious bay. Ships of
all sizes and rigs brought gold-seekers and provisions from the
East, all the way round Cape Horn, after voyages of weary months,
and at San Francisco their crews deserted and hundreds of these
craft were left at their moorings to rot. Ashore was a riot of
money, prodigious extravagance, mean, shabby appointments, sudden
riches, great disappointment, revelry, improvidence and suicide.
The streets that now lay squares from the water were then at the
water's edge and batteaus brought cargoes ashore. Long wharves--
one was for years called the Long Wharf even after there were
others built much longer--led out over the shallow water. These
shallows were later filled and streets built upon them, and upon
them arose warehouses, hotels, factories, lodging houses and
business places.
The city grew rapidly in the direction away from the bay. But in
its early days it was a city with no confidence in its own
stability, and its buildings were accordingly unstable. A few
minor earthquakes shook some of these down years ago and
established in the minds of the people a horror of earthquakes.
Frame houses became the rule.
In its ensuing life San Francisco developed the attributes of a
city of gayety tempered by business. The population, for the most
part, affected light-hearted scorn of money, or, rather, of saving
money. It made mirth of life, habituated itself to expect
windfalls such as miners and prospectors dream of, developed a
moderate amount of business, and enjoyed the day while there was
sunlight and the night when there was artificial light. The
windfalls grew less frequent, mining became a costly and scientific
process, and agriculture succeeded it. But, though it was only
necessary to tickle the land with a hoe and pour water upon the
tickled spot, to have it laugh with two, three or even four
harvests a year, agriculturists continued scarce. The Chinese
truck farms, some of which lay within the city's lines, supplied
the small fruits and vegetables. Across the bay white men farmed,
and grapes, fruits, vegetables and flowers of prodigious variety
and monstrous dimensions were grown. But Eastern men came to do
the farming. The Californian who himself was an "Argonaut," or
whose father was an Argonaut, found no attractions in the steady
labor of farming.
There followed a period of depression, ascribed by many to the
influx of the Chinese and their effect upon the labor market,
though the army of the unemployed were as a rule unwilling to do
the work their Celestial rivals engaged in, that of truck farming,
fruit raising, manual household labor, wood cutting and the like.
A heavy weight settled on the city; business grew slack; the army
of the unemployed, of ruined speculators and moneyless newcomers
grew steadily greater, and for an era San Francisco saw its dark
side.
But this was not a long duration. There was fast developing a new
and important business, resulting from the development of the real
resources of the State--the fruits, particularly the citrous fruits
that grew abundantly in the warm valley. Fortunes were made in
oranges, lemons, limes, grapes, almonds and pears. Raisins, whose
size defied anything heretofore known, were made from the huge
grapes that grew in the San Joaquin Valley. Sonoma sent its grapes
to be made into wine. Capital flowed in from every side. Eastern
men in search of health, others in search of wealth, came to the
Golden State. No matter who came, where they came from, or where
they were going, they spent a few days, or many, and some money, or
much, in "'Frisco." The enterprise of the second edition pioneers
quickly transformed the State and city.
AGRICULTURE BRINGS NEW WEALTH.
Luxury was startling. San Francisco's mercantile community equaled
the best, the stores and shops were as beautiful as anywhere in the
world and proportionately as well patronized. Theatres, music
halls, restaurants, hotel bars and the like were ablaze with lights
at night, and patronized by a gay throng. Sutro's bath, near the
Cliff House, was a species of entertainment unequaled anywhere.
The Presidio, as the army post is still known, as in the Spanish
nomenclature, gave its drills, regarded as free exhibitions for the
people. Golden Gate Park was an endless daily picnic ground.
The crowds in the streets of San Francisco were noticeably well
dressed and usually gay, without that fixed, drawn, saturnine look
noticeable among the people of the East. It is doubtful whether,
upon the whole, the earnings of the San Francisco man equaled those
of his Eastern brother, but his holidays were frequent and his joys
greater. The grind of life was not yet steady--men had not become
mere machines.
The climate of California is peculiar; it is hard to give an
impression of it. In the first place, all the forces of nature
work on laws of their own in that part of California. There is no
thunder or lightning; there is no snow, except a flurry once in
five or six years; there are perhaps half a dozen nights in the
winter when the thermometer drops low enough so that there is a
little film of ice on exposed water in the morning. Neither is
there any hot weather. Yet most Easterners remaining in San
Francisco for a few days remember that they were always chilly.
A PECULIAR YET DELIGHTFUL CLIMATE.
For the Gate is a big funnel, drawing in the winds and the mists
which cool off the great, hot interior valley of San Joaquin and
Sacramento. So the west wind blows steadily ten months of the year
and almost all the mornings are foggy. This keeps the temperature
steady at about 55 degrees--a little cool for comfort of an
unacclimated person, especially indoors. Californians, used to it,
hardly ever think of making fires in their houses except in the few
exceptional days of the winter season, and then they rely mainly
upon fireplaces. This is like the custom of the Venetians and the
Florentines.
But give an Easterner six months of it, and he, too, learns to
exist without a chill in a steady temperature a little lower than
that to which he is accustomed at home. After that one goes about
with perfect indifference to the temperature. Summer and winter
San Francisco women wear light tailor-made clothes, and men wear
the same fall-weight suits all the year around.
Except for the modern buildings, the fruit of the last ten years,
the town presented at first sight to the newcomer a disreputable
appearance. Most of the buildings were low and of wood. In the
middle period of the 70's, when a great part of San Francisco was
building, there was some atrocious architecture perpetrated. In
that time, too, every one put bow windows on his house, to catch
all of the morning sunlight that was coming through the fog, and
those little houses, with bow windows and fancy work all down their
fronts, were characteristic of the middle class residence
districts.
Then the Italians, who tumbled over Telegraph Hill, had built as
they listed and with little regard for streets, and their houses
hung crazily on a side hill which was little less than a precipice.
For the most part the Chinese, although they occupied an abandoned
business district, had remade the houses Chinese fashion, and the
Mexicans and Spaniards had added to their houses those little
balconies without which life is not life to a Spaniard.
The hills are steep beyond conception. Where Vallejo Street ran up
Russian Hill it progressed for four blocks by regular steps like a
flight of stairs.
With these hills, with the strangeness of the architecture, and
with the green gray tinge over everything, the city fell always
into vistas and pictures, a setting for the romance which hung over
everything, which has always hung over life in San Francisco since
the padres came and gathered the Indians about Mission Dolores.
And it was a city of romance and a gateway to adventure. It opened
out on the mysterious Pacific, the untamed ocean, and most of
China, Japan, the South Sea Islands, Lower California, the west
coast of Central America, Australia that came to this country
passed in through the Golden Gate. There was a sprinkling, too, of
Alaska and Siberia. From his windows on Russian Hill one saw
always something strange and suggestive creeping through the mists
of the bay. It would be a South Sea Island brig, bringing in
copra, to take out cottons and idols; a Chinese junk with fan-like
sails, back from an expedition after sharks' livers; an old whaler,
which seemed to drip oil, back from a year of cruising in the
Arctic. Even, the tramp windjammers were deep-chested craft,
capable of rounding the Horn or of circumnavigating the globe; and
they came in streaked and picturesque from their long voyaging.
A MIXTURE OF RACES.
In the orange colored dawn which always comes through the mists of
that bay, the fishing fleet would crawl in under triangular lateen
sails, for the fishermen of San Francisco Bay are all Neapolitans,
who have brought their costumes and sail with lateen rigs shaped
like the ear of a horse when the wind fills them and stained an
orange brown.
The "smelting pot of the races" Stevenson called the region along
the water front, for here the people of all these craft met,
Italians, Greeks, Russians, Lascars, Kanakas, Alaska Indians, black
Gilbert Islanders, Spanish-Americans, wanderers and sailors from
all the world, who came in and out from among the queer craft to
lose themselves in the disreputable shanties and saloons. The
Barbary Coast was a veritable bit of Satan's realm. The place was
made up of three solid blocks of dance halls, for the delectation
of the sailors of the world. Within those streets of peril the
respectable never set foot; behind the swinging doors of those
saloons anything might be happening, crime was as common here as
drink, and much went on of which the law was blankly ignorant.
Not far removed from this haunt of crime was the world-famous
Chinatown, a district six blocks long and two wide, and housing
when at its fullest some 30,000 Chinese. Old business houses at
first, the new inmates added to them, rebuilt them, ran out their
own balconies and entrances, and gave them that feeling of huddled
irregularity which makes all Chinese built dwellings fall naturally
into pictures. Not only this, they burrowed to a depth equal to
three stories under the ground, and through this ran passages in
which the Chinese transacted their dark and devious affairs--as the
smuggling of opium, the traffic in slave girls and the settlement
of their difficulties, by murder if they saw fit. The law was
powerless to prevent or discover and convict the murderers.
Chinatown is gone; the Barbary Coast is gone; the haunts of crime
have been swept by the devouring flames, and if the citizens can
prevent they will never be restored. The old San Francisco is
dead. The gayest, lightest-hearted, most pleasure-loving city of
this continent, and in many ways the most interesting and romantic,
is a horde of huddled refugees living among ruins. It may rebuild;
it probably will; but those who have known that peculiar city by
the Golden Gate and have caught its flavor of the Arabian Nights
feel that it can never be the same. When it rises out of its ashes
it will probably doubtless resemble other modern cities and have
lost its old strange flavor.
CHAPTER XII.
Life in the Metropolis of the Pacific
Brought up in a bountiful country, where no one really has to work
very hard to live, nurtured on adventure, scion of a free and merry
stock, the real, native Californian is a distinctive type; as far
from the Easterner in psychology as the extreme Southern is from
the Yankee. He is easy going, witty, hospitable, lovable, inclined
to be unmoral rather than immoral in his personal habits, and above
all easy to meet and to know.
Above all there is an art sense all through the populace which sets
it off from any other part of the country. This sense is almost
Latin in its strength, and the Californian owes it to the leaven of
Latin blood.
THE 'FRISCO RESTAURANTS.
With such a people life was always gay. If they did not show it on
the streets, as do the people of Paris, it was because the winds
made open cafes disagreeable at all seasons of the year. The
gayety went on indoors or out on the hundreds of estates that
fringed the city. It was noted for its restaurants. Perhaps
people who cared not how they spent their money could get the best
they wished, but for a dollar down to as low as fifteen cents the
restaurants furnished the best fare to be had anywhere at the
price.
The country all about produced everything that a cook needs, and
that in abundance--the bay was an almost untapped fish-pond, the
fruit farms came up to the very edge of the town, and the
surrounding country produced in abundance fine meats, all cereals
and all vegetables.
But the chefs who came from France in the early days and liked this
land of plenty were the head and front of it. They passed their
art to other Frenchmen or to the clever Chinese. Most of the
French chefs at the biggest restaurants were born in Canton, China.
Later the Italians, learning of this country where good food is
appreciated, came and brought their own style. Householders always
dined out one or two nights of the week, and boarding houses were
scarce, for the unattached preferred the restaurants. The eating
was usually better than the surroundings.
THE FAMOUS POODLE DOG.
Meals that were marvels were served in tumbledown little hotels.
Most famous of all the restaurants was the Poodle Dog. There have
been no less than four restaurants of this name, beginning with a
frame shanty where, in the early days, a prince of French cooks
used to exchange recipes for gold dust. Each succeeding restaurant
of the name has moved farther downtown; and the recent Poodle Dog
stands--or stood--on the edge of the Tenderloin in a modern five-
story building. And it typified a certain spirit that there was in
San Francisco.
On the ground floor was a public restaurant where there was served
the best dollar dinner on earth. It ranked with the best and the
others were in San Francisco. Here, especially on Sunday night,
almost everybody went to vary the monotony of home cooking. Every
one who was any one in the town could be seen there off and on. It
was perfectly respectable. A man might take his wife and daughter
there.
On the second floor there were private dining rooms, and to dine
there, with one or more of the opposite sex, was risque but not
especially terrible. But the third floor--and the fourth floor--
and the fifth! The elevator man of the Poodle Dog, who had held
the job for many years and never spoke unless spoken to, wore
diamonds and was a heavy investor in real estate.
There were others as famous in their way--Zinkaud's, where, at one
time, every one went after the theatre, and Tate's, which has
lately bitten into that trade; the Palace Grill, much like the
grills of Eastern hotels, except for the price; Delmonico's, which
ran the Poodle Dog neck and neck in its own line, and many others,
humbler, but great at the price.
THE BOHEMIAN CLUB.
To the visitor who came to see the city and who put himself in the
hands of one of its well-to-do citizens for the purpose, the few
days that followed were apt to be a whirl of mirth and sight-
seeing, made up of breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, drives, little
trips across the bay, dashes down the peninsula to the polo and
country clubs, hours spent in Bohemia, trips around the world among
all the races of the habitable globe, all of whom had their
colonies in this most cosmopolitan of American cities.
In club life the Bohemian stood first and foremost, the famous club
whose meeting place, with all its art treasures, is now a heap of
ashes, but which was formerly 'Frisco's head-centre of mirth.
Founded by Henry George, the world-famous single tax advocate, when
he was an impecunious scribbler on the San Francisco Post, it grew
to be the choicest place of resort in the Pacific metropolis.
Within its walls the possession of dollars was a bar rather than an
"open sesame," the master key to its circles being the knack of
telling a good story or the possession of quick and telling wit.
Fun-making was the rule there, and the only way to escape being
made its victim was the power to deliver a ready and witty retort.
In this home of good fellowship all the artists, actors, wits,
literati, fiddlers, pianists and bon vivants were members. Here an
impoverished painter could square his grill and buffet account by
giving the club a daub to hang on its walls. Here in days of old
the Sheriff used to camp regularly once a month until the members
rustled up the money to replevin the furniture. But these days of
poverty passed away, and in later years the club came to know
prosperity beyond the dreams of the good fellows who founded it.
THE WICKEDEST AND GAYEST.
The Bohemian is gone, but the spirit that founded and made it still
exists, and we may look to see it rise, like the phoenix, from its
ashes.
San Francisco was often called the wickedest city in America. It
was hardly that, it was simply the gayest. It was not the home of
purity; neither is any other city. What other cities do behind
closed doors San Francisco did not hesitate to do in the open.
In Eastern cities the police have driven vice into tenements,
lodging houses and apartments. San Francisco did not do that. She
had certain quarters where, according to unwritten law, vice was
allowed to abide, and she did not try to hide the fact that it
could be found there. She was not secretly immoral; she was
frankly unmoral.
She did not believe in driving her vice from the open where it
could be recognized and controlled--prevented from doing any more
harm than it was possible to stop--into districts of the city where
good people dwell and purity would feel its contaminating
influence. There were regions in which the respectable never set
foot, haunts of acknowledged vice which for virtue to enter would
be to lose caste.
As for its gayety, San Francisco was proud of the reputation of
being the Paris of America. Its women were beautiful, and they
knew it. They liked to adorn their beauty with fine clothes and
peacock along the streets on matinee days. If you asked a San
Francisco girl why she wore such expensive clothes, she would say,
frankly, "Because I like to have the men admire me," and she would
see no harm in saying it. There was very little sham about the San
Francisco women. Their men understood them and worshiped them.
They bore themselves with the freedom that was theirs by right of
their heritage of open-air living, the Bohemian atmosphere they
breathed, the unconventional character of their surroundings.
Their figures were strong and well moulded, their faces bloomed
with health like the roses in their gardens. They drew the wine of
laughter from their balmy California air. Sorrow and trouble sat
lightly on their shoulders.
There was no end of enjoyments. After the theatre they would go to
Zinkaud's, Tate's, the Palace or some other of the many places of
resort, for a snack to eat and a spell under the music, which was
to be heard everywhere.
Another part of the gay life of the city was for a private dance to
keep going all night in a fashionable residence, and at daylight,
instead of everybody going to bed, to jump into automobiles or
carriages or take the trolley cars and whizz off to the beach for a
dip in the cold salt water pool at Sutro's baths, and then, with
ravenous appetites, sit down on the Cliff House balcony to an open-
air breakfast while watching the ships sail in and out at the
Golden Gate and hearing the seals barking on the rocks. After that
home and to rest.
AN ALL-NIGHT TOWN.
The city never went to sleep altogether. It was "an all-night"
town. Few of the restaurants ever closed, none of the saloons did.
Always during the whole twenty-four hours of the day there was
"something doing" in the Tenderloin. No hour of the night was ever
free of revelry. It was marvelous how they kept it up. The
average San Franciscon could stay awake all night at a card game,
take a cold wash and a good breakfast in the morning, and go
straight downtown to business and feel none the worse for it.
It was a gay town, a captivating, piquant, audacious, but not
especially wicked city. A Frenchy, a risque city it might justly
have been called, but it was not wicked in the sense that sordid
vice, vulgar crime and wretched squalor constitute wickedness.
It was a lovable place that everybody longed to get back to, once
having been there. A woman, leaving it for years, watched it from
the ferryboat, and, weeping, said, "San Francisco, oh, my San
Francisco, I am leaving thee."
Will those who left it after the fire ever get back to their old
city again? We have already expressed our doubt of this. The old
San Francisco is probably gone, never to return. The new San
Francisco will be a cleaner, saner and safer city, destitute of its
rookeries, its tenements and its Chinatown. It will be a greater
and more sightly city than that of the past, but to those who knew
and loved the old San Francisco--San Francisco the captivating, the
maddest, gayest, liveliest and most rollicking in the country--
there must be something impressibly sad to its old inhabitants in
the reflection that the new city of the Golden Gate can never be
quite the same as the haven of their early affections.
CHAPTER XIII.
Plans to Rebuild San Francisco.
Almost as soon as the terrible conflagration had been checked and
gotten under control by the heroic efforts of the soldiers and
firemen, a little group of the leading citizens of the desolated
city had met in the office of Mayor Eugene E. Schmitz and had begun
to plan the restoration of their municipality. It was an admirable
courage, bred in the stock of those men who in 1849 left
comfortable homes in the East to seek their fortune in the Golden
State, that inspired the loyal leaders of the present day citizens
to provide with far-seeing eyes for the rebuilding of their homes
and business houses with more orderly precision after the fire than
had been possible during the hustle of early days in a new city.
The old San Francisco was no more, and never could be recalled save
as a memory. The local color, atmosphere, that which might be
termed the feeling of the old city, vanished with the clustered
houses, as rich in tradition as the ancient missions in whose
cloisters worshiped the Spanish padre "before the Gringo came."
Heartrending as it was to the citizens who loved their homes and
haunts to see them disappear into smoke, there was an attraction
about the city of the Golden Gate which endeared it to all
Americans.
One of San Francisco's charms was in its defiance of precedent.
There were hills to be conquered, and San Francisco' s expanding
traffic hurled itself at the face of them. It went up and up, with
no thought of finding a way around. So it happened that on some of
the streets the steepness was too great for horses. In the centre
there are cable roads, and on either side of the rails grass grows
through the cobbles. The earlier structures on the level were put
together in haste. For the most part they remained essentially
unchanged until they fell with a crash. True, they had become
stained by time, unkempt, dwarfed by new neighbors, but nobody
desired to efface them. Away from the business section houses
appeared on the various hills, perched precariously near the brink;
houses reached by long flights and grown over with roses. The
bathing fogs touched them with gray. Moss grew on their roofs. In
the little, lofty yards calla lilies bloomed with the profusion of
weeds. The natural beauty of the site, the quaintness of the
commercial and social development of which it became the centre,
attracted the poet and the artist. It incited them to paint the
attractions and to sing the praises of their chosen home.
But the loyal sons of those brave pioneers who founded the
metropolis were not in the least daunted by the problem of raising
from its ruins the whole vast number of dwellings and business
houses. The leaders of the people, the men who had been identified
with San Francisco since its early days, and whose great fortunes
were almost swept away by the cataclysm, lent courage to all the
wearied thousands by firm statements of their optimism.
James D. Phelan, former Mayor of the city and one of its richest
capitalists, immediately announced his intention of rebuilding his
properties at Market and O'Farrell Streets, in the heart of the
ruined business district. William H. Crocker, one of the heaviest
losers, a nephew of Charles Crocker, who founded the Central
Pacific Railroad with Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford and
others, stated emphatically that he would put his shoulder to the
wheel. On receiving the first news of the disaster, and before he
knew what his losses would amount to, he said:
"Mark my words, San Francisco will arise from these ashes a greater
and more beautiful city than ever. I don't take any stock in the
belief of some people that investors and residents will be panicky
and afraid to build up again. This calamity, terrible as it is,
will mean nothing less than a new and grander San Francisco. It is
preposterous to suggest the abandonment of the city. It is the
natural metropolis of the Pacific coast. God made it so. D. O.
Mills, the Spreckels family, everybody I know, have determined to
rebuild and to invest more than ever before. Burnham, the great
Chicago architect, has been at work for a year or more on plans to
beautify San Francisco. Terrible as this destruction has been, it
serves to clear the way for the carrying out of these plans. Why,
even now we are figuring on rebuilding. More than that, I am
confident that, except for what fire has absolutely laid waste, it
will be found that the buildings are less injured than was
supposed. Plastering, ornamental work, glass and more or less
loose material has been shaken down, but the framework, I am sure,
will be found intact in many big buildings."
D. Ogden Mills, of New York, who owned enormous properties in the
stricken city, was equally confident.
"We will go ahead," said he, "and build the city, and build it so
that earthquakes will not shake it down and so fire will not
destroy it, and we will have a water system which will enable us to
draw water from the sea for fire extinguishing service and other
municipal purposes. We will thus have less to fear from the
destruction of the land mains. The whole point with all of us who
own property down there is that we have to build. To let it lie
idle, piled with its ruins, would mean the throwing away of money,
and I am sure none of us intends to do that. The city will go up
like Baltimore did, and Galveston, and Charleston, and Chicago, and
there will be no lack of capital. California spirit and California
enterprise, which are always associated with the State of
California, will rise superior to this calamity."
George Crocker, elder brother of William H. Crocker; Archer M.
Huntington, son of Collis P. Huntington; Mrs. Herman Oelrichs, Mrs.
W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr., members of the wealthy Spreckels family and
others all expressed, before the great conflagration had ceased
burning, the confident expectation that the city would rise,
Phoenix-like, from its ashes and become more beautiful and
prosperous than it had ever been in the past.
So complete was the calamity that the Government of the United
States lent a hand in the earliest work of restoration. On April
20th, two days after the earthquake, Congress took immediate steps
to repair or replace all the public buildings damaged or destroyed
in San Francisco. The willingness of Congress to assist those in
need of work by immediately beginning the reconstruction of the
Federal buildings was indicated when Senator Scott, chairman of the
Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, introduced a resolution
calling upon the Secretary of the Treasury for full information as
to the exact condition of the various government buildings in San
Francisco, and instructing him to submit an estimate showing the
aggregate sum needed to repair or rebuild them. The resolution
suggested that steel frames be used in any new buildings. This
resolution was adopted. It was soon learned that the new Post
Office, the Mint and the old Customs House were practically
undamaged. The branch of the United States Mint, on Fifth Street,
and the new Post Office at Seventh and Mission Streets, were
striking examples of the superiority of workmanship put into
Federal buildings. The old Mint building, surrounded by a wide
space of pavement, was absolutely unharmed. The Mint made
preparations to resume business at once. The Post Office building
also was virtually undamaged by fire. The earthquake shock did
some damage to the different entrances to the building, but the
walls were left standing in good condition. President Roosevelt
also sent a message to Congress asking that $300,000 be at once
appropriated to finish the Mare Island Navy Yard, in order that
employment might be given to the many workmen who were in extreme
need of money for the necessities of life.
It was a most fortunate circumstance that the property records in
the Hall of Records were unharmed either by earthquake or fire.
Endless disputes and litigation over the questions of ownerships
would undoubtedly have otherwise impeded the work of those
sincerely anxious to repair their shattered fortunes and opened the
way for the unscrupulous to take unfair advantage of the general
chaos.
But the temper of the people was such that only the boldest would
have dared to use trickery for his own ends. Every man stood at
the side of his neighbor working for himself and for the good of
all. Before the embers were cool the owners of some of the damaged
skyscrapers gave commands to proceed instantly with their
reconstruction. The Spreckels Building, the Hayward Building, the
St. Francis Hotel, the Merchants' Exchange and structures that
permitted it were ordered rushed into shape as quickly as possible.
And already contracts had been drawn up for other steel-frame
buildings to be erected with all speed. Many substantial business
men and property owners of San Francisco were in consultation with
the architects within a few days. While the work of clearing away
the debris went forward, a corps of draughtsmen was busily occupied
preparing plans for the new buildings to adorn the city.
Mayor Schmitz telegraphed to the Mayors of all leading cities,
inquiring how many architects or architectural draughtsmen could be
induced to leave for San Francisco at once, and hundreds of young
men immediately responded to the call. Experts of the several
great contracting companies hurried to the scene and were ready to
deposit material and labor on the ground for the work of
restoration. Daniel H. Burnham, a leading architect of Chicago,
who had previously drawn plans for beautifying the city, was
summoned to superintend the work.
All the horses, mules and wagons obtainable were immediately
pressed into service to remove the debris and clear the streets so
that traffic could be resumed. Within a week after the first
earthquake shock trolley cars were running in the principal
streets, telephone communication had been re-established in the
most needed quarters, electric lights were available and business
had begun again on a limited scale.
Yet, in spite of the indomitable courage of the citizens and the
efficient labor of the public officers and the utility companies,
an enormous amount of work remained. Virtually every bank in San
Francisco had to be rebuilt. Only the Market Street National Bank
was left nearly undamaged. An official list of the condition of
the school buildings throughout the city showed that twenty-nine
school buildings were destroyed and that forty-four were partially,
at least, spared. Many of the latter were so damaged that they had
to be either pulled down or thoroughly repaired, and arrangements
were made to resume the short term in tents erected in the parks,
where thousands of the homeless had already found temporary
shelter. With these two vital classes of public institutions
prepared to care for the demands about to be made on them,
confidence was not lacking in other parts. Most of the foundries
and factories near the water front and south of Market Street
immediately called in all their employees and began to clear away
the wreckage and make ready for continuing business. Great credit
is due to the newspapers, nearly all of which continued their daily
issues without interruption, although their buildings, with offices
and printing plants, were entirely destroyed by the flames which
followed the earthquake. Those whose premises were early
threatened with destruction betook themselves to Oakland, seven
miles distant across the bay, and published their sheets from the
establishments of the Oakland papers. A thorough inspection shows
that comparatively little damage was done in the vicinity of the
Cliff. The Cliff House, which was at first reported to have been
hurled into the sea, not only stood, but the damage sustained by it
from the earthquake was slight. The famous Sutro baths, located
near the Cliff House, with the hundreds of thousands of square feet
of glass roofing, also were practically unharmed. Only a few of
the windows in the Sutro baths and the Cliff House were broken, and
the lofty chimney of the pumping plant of the former establishment
was cracked only a trifle. When the situation was finally summed
up, however, nearly three-fourths of the city had to be rebuilt or
remodeled, and the cost of doing this was enough to appal the
strongest hearts.
Financially the prospect was encouraging. Not a bank lost the
contents of its fireproof vaults and remained practically unharmed,
so far as credit was concerned.
For a number of days it was impossible to open any strong boxes on
account of the great heat which the thick walls retained, and this
naturally caused some embarrassment and lack of ready money.
Nearly all of them, however, had strong connections in Eastern
cities and large balances to their credit in other banks of America
and Europe. They were also favored by the fact that the United
States Mint and the Sub-Treasury held between them some
$245,000,000 in ready money. The Secretary of the Treasury
immediately deposited $10,000,000 to the credit of the local banks,
and financiers of the great business centres of the country added
to public confidence by prompt statements that they would
facilitate the reconstruction of the city by a liberal advancement
of funds.
One prominent Eastern capitalist expressed the general conviction
in the following words:
"No great city, unless it dried up entirely from lack of commercial
life blood, was ever annihilated by such a disaster as that of San
Francisco. Pompeii and Herculaneum were not great cities in the
first place, and in the second, they were completely covered,
smothered as it were, with the ashes and molten lava of the
adjoining volcano, and nearly all of their inhabitants perished.
If it be admitted that three-fourths of the superstructures, so to
speak, of San Francisco, estimated according to valuation, is
destroyed, we have yet the fact remaining that the lives of only
about one four-hundredth of its population have been lost.
"San Francisco was not merely land and the buildings erected upon
it, but it was people, and one of the most active, most hopeful,
most vivacious human communities on the face of the earth. You
cannot long discourage such a community, unless you wipe out three-
fourths of its members. Will San Francisco rise again? Most
certainly it will. Galveston and Baltimore, not to mention
Charleston, Boston and Chicago, showed the spirit of material
resurrection in American communities, sore-smitten by calamity.
After Galveston had been made a desert of sand and debris, there
were predictions that it would never rise again. What was the
outcome? A finer Galveston than before, and finer than many years
of slow improvement in the natural course would have made it.
Baltimore is busier commercially than it was before the great fire.
"San Francisco is exceedingly fortunate in the fact that its
moneyed institutions remain strong, with abundant supplies of
funds. It is true that many of them undoubtedly hold large numbers
of real estate mortgages as securities for loans, and that much of
the property thus represented is now in ashes. But with care and
an accommodating spirit practically all of those mortgaged can be
so nursed that they will be made absolutely good. The banks will
be found to be only too eager to afford new loans which will enable
realty owners to rebuild. You will see San Francisco rise a more
splendid city than ever, and better prepared to resist future
earthquake shocks. Because it has had this dreadful visitation is
no reason for apprehension that another like it will come within
the life of the present generation, or two or three after. The
destruction of Lisbon in the middle of the eighteenth century and
its subsequent immunity from seismic damage is a reassuring
example."
The municipality was in excellent financial condition to meet and
rise above the extraordinary needs of the situation. It had a
bonded debt of only $4,245,100, while its realty valuation was
$402,127,261 and its personalty $122,258,406. The question of
issuing further amounts of bonds was therefore one of the first
measures considered by Mayor Schmitz and his co-workers, and an
appeal was made to the Federal Government to guarantee the proposed
loans, so that the most urgent work which lay in the city's
province could be undertaken at once and without an excessive
burden of interest.
The vast insurance loss was divided among 107 companies, and,
though only a little more than half the damage was covered by
policies, the total swelled toward the colossal sum of
$150,000,000. Several of the largest companies were seriously
crippled by the disaster and some were forced into liquidation. To
the great relief of the entire country, nevertheless, the financial
situation was not severely affected, and there was every reason to
believe that the great bulk of the insurance would be paid.
CHAPTER XIV.
The Earthquake Wave Felt Round the Earth.
The outbreak of earth forces at San Francisco did not stand alone.
There were others elsewhere at nearly the same time, the whole
seeming to indicate a general disturbance in the interior of the
earth's crust. Some scientists, indeed, declared that no possible
connection could exist between the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and
the earthquake at San Francisco, but others were inclined to view
certain facts in regard to recent seismic and volcanic activity as,
to say the least, suggestive.
As to the actual cause of the California earthquake, the wisest
confession we can make is that of ignorance, there being almost as
little known as to the origin, period and coming of earthquakes as
when Pliny wrote 1,800 years ago. The Roman observer knew that the
tremor passed like a wave through the surface of the earth; he knew
that it had a given direction, and he knew that certain regions
were rife with seismic disturbance. More he could not say, and
when this is said all has been said that is known to-day.
Setting aside these general considerations, let us return to the
question of the disaster at San Francisco on that fatal morning of
April 18th. The shock did not come unexpectedly. A month previous
there had been a severe earthquake in the Island of Formosa, and
many lives were lost there, while an enormous amount of damage was
done. Only a few days before the event in San Francisco there was
another earthquake in the same island. Still greater havoc was
caused by it than by the earthquake in March, but fewer lives were
lost, the reason being that the people were warned in time. Early
in April the eruption of Mount Vesuvius reached its height and
devastated the country around the volcano, covering an enormous
territory with ashes, and caused the loss of hundreds of lives.
On Tuesday night, April 17th, word was received from Piatigorsk,
Circassia, that there had been two severe earthquake shocks the
previous day in Northern Caucasia. The same night a telegram from
Madrid said that the newspapers there reported that the long-
dormant volcano on Palma, the largest of the Canary Islands, was
showing signs of eruption, columns of smoke issuing from the
crater.
WIDESPREAD EARTH TREMORS.
While scientists as a rule doubt that there was any connection
between these volcanic phenomena and the earthquake at San
Francisco, yet reports from the Mount Weather observation station
in Virginia, a few miles from Washington, show that the eruptions
of Vesuvius acted on the magnetic instruments by electro-magnetic
waves in such a way as to disturb the electrical potentials at that
place. Be this as it may, there is one remarkable circumstance in
regard to all this activity. All the places mentioned--Formosa,
Southern Italy, Caucasia, and the Canary Islands--lie within a belt
bounded by lines a little north of the fortieth parallel and a
little south of the thirtieth parallel. San Francisco is just
south of the fortieth parallel, while Naples is just north of it.
The latitude of Calabria, where the terrible earthquakes occurred
in 1905, is the same as that of the territory affected by the
recent earthquake in the United States. This may or may not have
some bearing on the question.
Whatever be thought of all this, one thing is certain, the
earthquake which laid San Francisco in ruins was felt the world
over, wherever there were instruments in position to detect and
record it. The seismograph in the government observatory at
Washington showed that the first wave, on April 18th, came at 8.19-
-equivalent to 5.19 at San Francisco; that at 8.25 there was a
stronger wave motion, and that from 8.32 to 8.35 the recording pen
was carried off the paper. The vibrations did not entirely cease
until 12.35 P. M., during this period there having been nearly half
an inch of to and fro motion in the surface of the earth.
RECORDS OF FOREIGN OBSERVATIONS.
From far away New Zealand, on the same date, the government
seismograph at the capital, Wellington, recorded seismic waves that
apparently passed round the earth five times at intervals of about
four hours each.
Across the Atlantic, at Heidelberg, in Germany, the records showed
vibrations lasting one hour. At Sarayevo, in Bosnia, there was a
sharp shock at 11 A. M., undulating from west to east. At
Funfkirchen, in Hungary, at Laibach, in Austria, in the Isle of
Wight, off the coast of England, and all through Italy, from north
to south, the shocks were felt.
At Hancock, Mich., a shock was felt on April 19th a mile below the
surface in the Quincy mine of such severity that one man was killed
and four injured by a fall of rock loosened by the trembling of the
earth. There is no evidence, however, that this had any connection
with the California disaster, the dates not coinciding.
Turning to the Far East, across the Pacific, seismographs in the
Imperial University of Tokio showed that the earthquake was felt
there eleven minutes later than in San Francisco, and similar
instruments in Manila detected the arrival of the seismic waves
twenty minutes after the San Francisco shock. In this there was a
slight difference in time compared with Tokio, but, considering the
distance, near enough to prove that the disturbances came from the
same source.
Not until the day following was any noticeable disturbance felt in
Honolulu, but on April 19th shocks were plainly felt for six
minutes and the water in the harbor rose rapidly. Panic seemed
imminent just before the shocks subsided. While earthquakes are by
no means infrequent in these islands, this was more severe than any
recorded in recent years, causing buildings to sway to and fro and
partly demolishing some of frail construction.
If, as the majority of men qualified to discuss earthquakes seem to
think, the San Francisco earthquake had no connection with volcanic
action, but was caused by what is technically known as a "fault" in
the formation of the crust of the earth, it seems easy enough to
account for these wave motions travelling round the earth. How
widely this may really have made itself felt it is not possible to
say. Several of the great earthquakes in Japan have been recorded
in the seismographs of the observatories on every continent and in
Australia, showing that in severe disturbances of this kind the
whole surface strata quiver, alike under the oceans and over the
continents and islands. At the time of a shock, of course, half of
the world is in darkness and asleep. This is taken to account for
the fact that so far only a few observatories have reported
catching the San Francisco vibrations.
The instruments invented for the recording of the motions of the
earth's crust are looked upon by scientists as the most delicate of
all machines. So highly sensitive are they, indeed, that the very
slightest vibratory motion is recorded perfectly. Even the tread
of feet cannot escape this instrument if sufficient to cause a
vibration.
There are three classes of instruments for the automatic recording
of earth tremors, each with its own particular function. First is
the seismoscope, which will merely detect and record the fact that
there has been such a tremor. Some of these are so equipped as to
indicate the time of the disturbance.
Second, is the seismometer, the function of which is to measure the
maximum force of the shock, either with or without an indication of
its direction. The third instrument is the seismograph, which is
so arranged that it will accurately record the number, succession,
direction, amplitude and period of successive oscillations. This
last instrument is by far the most delicate of the three.
In the construction of this earthquake recording machine the maker
must so suspend a heavy body that when its normal position is
disturbed in the most infinitesimal degree no reactionary force
will be developed tending to restore it to its original position.
The inventor has never been found who could accomplish this
suspension of a body to perfection. The seismograph of to-day,
however, has reached a stage of perfection where close
approximations are obtained in the records made.
CHAPTER XV.
Vesuvius Devastates the Region of Naples.
We have in other chapters described the terrible work of Mount
Vesuvius in the past, from the far-off era of the destruction of
Pompeii down to the end of the last century. There comes before us
now another frightful eruption, one of the greatest in its history,
that of 1906. For thirty years before this outbreak the mighty
volcano had been comparatively quiet, rarely ceasing, indeed, to
smoke and fume, but giving little indication of the vast forces
buried in its heart. It showed some sympathy with Mont Pelee in
1902, and continued restless after that time, but it was not until
about the middle of February, 1906, that it became threatening,
lava beginning to overflow from the crater and make its lurid way
down the mountain's side.
It was in the middle of the first week of April that these
indications rose to the danger point, the flow of lava suddenly
swelling from a rivulet to a river, pouring in a gleaming flood
over the crater's rim, and meeting the other streams that came
streaming down the volcano's rugged flank. While this went on the
mountain remained comparatively quiet, there being no explosions,
though a huge cloud of volcanic ash and cinders rose high in the
air until it hung over the crater in the shape of an enormous pine
tree, while from it a shower of dust and sand, soon to become
terrible, began to descend upon the surrounding fields and towns.
Dangerous as is Vesuvius at any time, the people of the vicinity
dare its perils for the allurement of its fertile soil. A ring of
populous villages encircles it, flourishing vineyards and olive
groves extend on all sides, and the hand of industry does not
hesitate to attack its threatening flanks. The intervals between
its death-dealing throes are so long that the peasants are always
ready to dare destruction for the hope of winning the means of life
from its soil.
THE RIVERS OF LAVA.
All this locality was now a field of terror and death. Down on the
vineyards and villages poured the smothering ashes in an ever
increasing rain; toward them slowly and threateningly crawled the
fiery serpents of the lava streams; and from their homes fled
thousands of the terror-stricken people, frantic with horror and
dismay. A number of populous villages were threatened by the lurid
lava streams, the most endangered being Bosco Trecase, with its
10,000 inhabitants. Toward this devoted town poured steadily the
irresistible flood of molten rock. The soldiers who had been
hurried to the front sought to divert its flow by digging a wide
ditch across its course and throwing up a high bank of earth, but
they worked in vain. The demon of destruction was not to be robbed
of its prey. The liquid stream advanced like a colossal serpent of
fire, turning its head like a crawling snake to the right and left,
but keeping steadily on toward the fated town. The ditch was
filled; the bank gave way; the first house was reached and burst
into flames; the creeping stream of fire pushed on to the next
houses in its way; only then did the despairing people desert their
homes and flee for their lives, carrying with them the little they
could snatch of their treasured possessions.
F. Marion Crawford, the novelist, who was present at this scene,
thus describes the flight of the terrified people:
"I saw men, women and children and infants, whose mothers carried
them at the breast or in their aprons, fleeing in an endless
procession. Dogs, too, and cats were on the carts, and sometimes
even chickens, tied together by the legs, and piles of mattresses
and pillows and shapeless bundles of clothes. All were white with
dust. Under the lurid glare I saw one old woman lying on her back
across a cart, ghastly white and, if not dead already of fear and
heat and suffocation, certainly almost gone. We ourselves could
hardly breathe."
It was on Saturday, the 7th, that Bosco Trecase became the prey of
the river of molten rock. During that night and the following day
the crisis of the eruption came. The observatory on the mountain
side was occupied by Professor Matteucci, his assistant, Professor
Perret, of New York, and two domestics, all others having been sent
away. Their description of the scene in which they found
themselves is vividly picturesque. At midnight the situation in
the observatory was terrible. The forces of the earthquake were
let loose and the ground rocked so that it was almost impossible to
stand. The roaring of the main crater was deafening, while the
volcano poured forth its contents like a fountain, and the electric
display was terrifying, constant claps of thunder following the
lurid flashes of lightning, which gave the sky a blood-red hue.
Shortly after three o'clock in the morning the explosive energy of
the mighty mass culminated. The whole cone burst open with a
tremendous earthquake shock, from the heart of the recently silent
mountain came a deafening roar, and red-hot rocks, like the balls
from nature's mighty artillery, were hurled a half mile into the
air, while a dense mass of ashes and sand was flung to three or
four times this height. All the next day the terrible detonation
kept up, and a hail of bullet-like stones poured downward from the
skies. Rarely has a more terrible Sunday been seen. It was as if
the demons of earth and air were let loose and were seeking to
destroy man and his puny works.
THE CRISIS OF THE ERUPTION.
This frightful explosion of the 8th of April was the worst of the
dreadful display of volcanic forces, but the work kept up with
diminishing intensity much of the following week. The ashes and
cinders continued to pour down in suffocating showers, covering the
ground to a depth of four or five feet in the vicinity of the
volcano and to a considerable depth at Naples, ten miles away. The
sun disappeared behind the thick cloud that filled the air, and the
scene resembled that described by Pliny more than eighteen hundred
years before.
Of Bosco Trecase nothing was left but the large stone church and a
few houses. Another river of lava reached the outskirts of Torre
del Greco, and a third stopped at the cemetery of Torre Annunziata.
Those towns escaped, but thousands of acres of fertile cultivated
land, with farm houses and stock, were destroyed. The peninsular
railway up the mountain was ruined and the large hotel burned. One
writer tells the following tale of what he saw on that fatal
Saturday and Sunday:
"On the road I met hundreds of families in flight, carrying their
few miserable possessions. The spectacle of collapsing carts and
fainting women was frequently seen. When one reached the lava
stream a stupefying spectacle presented itself. From a point on
the mountain between the towns I saw four rivers of molten fire,
one of which, 200 feet wide and over 40 deep, was moving slowly and
majestically onward, devouring vineyards and olive groves. I
witnessed the destruction of a farm house enveloped on three sides
by lava. Immediately overhead the great crater was belching
incandescent rock and scoria for an incredible distance. The whole
scene was wreathed with flames, and a perpetual roar was heard.
Ever and anon the cone of the volcano was encircled with vivid
electric phenomena, amid which a downpour of liquid fire on all
sides of the crater was revealed in magnificent awfulness. In the
evening there was a frightful shock of earthquake, which was
repeated at two o'clock on Sunday morning. Simultaneously the lava
streams redoubled their onrush, and men, women and children fled
precipitately toward the sea. The lava had invaded the road behind
them."
A REIGN OF TERROR.
The great loss of life was due to the vast fall of ashes, which
crushed in hundreds of roofs and buried the occupants within the
ruins of their homes. In all the neighboring towns buildings were
destroyed in great numbers, an early estimate being that fully
5,000 houses had been partly crushed or utterly destroyed. On the
Ottajano side of the mountain, where the ashes fell in greatest
profusion, all the houses of the villages were damaged, and
Ottajano itself was left a wreck, several hundred dead bodies being
taken from its ruins. In Naples the ash fall was so incessant that
those who could afford it wore automobile coats, caps and goggles,
while the people generally sought to save their eyes and faces by
the aid of paper masks and umbrellas. The drivers of trolley cars
were obliged to wear masks of some transparent material under the
vizors of their caps.
DISASTERS AT SAN GIUSEPPE AND NAPLES.
There were two special disasters attended by serious loss of life.
On the 9th, while a congregation of two hundred or more were
attending mass in the church at San Giuseppe, the roof crushed in
from the weight of ashes upon it and fell upon the worshippers
below, few or none of whom escaped unhurt. Fifty-four dead bodies
were taken from the ruins and a large number were severely injured.
The Mayor of the town was dismissed from his office for leaving his
post of duty in the face of danger.
The second disaster, one of the same character, took place at
Naples. This was on Tuesday, April 10th. Just previous to it the
people had been marching in religious processions through the
streets, to render thanks for the apparent cessation of the
activity of Vesuvius. Motley but picturesque processions were
these, headed by boys carrying candles, which burned simply in the
full sunshine and bearing aloft images of the Madonna or saints,
clad in gorgeous robes of cheap blue or yellow satin. Their joy
was suddenly changed to grief by tidings of a frightful disaster.
The roof of the Monte Oliveto market, fronting on the Toledo, the
main thoroughfare, had suddenly crushed in, burying more than 200
people beneath its heavy fall.
The market had been crowded with buyers and their children, and it
was the busiest hours of the day in the great roofed courtyard,
covering a space 600 feet square, when, with scarcely a tremor of
warning, there came a frightful crash and a dense cloud of dust
covered the scene, from out of which came heartrending screams of
agony. The volcanic ash which, unnoticed, had gathered thickly on
the roof, had broken it in by its weight.
The news set the people frantic with grief and indignation. They
insisted that the authorities knew that the roof was unsafe and had
neglected their duty. Cursing and screaming in their intense
excitement, they surrounded the market, endeavoring with frantic
haste to remove the heavy beams from beneath which came the
appealing calls for help, many of the rescuers sobbing aloud as
they worked. It required a large force of police and soldiers to
keep them back and permit the firemen and other trained workers to
carry on more systematically the work of relief. Twelve persons
proved to have been killed, two fatally injured, twenty-four
seriously hurt and over a hundred badly bruised and cut. Among
these were many children, whose parents had sent them to do the
marketing without a dream of danger, and the grief of the parents
was intense. The Duke of Aosta, Prefect of Naples, directed the
work of rescue, while his wife assisted in the care of the injured.
As the Duchess bent in the hospital to give a cooling drink to a
badly bruised little girl she felt a kiss upon her hand. Looking
down, she saw a woman kneeling at her feet, who gratefully said:
"Your Excellency, she is all I have. I am a widow. May God reward
you."
While this scene of horror was taking place in Naples the fate of
the town and villages grouped around the foot of the volcano seemed
as hopeless as ever. Early on the 10th the showers of ashes and
streams of lava diminished and almost ceased, but later the same
day they began again, and the terrified inhabitants feared that a
catastrophe like that which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum was
about to visit them. The lava which reached the cemetery of Torre
Annunziata turned in the direction of Pompeii as if to freshly
entomb that exhumed city of the past. A violent storm of
sulphurous rain fell at San Giuseppe, Vesuviana and Sariano, and on
all sides the fall of sand and ashes came on again in full
strength. Even with the sun shining high in the heavens the light
was a dim yellow, in the midst of which the few persons who still
haunted the stricken towns moved about in the awful stillness of
desolation like gray ghosts, their clothing, hair and beards
covered with ashes.
THE ERUPTION RESUMED.
A typical case was that of Torre del Greco. Though for thirty
hours the place had been deserted, a few ghostly figures could be
seen at intervals when the vivid flashes of lightning illuminated
the gloom-covered scene, wandering desolately about, hungry and
thirsty, their throats parched by smoke and dust, yet unable to
tear themselves away from the ruins of their late comfortable
homes.
So deep was the ash fall that railway or tramway travel to the
inner circle of towns was impossible, and the great depth of fallen
dust choked the roads so as to render travel by carriage or on foot
very difficult. A party of officials made a tour of inspection by
automobile, visiting a number of the town, but were prevented by
the state of the roads from reaching others. Ottajano was thus cut
off from travel, and a heavy fall of ashes followed the officials
in their retreat. At Bosco Trecase the lava had gathered into a
lake, already growing solid on top, but a mass of liquid rock
beneath.
The lava carried vast masses of burnt stone and sulphur on its
surface, like dross on melted lead, and nothing was visible toward
Bosco Trecase but endless acres of dark scoriae, broken here and
there by the greenish, curling smoke of sulphur. At one point a
great cone pine tree, torn up by its roots and turned to black
charcoal, stuck out of the mass at a sharp angle. The air was
almost unbearable, the heat intense, and few could long bear the
dangers and discomfort of the situation.
SCENES OF HORROR.
The greatest depth of ashes encountered was in the vicinity of
Ottajano. Here large areas were buried to a depth of several feet.
Soldiers had been sent there with military carts, carrying
provisions and surgical appliances, with orders to lend their aid
in the work of relief. They found it almost impossible to make
their way through the deep fine dust, and the tales of horror and
heroism they had to tell resembled those that must of old have been
borne to Rome by the fleeing inhabitants of Pompeii.
Efforts were made to remove the children and old persons in the
carts, but when these had gone a few hundred feet it was found
that, although there were four horses harnessed to each vehicle,
they could not pull their loads through the ashes. This caused a
panic among the children, who expected to be buried in the
incessant fall from the volcano, and they fled in all directions in
the darkness and blinding rain. Searching parties went after them,
but in spite of continuous shouting and calling no trace was found
of the little ones, and numbers of the children were undoubtedly
smothered by the ashes and sand.
Many of the inhabitants had been buried in the ruins of their
houses, and the scenes when the victims were unearthed were often
piteous and terrible. The positions of the bodies showed that the
victims had died while in a state of great terror, the faces being
convulsed with fear. Three bodies were found in a confessional of
one of the fallen churches. One body was that of an old woman who
was sitting with her right arm raised as though to ward off the
advancing danger. The second was that of a child about eight years
old. It was found dead in a position, which would indicate that
the child had fallen with a little dog close to it and had died
with one arm raised across its face, to protect itself and pet from
the crumbling ruins. The third body, that of a woman, was reduced
to an unrecognizable mass. These three victims were reverently
laid side by side while a procession of friends and relatives
offered up prayers beside them.
One soldier rode his horse through the ashes reaching up to its
flanks, calling out, "Who wants help?" He was rewarded by hearing
a woman's voice reply in weak tones and, springing from his horse,
he floundered through the ashes to the ruined walls of a house from
which the voice seemed to come. As he made his way through the
soft, treacherous layer of scoriae which surrounded the destroyed
habitation, and with difficulty worked his way toward the building
the soldier shouted words of encouragement and, climbing over a
heap of ruins and braving a toppling wall, entered the building.
In the cellar he found the bodies of three children. Near them was
a woman, barely alive, who by almost superhuman efforts for hours
had succeeded in freeing herself from a mass of debris which had
fallen upon her. The soldier picked the woman up in his arms and
carried her to a place of safety. It was found that both legs were
broken and that she had been badly crushed about the body.
Some extraordinary escapes from death took place. A man and his
four children were rescued after having been lost in the ash-
covered wilderness for fifty-six hours. They were terribly
exhausted, and were reduced almost to skeletons.
Robert Underwood Johnson, one of the editors of the "Century
Magazine, who happened to be in Rome at the time of the eruption,
made one of a party who ventured as near the scene of destruction
as they could safely approach. From his graphic story of his
experiences we copy some of the most interesting details.
AN AMERICAN OBSERVER.
"We caught a train for Torre Annunziata, three miles this side of
Pompeii and two miles from the southern end of the wedge of lava
which destroyed Bosco Trecase. We had a magnificent view of the
eruption, eight miles away. Rising at an angle of fifty degrees,
the vast mass of tumult roundness was beautifully accentuated by
the full moon, shifting momentarily into new forms and drifting
south in low, black clouds of ashes and cinders reaching to Capri.
At Torre del Greco we ran under this terrifying pall, apparently a
hundred feet above, the solidity of which was soon revealed in the
moonlight. The torches of the railway guards added to the effect,
but greatly relieved the sulphurous darkness.
"We reached Torre Annunziata at three in the morning. There was
little suggestion of a disaster as we trudged through the sleeping
town to the lava, two miles away. The brilliant moon gave us a
superb view of the volcano, a gray-brown mass rising, expanding and
curling in with a profile like a monstrous cyclopean face. But
nothing in mythology gives a suggestion of the fascination of this
awful force, presenting the sublime beauty above, but in its
descent filled with the mysterious malignance of God's underworld.
"We reached the lava at a picturesque cypress-planted cemetery on
the northern boundary of Torre Annunziata. It was as if the dead
had effectually cried out to arrest the crushing river of flames
which pitilessly engulfed the statue of St. Anne with which the
people of Bosco Reale tried to stay it, as at Catania the veil of
St. Agathe is said to have stayed a similar stream from Mount Etna.
"We climbed on the lava. It was cool above but still alive with
fire below. We could see dimly the extent of the destruction
beyond the barrier of brown which had enclosed the streets, torn
down the houses, invaded the vineyards and broken Cook's railways.
A better idea of the surroundings was obtained at dawn from the
railway. We saw north what was left of Bosco Trecase--a great,
square stone church and a few houses inland in a sea of dull, brown
lava. North and east rose a thousand patches of blue smoke like
swamp miasma. All was dull and desolate slag, with nowhere the
familiar serpentine forms of the old lava streams. In terrible
contrast with the volcanic evidences were strong cypresses and
blooming camelias in a neighboring cemetery.
"We ate a hasty luncheon before sunrise, when the great beauty of
the scene was revealed. The column now seemed higher and more
massive, rising to three times the height of Vesuvius. Each
portion had a concentric motion and new aspects. The south edges
floating toward the sea showed exquisite curved surfaces, due to
the upper moving current. It was like the decoration of the side
of a great sarcophagus. As a yellow dust hangs over Naples and
hides the volcano, I count myself fortunate to have seen all day
from leeward this spectacle of changing, undiminishing beauty.
"The wedge of cultivated land ruined east of the volcano extended
at least ten miles, with a width of twenty or thirty miles. Fancy
a rich and thickly populated country of vineyards lying under three
to six inches of ashes and cinders of the color of chocolate with
milk, while above, to the west, the volcano in full activity is
distributing to the outer edges of the circle the same fate, and
you will get an idea of the desolate impression of the scene, a
tragedy colossal and heartrending. Like that of Calabria, it
enlists the sympathy of the civilized world. It takes time for
such a calamity to be realized.
"Two miles below San Giuseppe we struck cinders which the soldiers
were shoveling, making a narrow road for the refugees. Our wagon
driver begged off from completing his contract to take us to San
Giuseppe. We had not the heart to insist, so the rest of the
journey to the railway at Palma, eight miles, was made laboriously
on foot for three hours through sliding cinders.
"In many places temporary shelters had been built by the roadside,
like children's playhouses. Here women were huddled with their
bedding, awaiting the coming of supplies which the army had begun
to distribute. The men were largely occupied with shoveling
cinders from the stronger roofs and floors into heaps three to six
feet deep along the roadside. Many two-wheeled carts loaded with
salvage, drawn by donkeys or pushed by peasants, were making their
way along, the women with bundles on their heads or carrying
poultry.
"In the square of San Giuseppe was an encampment of soldiers, with
low tents. Near a destroyed church, in coarse yellow linen
shrouds, were the bodies of thirty-three of the persons who there
lost their lives. The peasants were sad, but uncomplaining; in
fact, for so excitable a people they were wonderfully calm. As
evidence of the thrift and self-respect of these, we were not once
asked for alms during the afternoon."
THE KING AT THE FRONT.
The Italian Government did all it could at the moment to alleviate
the horrors of the situation, sending money to be expended in
relief work and dispatching high officials of the government to
give aid and encouragement by their presence. The King, Victor
Emmanuel, and Queen Helene reached the scene of destruction as
early as possible and lent their personal assistance to the work of
rescue.
Obliged to leave his automobile, which could not move over the
cinder-choked road, the King went forward with difficulty on
horseback, the animal floundering through four feet of ashes,
stumbling into holes, and half blinded by the fall of dust and
cinders.
"How did you escape?" he asked a priest whom he met in his journey.
"I put myself in safety," was the reply.
"What do you mean?" asked the King.
"Realizing the danger, I left Nola."
"What!" cried the King, with a flush of anger. "You, a minister of
God, were not here to share the danger of your people and
administer the last sacraments? You did very wrong and forgot your
duty."
Reaching Ottejano, the King did what he could to expedite the work
of rescue at that central point of disaster, more than a hundred
dead bodies being taken from the ruins in his presence. He stood
with set pale face watching the removal of the victims and
directing the movement of the workers. During his visit at the
front he inspected the temporary camp hospitals, in which the
soldiers were caring for the injured and suffering, speaking to the
poor victims, giving them what comfort he could, and asking what he
could do to relieve their distress. Every request or desire was
received with sympathy and orders given to have it fulfilled.
A pitiful scene took place when the King bent over a poor man,
whose right leg had been amputated, and asked what he could do to
comfort and aid him in his affliction.
"Send me my son, who is serving as a soldier," said the maimed
peasant.
The King, visibly affected, clasped the old man's hand and
exclaimed:
"My poor fellow! I can do much, but to grant your request would
mean breaking the laws, which I must be the first to respect. I
would give anything I have were it possible by so doing to send
your son to you, but I cannot do so."
While the King was thus engaged at the scenes of desolation, Queen
Helene visited the charitable institutions at Naples and inspected
the places where the refugees were housed, doing what she could to
improve conditions and add to the comfort of the sufferers. The
Princess of Schleswig-Holstein, who was in Naples, made an
automobile visit to the afflicted towns, but the motor broke down,
and she was forced to return on foot, walking a distance of twelve
miles through the ashes and displaying a power of endurance that
surprised the natives.
THE CANOPY OF DUST.
By Friday, April 13th, the eruption was practically at an end.
Vesuvius had spent itself in the enormous convulsion of the 7th and
8th and the subsequent minor explosions and had returned to its
normal state, ceasing to give any signs of life, except the cloud
of smoke which still rose from its crater and spread like a thick
curtain over and around the mountain. Looked at from Naples, there
was none of the familiar aspects of the volcano, with its output of
smoke and ashes by day and fiery gleam by night. Now it lay buried
in darkness and obscurity, clothed in a dense pall of smoke. At
Rome there was sunshine, but twenty miles south hung a misty veil,
and twenty-five miles above Naples a zone of semi-obscurity began,
blotting out the sun, whose light trickled through with a sickly
glare. Everything was whitened with powdery dust; pretty white
villas were daubed and dripping with mud, and people were busy
shoveling the ashes from their roofs.
The crowds at the stations resembled millers, their clothes flour
covered; the Campania presented the appearance of a Dakota prairie
after a blizzard of snow, though everything was gray instead of
white. The ashes lay in drifts knee deep. As the volcano was
approached semi-night replaced the day, the gloom being so deep
that telegraph poles twenty feet away could not be seen. Breathing
was difficult, and the smoke made the eyes water. At Naples,
however, a favorable wind had cleared the air of smoke, the sun
shone brightly, and the versatile people were happy once more. The
goggles and eye-screens had disappeared, but the streets were
anything but comfortable, for some six thousand men were at work
clearing the ashes from the roofs and main streets and piling them
in the middle of the narrow streets, making the passage of vehicles
very difficult and the sidewalks far from comfortable for foot
passengers.
But while brightness and joy reigned at Naples, there were gruesome
scenes within the volcanic zone. At Bosco Trecase soldiers carried
on the work of exhumation, being able to work only an hour at a
time on account of the advanced stage of decomposition of the
bodies. Many of these were shapeless, unrecognizable masses of
flesh and bones, while others were little disfigured. To lessen
the danger of an epidemic the bodies were buried as quickly as
possible in quicklime.
On Sunday, the 15th, the searchers at Ottejano were surprised at
finding two aged women still alive, after six days' entombment in
the ruins. They were among those who had been buried by the
falling walls a week before. The rafters of the house had
protected them, and a few morsels of food in their pockets aided to
keep them alive. At some points there the ashes were ten feet
deep. At San Giuseppe bodies of women were found in whose hands
were coins and jewels, and one woman held a jewelled rosary. This
recalls the results of exploration at Herculaneum and Pompeii,
where were similar instances of death overtaking the victims of the
volcano while fleeing with their jewels in their hands.
It is interesting to learn that two men stood heroically to their
post of duty during the whole scene of the explosion, Professor
Matteucci, Director of the Royal Observatory, and his American
assistant, Professor Frank A. Perret, of New York. Though the
building occupied by them was exposed to the full force of the rain
of stones from the burning mountain, they remained undauntedly at
their post through that week of terror. On the 14th some of that
venturesome fraternity, the newspaper correspondents, reached their
eyrie on the highest habitable point on Vesuvius and heard the
story of their experiences.
THE HEROES OF THE OBSERVATORY.
For several days Professors Matteucci and Perret and their two
servants had been cut off from the outside world and bombarded by
the volcano, their rations consisting of bread, cheese and dried
onions, until on Friday a hardy guide was induced to push through
to them with some provisions. During the eruption the Professor
had kept at his instruments, taking observations day and night and
making calculations in the midst of the inferno. Roughly dressed,
he looked like a Western cowboy after a hard ride in a dust storm.
The portico where he stood was knee deep in ashes, and from the
observatory terrace narrow paths had been cut through the ashes,
but as far as the eye could reach an ocean of ashes and twisted
rivers were alone visible, with Vesuvius rising grimly in the
midst. The great monster was enveloped in a cloak of white, as if
buried under a snowstorm, its surface being here and there slit
with gulches in which lava ran. At the bottom of one of those
gulches lay the wrecked remnants of the peninsular railway, a
portion of its twisted cable protruding through the ashes. As the
correspondents ascended the mountain they were surprised by the
apparition of natives, men wrinkled with age, who emerged from
dugouts just below the observatory and offered them milk and eggs,
just as if they were ordinary visitors to the volcano. As they
descended they heard the sound of a mandolin from one of these
dugouts. Evidently Vesuvius had no terrors for these case-hardened
veterans.
We have already told the story gleaned by the correspondents from
the daring scientists. Matteucci completed his record of boldness
on Friday, the 13th, by climbing to a point far above the
observatory, at the imminent risk of his life, to observe the
conditions then existing. From what he says he believed the end of
the disturbance near, though he did not venture to predict. As for
the ashes, which a light wind was then blowing in a direction away
from Naples, he said: "The ill wind is now blowing good to other
places, for ashes are the best fertilizer it is possible to use.
It is merely a question just now of having too much of a good
thing."
This is a fact so far as the volcanic ash is concerned. An
examination of the ashes a few days ago shows that they will prove
an active and valuable fertilizer. The fertile slopes of Vesuvius
have ever been an allurement to the vine-grower, four crops a year
being a temptation no possible danger could drive him from, and as
soon as the mountain grows surely peaceful after this eruption, we
shall find its farmers risking again the chance of its uncertain
temper. But this is not the case with the land covered with lava
and cinders. Time for their disintegration is necessary before
they can be brought under cultivation, and this is a matter of
years. After the great eruption of 1871-72 the land covered with
cinders did not bear crops for seven years, and there is no reason
that they will do so sooner on the present occasion. So for years
to come much of the volcanic soil must remain a barren and desert
void.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Great Lisbon and Calabrian Earthquakes.
To our account of the great earth convulsions of San Francisco it
is in place to append a description of some similar events of older
date. It is due to the same causes, whatever these causes may be,
the imprisoned forces within the earth acting over great distances
during the earthquake, while they are concentrated within some
limited space when the volcano begins its work. The earthquake is
the most terrible to mankind of all the natural agencies of
destruction. While the volcano usually has a greater permanent
effect upon surface conditions, it is, as a rule, much less
destructive to human life, the earthquake often shaking down cities
and burying all their inhabitants in one common grave. Violent
earthquakes are also of far more frequent occurrence than
destructive volcanic eruptions, many hundreds of them having taken
place during the historic period.
While the earthquake is only indirectly connected with the subject
of our work, it seems desirable to make some mention of it here, at
least so far as relates to those terrible convulsions whose
destructiveness has given them special prominence in the history of
great disasters. Ancient notable examples are those which threw
down the famous Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos of Alexandria.
The city of Antioch was a terrible sufferer from this affliction,
it having been devastated some time before the Christian era, while
in the year 859 more than 15,000 of its houses were destroyed. Of
countries subject to earthquakes, Japan has been an especial
sufferer, in some cases mountains or islands being elevated in
association with shocks; in others, great tracts of land being
swallowed up by the sea. The number of deaths in some of these
instances was enormous.
Numerous thrilling examples of the destructive work of the
earthquake at various periods are on record. Of these we have
given elsewhere a tabular list of the more important, and shall
confine ourselves to a few striking examples of its destructive
action. In the record of great earthquakes, one of the most famous
is that which in 1755 visited the city of Lisbon, the capital of
Portugal, and left that populous, place in ruin and dire distress.
It may be well to recall the details of this dire event to the
memories of our readers.
THE GREAT LISBON EARTHQUAKE
On the night of the 31st of October, 1755, the citizens of the fair
city of Lisbon lay down to sleep, in merciful ignorance of what was
awaiting them on the morrow. The morning of the 1st of November
dawned, and gave no sign of approaching calamity. The sun rose in
its brightness, the warmth was genial, the breezes gentle, the sky
serene. It was All Saints' Day--a high festival of the Church of
Rome. The sacred edifices were thronged with eager crowds, and the
ceremonies were in full progress, when the assembled throngs were
suddenly startled from their devotions. From the ground beneath
came fearful sounds that drowned the peal of the organ and the
voices of the choirs. These underground thunders having rolled
away, an awful silence ensued. The panic-stricken multitudes were
paralyzed with terror. Immediately after the ground began to heave
with a long and gentle swell, producing giddiness and faintness
among the people. The tall piles swayed to and fro, like willows
in the wind. Shrieks of horror rose from the terrified assembly.
Again the earth heaved, and this time with a longer and higher
wave. Down came the ponderous arches, the stately columns, the
massive walls, the lofty spires, tumbling upon the heads of priests
and people. The graven images, the deified wafers, and they who
had knelt in adoration before them--the worshipped and the
worshippers alike--were in a moment buried under one
undistinguishable mass of horrible ruins. Only a few, who were
near the doors, escaped to tell the tale.
It fared no better with those who had remained in their dwellings.
The terrible earth-wave overthrew the larger number of the private
houses in the city, burying their inhabitants under the crumbling
walls. Those who were in the streets more generally escaped,
though some there, too, were killed by falling walls.
The sudden overthrow of so many buildings raised vast volumes of
fine dust, which filled the atmosphere and obscured the sun,
producing a dense gloom. The air was full of doleful sounds--the
groans of agony from the wounded and the dying, screams of despair
from the horrified survivors, wails of lamentation from the
suddenly bereaved, dismal howlings of dogs, and terrified cries of
other animals.
In two or three minutes the clouds of dust fell to the ground, and
disclosed the scene of desolation which a few seconds had wrought.
The ruin, though general, was not universal. A considerable number
of houses were left standing--fortunately tenantless--for a third
great earth-wave traversed the city, and most of the buildings
which had withstood the previous shocks, already severely shaken,
were entirely overthrown.
WATER ADDS TO THE DESTRUCTION
The last disaster filled the surviving citizens with the impulse of
flight. The more fortunate of them ran in the direction of the
open country, and succeeded in saving their lives; but a great
multitude rushed down to the harbor, thinking to escape by sea.
Here, however, they were met by a new and unexpected peril. The
tide, after first retreating for a little, came rolling in with an
immense wave, about fifty feet in height, carrying with it ships,
barges and boats, and dashing them in dire confusion upon the
crowded shore. Overwhelmed by this huge wave, great numbers were,
on its retreat, swept into the seething waters and drowned. A vast
throng took refuge on a fine new marble quay, but recently
completed, which had cost much labor and expense. This the sea-
wave had spared, sweeping harmless by. But, alas! it was only for
a moment. The vast structure itself, with the whole of its living
burden, sank instantaneously into an awful chasm which opened
underneath. The mole and all who were on it, the boats and barges
moored to its sides, all of them filled with people, were in a
moment ingulfed. Not a single corpse, not a shred of raiment, not
a plank nor a splinter floated to the surface, and a hundred
fathoms of water covered the spot. To the first great sea-wave
several others succeeded, and the bay continued for a long time in
a state of tumultuous agitation.
About two hours after the first overthrow of the buildings, a new
element of destruction came into play. The fires in the ruined
houses kindled the timbers, and a mighty conflagration, urged by a
violent wind, soon raged among the ruins, consuming everything
combustible, and completing the wreck of the city. This fire,
which lasted four days, was not altogether a misfortune. It
consumed the thousands of corpses which would otherwise have
tainted the air, adding pestilence to the other misfortunes of the
survivors. Yet they were threatened with an enemy not less
appalling, for famine stared them in the face. Almost everything
eatable within the precincts of the city had been consumed. A set
of wretches, morever, who had escaped from the ruins of the
prisons, prowled among the rubbish of the houses in search of
plunder, so that whatever remained in the shape of provisions fell
into their hands and was speedily devoured. They also broke into
the houses that remained standing, and rifled them of their
contents. It is said that many of those who had been only injured
by the ruins, and might have escaped by being extricated, were
ruthlessly murdered by those merciless villains.
The total loss of life by this terrible catastrophe is estimated at
60,000 persons, of whom about 40,000 perished at once, and the
remainder died afterwards of the injuries and privations they
sustained. Twelve hundred were buried in the ruins of the general
hospital, eight hundred in those of the civil prison, and several
thousands in those of the convents. The loss of property amounted
to many millions sterling.
WIDE-SPREAD DESTRUCTION
Although the earth-wave traversed the whole city, the shock was
felt more severely in some quarters than in others. All the older
part of the town, called the Moorish quarter, was entirely
overthrown; and of the newer part, about seventy of the principal
streets were ruined. Some buildings that withstood the shocks were
destroyed by fire. The cathedral, eighteen parish churches, almost
all the convents, the halls of the inquisition, the royal
residence, and several other fine palaces of the nobility and
mansions of the wealthy, the custom-houses, the warehouses filled
with merchandise, the public granaries filled with corn, and large
timber yards, with their stores of lumber, were either overthrown
or burned.
The king and court were not in Lisbon at the time of this great
disaster, but were living in the neighborhood at the castle of
Belem, which escaped injury. The royal family, however, were so
alarmed by the shocks, that they passed the following night in
carriages out of doors. None of the officers of state were with
them at the time. On the following morning the king hastened to
the ruined city, to see what could be done toward restoring order,
aiding the wounded, and providing food for the hungry.
The royal family and the members of the court exerted themselves to
the uttermost, the ladies devoting themselves to the preparation of
lint and bandages, and to nursing the wounded, the sick, and the
dying, of whom the numbers were overwhelming. Among the sufferers
were men of quality and once opulent citizens, who had been reduced
in a moment to absolute penury. The kitchens of the royal palace,
which fortunately remained standing, were used for the purpose of
preparing food for the starving multitudes. It is said that during
the first two or three days a pound of bread was worth an ounce of
gold. One of the first measures of the government was to buy up
all the corn that could be obtained in the neighborhood of Lisbon,
and to sell it again at a moderate price, to those who could afford
to buy, distributing it gratis to those who had nothing to pay.
For about a month afterward earthquake shocks continued, some of
them severe. It was several months before any of the citizens
could summon courage to begin rebuilding the city. But by degrees
their confidence returned. The earth had relapsed into repose, and
they set about the task of rebuilding with so much energy, that in
ten years Lisbon again became one of the most beautiful capitals of
Europe.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE
The most distinguishing peculiarities of this earthquake were the
swallowing up of the mole, and the vast extent of the earth's
surface over which the shocks were felt. Several of the highest
mountains in Portugal were violently shaken, and rent at their
summits; huge masses falling from them into the neighboring
valleys. These great fractures gave rise to immense volumes of
dust, which at a distance were mistaken for smoke by those who
beheld them. Flames were also said to have been observed: but if
there were any such, they were probably electrical flashes produced
by the sudden rupture of the rocks.
The portion of the earth's surface convulsed by this earthquake is
estimated by Humboldt to have been four times greater than the
whole extent of Europe. The shocks were felt not only over the
Spanish peninsula, but in Morocco and Algeria they were nearly as
violent. At a place about twenty-four miles from the city of
Morocco, there is said to have occurred a catastrophe much
resembling what took place at the Lisbon mole. A great fissure
opened in the earth, and an entire village, with all its
inhabitants, upwards of 8,000 in number, were precipitated into the
gulf, which immediately closed over its prey.
EARTHQUAKES IN CALABRIA
Of the numerous other examples of destructive earthquakes which
might be chosen from Old World annals, it will not be amiss to
append a brief account of those which took place in Calabria,
Italy, in 1783. These, while less wide-spread in their influence,
were much longer in duration than the Lisbon cataclysm, since they
continued, at intervals, from the 5th of February until the end of
the year. The shocks were felt all over Sicily and as far north as
Naples, but the area of severe convulsion was comparatively
limited, not exceeding five hundred square miles.
The centre of disturbance seems to have been under the town of
Oppido in the farther Calabria, and it extended in every direction
from that spot to a distance of about twenty-two miles, with such
violence as to overthrow every city, town and village lying within
that circle. This ruin was accomplished by the first shock on the
5th of February. The second, of equal violence, on the 28th of
March, was less destructive, only because little or nothing had
been left for it to overthrow.
At Oppido the motion was in the nature of a vertical upheaval of
the ground, which was accompanied by the opening of numerous large
chasms, into some of which many houses were ingulfed, the chasms
closing over them again almost immediately. The town itself was
situated on the summit of a hill, flanked by five steep and
difficult slopes; it was so completely overthrown by the first
shock that scarcely a fragment of wall was left standing. The hill
itself was not thrown down, but a fort which commanded the approach
to the place was hurled into the gorge below. It was on the flats
immediately surrounding the site of the town and on the rising
grounds beyond them that the great fissures and chasms were opened.
On the slope of one of the hills opposite the town there appeared a
vast chasm, in which a large quantity of soil covered with vines
and olive-trees was engulfed. This chasm remained open after the
shock, and was somewhat in the form of an amphitheatre, 500 feet
long and 200 feet in depth.
MOST CALAMITOUS OF THE LANDSLIPS
The most calamitous of the landslips occurred on the sea-coast of
the Straits of Messina, near the celebrated rock of Scilla, where
huge masses fell from the tall cliffs, overwhelming many villas and
gardens. At Gian Greco a continuous line of precipitous rocks,
nearly a mile in length, tumbled down. The aged Prince of Scilla,
after the first great shock on the 5th of February, persuaded many
of his vassals to quit the dangerous shore, and take refuge in the
fishing boats--he himself showing the example. That same night,
however, while many of the people were asleep in the boats, and
others on a flat plain a little above the sea-level, another
powerful shock threw down from the neighboring Mount Jaci a great
mass, which fell with a dreadful crash, partly into the sea, and
partly upon the plain beneath. Immediately the sea rose to a
height of twenty feet above the level ground on which the people
were stationed, and rolling over it, swept away the whole
multitude. This immense wave then retired, but returned with still
greater violence, bringing with it the bodies of the men and
animals it had previously swept away, dashing to pieces the whole
of the boats, drowning all that were in them, and wafting the
fragments far inland. The prince with 1,430 of his people perished
by this disaster.
It was on the north-eastern shore of Sicily, however, that the
greatest amount of damage was done. The first severe shock, on the
5th of February, overthrew nearly the whole of the beautiful city
of Messina, with great loss of life. The shore for a considerable
distance along the coast was rent, and the ground along the port,
which was before quite level, became afterwards inclined towards
the sea, the depth of the water having, at the same time, increased
in several parts, through the displacement of portions of the
bottom. The quay also subsided about fourteen inches below the
level of the sea, and the houses near it were much rent. But it
was in the city itself that the most terrible desolation was
wrought--a complication of disasters having followed the shock,
more especially a fierce conflagration, whose intensity was
augmented by the large stores of oil kept in the place.
IMMENSE DESTRUCTION
According to official reports made soon after the events, the
destruction caused by the earthquakes of the 5th of February and
28th of March throughout the two Calabrias was immense. About 320
towns and villages were entirely reduced to ruins, and about fifty
others seriously damaged. The loss of life was appalling--40,000
having perished by the earthquakes, and 20,000 more having
subsequently died from privation and exposure, or from epidemic
diseases bred by the stagnant pools and the decaying carcases of
men and animals. The greater number were buried amid the ruins of
the houses, while others perished in the fires that were kindled in
most of the towns, particularly in Oppido, where the flames were
fed by great magazines of oil. Not a few, especially among the
peasantry dwelling in the country, were suddenly engulfed in
fissures. Many who were only half buried in the ruins, and who
might have been saved had there been help at hand, were left to die
a lingering death from cold and hunger. Four Augustine monks at
Terranuova perished thus miserably. Having taken refuge in a
vaulted sacristy, they were entombed in it alive by the masses of
rubbish, and lingered for four days, during which their cries for
help could be heard, till death put an end to their sufferings.
Of still more thrilling interest was the case of the Marchioness
Spastara. Having fainted at the moment of the first great shock,
she was lifted by her husband, who, bearing her in his arms,
hurried with her to the harbor. Here, on recovering her senses,
she observed that her infant boy had been left behind. Taking
advantage of a moment when her husband was too much occupied to
notice her, she darted off and, running back to the house, which
was still standing, she snatched her babe from its cradle. Rushing
with him in her arms towards the staircase, she found the stair had
fallen--cutting off all further progress in that direction. She
fled from room to room, pursued by the falling materials, and at
length reached a balcony as her last refuge. Holding up her
infant, she implored the few passers-by for help; but they all,
intent on securing their own safety, turned a deaf ear to her
cries. Meanwhile the mansion had caught fire, and before long the
balcony, with the devoted lady still grasping her darling, was
hurled into the devouring flames.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Charleston and Other Earthquakes of the United States.
The twin continents of America have rivalled the record of the Old
World in their experience of earthquakes since their discovery in
1492. The first of these made note of was in Venezuela in 1530,
but they have been numerous and often disastrous since. Among them
was the great shock at Lima in 1746, by which 18,000 were killed,
and those at Guatemala in 1773, with 33,000, and at Riobamba in
1797, with 41,000 victims. It will, however, doubtless prove of
more interest to our readers if we pass over these ruinous
disasters and confine ourselves to the less destructive earthquakes
which have taken place within our own country.
The United States, large a section of North America as it occupies,
is fortunate in being in a great measure destitute of volcanic
phenomena, while destructive earthquakes have been very rare in its
history. This, it is true, does not apply to the United States as
it is, but as it was. It has annexed the volcano and the
earthquake with its new accessions of territory. Alaska has its
volcanoes, the Philippines are subject to both forms of convulsion,
and in Hawaii we possess the most spectacular volcano of the earth,
while the earthquake is its common attendant. But in the older
United States the volcano contents itself with an occasional puff
of smoke, and eruptive phenomena are confined to the minor form of
the geyser.
We are by no means so free from the earthquake. Slight movements
of the earth's surface are much more common than many of us
imagine, and in the history of our land there have been a number of
earth shocks of considerable violence. Prior to that of San
Francisco, the most destructive to life and property was that of
Charleston in 1886, though the 1812 convulsion in the Mississippi
Valley might have proved a much greater calamity but for the fact
that civilized man had not then largely invaded its centre of
action.
As regards the number of earth movements in this country, we are
told that in New England alone 231 were recorded in two hundred and
fifty years, while doubtless many slighter ones were left
unrecorded. Taking the whole United States, there were 364
recorded in the twelve years from 1872 to 1883, and in 1885 fifty-
nine were recorded, more than two-thirds of them being on the
Pacific slope. Most of these, however, were very slight, some of
them barely perceptible.
Confining ourselves to those of the past important in their
effects, we shall first speak of the shocks which took place in New
England in 1755, in the year and month of the great earthquake at
Lisbon. On the 18th of November of that year, while the shocks at
Lisbon still continued, New England was violently shaken, loud
underground explosive noises accompanying the shocks. In the
harbors along the Atlantic coast there was much agitation of the
waters and many dead fish were thrown up on the shores. The shock,
indeed, was felt far from the coast, by the crew of a ship more
than two hundred miles out at sea from Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
This event, however, was of minor importance, being much inferior
to that of 1812, in which year California and the Mississippi
Valley alike were affected by violent movements of the earth's
crust. The California convulsions took place in the spring and
summer of that year, extending from the beginning of May until
September. Throughout May the southern portion of that region was
violently agitated, the shocks being so frequent and severe that
people abandoned their houses and slept on the open ground. The
most destructive shocks came in September, when two Mission houses
were destroyed and many of their inmates killed. At Santa Barbara
a tidal wave invaded the coast and flowed some distance into the
interior.
It may be said here that California has proved more subject to
severe shocks than any other section of our country. In 1865 sharp
tremors shook the whole region about the Bay of San Francisco, many
buildings being thrown down. Hardly any of brick or stone escaped
injury, though few lives were lost. In 1872 a disturbance was felt
farther west, the whole range of the Sierra Nevada mountains being
violently shaken and the earth tremblings extending into the State
of Nevada. The centre of activity was along the crest of the
range, and immense quantities of rock were thrown down from the
mountain pinnacles. A tremendous fissure opened along the eastern
base of the mountain range for forty miles, the land to the west of
the opening rising and that to the east sinking several feet. One
small settlement, that of Lone Pine, in Owen's Valley, on the east
base of the mountains, was completely demolished, from twenty to
thirty lives being lost. Luckily, the region affected had very few
inhabitants, or the calamity might have been great.
The earthquakes of 1812 in the Mississippi Valley began in
December, 1811, and continued at intervals until 1813. As a rule
they were more distinguished by frequency than violence, though on
several occasions they were severe and had marked effects. They
extended through the valleys of the Mississippi, Arkansas and Ohio,
and their long continuance was remarkable in view of the territory
affected being far from any volcanic region.
The surface of the valley of the Mississippi was a good deal
altered by these convulsions--several new lakes being formed, while
others were drained. Several new islands were also raised in the
river, and during one of the shocks the ground a little below New
Madrid was for a short time lifted so high as to stop the current
of the Mississippi, and cause it to flow backward. The ground on
which this town is built, and the bank of the river for fifteen
miles above it, subsided permanently about eight feet, and the
cemetery of the town fell into the river. In the neighboring
forest the trees were thrown into inclined positions in every
direction, and many of their trunks and branches were broken. It
is affirmed that in some places the ground swelled into great
waves, which burst at their summits and poured forth jets of water,
along with sand and pieces of coal, which were tossed as high as
the tops of trees. On the subsidence of these waves, there were
left several hundreds of hollow depressions from ten to thirty
yards in diameter, and about twenty feet in depth, which remained
visible for many years afterward. Some of the shocks were
vertical, and others horizontal, the latter being the most
mischievous. These earthquakes resulted in the general subsidence
of a large tract of country, between seventy and eighty miles in
length from north to south, and about thirty miles in breadth from
east to west. Lakes now mark many of the localities affected by
the earthquake movements. It is only to the fact that this country
was then very thinly settled that a great loss of life was avoided.
New Madrid, Missouri, was a central point of this earthquake, the
shocks there being repeated with great frequency for several
months. The disturbance of the earth, however, was not confined to
the United States, but affected nearly half of the western
hemisphere, ending in the upheaval of Sabrina in the Azores,
already described. The destruction of Caracas, Venezuela, with
many thousands of its inhabitants, and the eruption of La Soufriere
volcano of St. Vincent Island were incidents of this convulsion.
Dr. J. W. Foster tells us that on the night of the disaster at
Caracas the earthquake grew intense at New Madrid, fissures being
opened six hundred feet long by twenty broad, from which water and
sand were flung to the height of forty feet.
The most destructive of earthquakes in our former history was that
which visited Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886, the injury
caused by it being largely due to the fact that it passed through a
populous city. As it occurred after many of the people had
retired, the confusion and terror due to it were greatly augmented,
people fleeing in panic fear from the tumbling and cracking houses
to seek refuge in the widest streets and open spaces.
South Carolina had been affected by the wide-spread earthquakes of
1812. These in some cases altered the level of the land, as is
related in Lyell's "Principles of Geology." But the effect then
was much less than in 1886. Several slight tremors occurred in the
early summer of that year, but did not excite much attention. More
distinct shocks were felt on August 27th and 28th, but the climax
was deferred till the evening of August 31st. The atmosphere that
afternoon had been unusually sultry and quiet, the breeze from the
ocean, which generally accompanies the rising tide, was almost
entirely absent, and the setting sun caused a little glow in the
sky.
"As the hour of 9.50 was reached," we are told, "there was suddenly
heard a rushing, roaring sound, compared by some to a train of cars
at no great distance, by others to a clatter produced by two or
more omnibuses moving at a rapid rate over a paved street, by
others again, to an escape of steam from a boiler. It was followed
immediately by a thumping and beating of the earth beneath the
houses, which rocked and swayed to and fro. Furniture was
violently moved and dashed to the floor; pictures were swung from
the walls, and in some cases turned with their backs to the front,
and every movable thing was thrown into extraordinary convulsions.
The greatest intensity of the shock is considered to have been
during the first half, and it was probably then, during the period
of its greatest sway, that so many chimneys were broken off at the
junction of the roof. The duration of this severe shock is thought
to have been from thirty-five to forty seconds. The impression
produced on many was that it could be subdivided into three
distinct movements, while others were of the opinion that it was
one continuous movement, or succession of waves, with the greatest
intensity, as already stated, during the first half of its
duration."
Twenty-seven persons were killed outright, and more than that
number died soon after of their hurts or from exposure; many others
were less seriously injured. Among the buildings, the havoc,
though much less disastrous than has been recorded in some other
earthquakes in either hemisphere, was very great. "There was not a
building in the city which had escaped serious injury. The extent
of the damage varied greatly, ranging from total demolition down to
the loss of chimney tops and the dislodgment of more or less
plastering. The number of buildings which were completely
demolished and levelled to the ground was not great; but there were
several hundreds which lost a large portion of their walls. There
were very many also which remained standing, but so badly shattered
that public safety required that they should be pulled down
altogether. There was not, so far as at present is known, a brick
or stone building which was not more or less cracked, and in most
of them the cracks were a permanent disfigurement and a source of
danger and inconvenience." In some places the railway track was
curiously distorted. "It was often displaced laterally, and
sometimes alternately depressed and elevated. Occasionally several
lateral flexures of double curvature and of great amount were
exhibited. Many hundred yards of track had been shoved bodily to
the south eastward."
The ground was fissured at some places in the city to a depth of
many feet, and numerous "craterlets" were formed, from which sand
was ejected in considerable quantities. These are not uncommon
phenomena, and were due, no doubt, to the squirting of water out of
saturated sandy layers not far below the surface; these being
squeezed between two less pervious beds in the passage of the
earthquake wave. The ejected material in the Charleston earthquake
was ordinary sand, such as might exist in many districts which had
been quite undisturbed by any concussions of the earth.
Captain Dutton made a careful study of the observations collected
by himself and others concerning this earthquake, and came to the
conclusion that the Charleston wave traveled with unusual speed,
for its mean velocity was about 17,000 feet a second. The focus of
the disturbance was also ascertained. Apparently it was a double
one, the two centres being about thirteen miles apart, and the line
joining them running nearly the same distance to the west of
Charleston. The approximate depth of the principal focus is given
as twelve miles, with a possible error of less than two miles; that
of the minor one as roughly eight miles.
The Charleston earthquake was felt as a tremor of more or less
force through a wide area, embracing 900,000 square miles, and
affecting nearly the whole country east of the Mississippi. It is
said that the yield of the Pennsylvania natural gas wells
decreased, and that a geyser in the Yellowstone valley burst into
action after four years of rest. The movement of the earth-wave
was in general north and south, deflected to east and west, and the
snake-like fashion in which rails on the railroad were bent
indicated both a vertical and a lateral force.
This earthquake has been attributed to various causes, but
geological experts think that it was due to a slip in the crust
along the Appalachian Mountain chain. There is a line of weakness
along the eastern slope of this chain, characterized by fissures
and faults, and it was thought that a strain had been gradually
brought to bear upon this through the removal of earth from the
land by rains and rivers and its deposition in thick strata on the
sea-bottom. It is supposed that this variation in weight in time
caused a yielding of the strata and a slip seaward of the great
coastal plain. Professor Mendenhall, however, thinks it was due to
a readjustment of the earth's crust to its gradually sinking
nucleus.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Volcano and the Earthquake, Earth's Demons of Destruction.
To most of us, dwellers upon the face of the earth, this
terrestrial sphere is quite a comfortable place of residence. The
forces of Nature everywhere and at all times surround us, forces
capable, if loosened from their bonds, of bringing death and
destruction to man and the work of his hands. But usually they are
mild and beneficent in their action, not agents of destruction and
lords of elemental misrule. The air, without whose presence we
could not survive a minute, is usually a pleasant companion, now
resting about us in soft calm, now passing by in mild breezes. The
alternation of summer and winter is to us generally an agreeable
relief from the monotony of a uniform climate. The variation from
sunlight to cloud, from dry weather to rainfall, is equally viewed
as a pleasant escape from the weariness of too great fixity of
natural conditions. The change from day to night, from hours of
activity to hours of slumber, are other agreeable variations in the
events of our daily life. In short, a great pendulum seems to be
swinging above us, held in Nature's kindly hand, and adapting its
movements to our best good and highest enjoyment.
But has Nature,--if we are justified in personifying the laws and
forces of the universe,--has mother Nature really our pleasure and
benefit in mind, or does she merely suffer us to enjoy life like so
many summer insects, until she is in the mood to sweep us like
leaves from her path? It must seem the latter to many of the
inhabitants of the earth, especially to the dwellers in certain
ill-conditioned regions. For all the beneficent powers above named
may at a moment's notice change to destructive ones.
THE WIND IS A DEMON IN CHAINS
The wind, for instance, is a demon in chains. At times it breaks
its fetters and rushes on in mad fury, rending and destroying, and
sweeping such trifles as cities and those who dwell therein to
common ruin. Sunshine and rain are subject to like wild caprices.
The sun may pour down burning rays for weeks and months together,
scorching the fertile fields, drying up the life-giving streams,
bringing famine and misery to lands of plenty and comfort, almost
making the blood to boil in our veins. Its antithesis, the
rainstorm, is at times a still more terrible visitant. From the
dense clouds pour frightful floods, rushing down the lofty hills,
sweeping over fertile plains, overflowing broad river valleys, and,
wherever they go, leaving terror and death in their path. We may
say the same of the alternation of the seasons. Summer, while
looked forward to with joyous anticipation, may bring us only
suffering by its too ardent grasp; and winter, often welcomed with
like pleasurable anticipations, may prove a period of terror from
cold and destitution.
Such is the make-up of the world in which we live, such the
vagaries of the forces which surround us. But those enumerated are
not the whole. Can we say, with a stamp of the foot upon the solid
earth, "Here at least I have something I can trust; let the winds
blow and the rains descend, let the summer scorch and the winter
chill, the good earth still stands firm beneath me, and of it at
least I am sure?"
Who says so speaks hastily and heedlessly, for the earth can show
itself as unstable as the air, and our solid footing become as
insecure as the deck of a ship laboring in a storm at sea. The
powers of the atmosphere, great as they are and mighty for
destruction as they may become, are at times surpassed by those
which abide within the earth, deep laid in the so-called
everlasting rocks, slumbering often through generations, but at any
time likely to awaken in wrath, to lift the earth into quaking
billows like those of the sea, or pour forth torrents of liquid
fire that flow in glowing and burning rivers over leagues of ruined
land. Such is the earth with which we have to deal, such the
ruthless powers of nature that spread around us and lurk beneath
us, such the terrific forces which only bide their time to break
forth and sweep too-confident man from the earth's smiling face.
THE SUBTERRANEAN POWERS
The subterranean powers here spoken of, those we had denominated
earth's demons of destruction, are the volcano and the earthquake,
the great moulding forces of the earth, tearing down to rebuild,
rending to reconstitute, and in this elemental work often bringing
ruin to man's boasted fanes and palaces.
No one who has ever seen a volcano or "burning mountain" casting
forth steam, huge red-hot stones, smoke, cinders and lava, can
possibly forget the grandeur of the spectacle. At night it is
doubly terrible, when the darkness shows the red-hot lava rolling
in glowing streams down the mountain's side. At times, indeed, the
volcano is quiet, and only a little smoke curls from its top. Even
this may cease, and the once burning summit may be covered over
with trees and grass, like any other hill. But deep down in the
earth the gases and pent-up steam, are ever preparing to force
their way upward through the mountain, and to carry with them
dissolved rocks, and the stones which block their passage.
Sometimes, while all is calm and beautiful on the mountains,
suddenly deep-sounding noises are heard, the ground shakes, and a
vast torrent tears its way through the bowels of the volcano, and
is flung hundreds of feet high in the air, and, falling again to
the earth, destroys every living thing for miles around.
It is the same with the earthquake as with the volcano. The
surface of the earth is never quite still. Tremors are constantly
passing onward which can be distinguished by delicate instruments,
but only rarely are these of sufficient force to become noticeable,
except by instrumental means. At intervals, however, the power
beneath the surface raises the ground in long, billow-like motions,
before which, when of violent character, no edifice or human
habitation can for a moment stand. The earth is frequently rent
asunder, great fissures and cavities being formed. The course of
rivers is changed and the waters are swallowed up by fissures rent
in the surface, while ruin impends in a thousand forms. The cities
become death pits and the cultivated fields are buried beneath
floods of liquid mud. Fortunately these convulsions, alike of the
earthquake and volcano, are comparative rarities and are confined
to limited regions of the earth's surface. What do we know of
those deep-lying powers, those vast buried forces dwelling in
uneasy isolation beneath our feet? With all our science we are but
a step beyond the ancients, to whom these were the Titans, great
rebel giants whom Jupiter overthrew and bound under the burning
mountains, and whose throes of agony shook the earth in quaking
convulsions. To us the volcanic crater is the mouth from which
comes the fiery breath of demon powers which dwell far down in the
earth's crust. The Titans themselves were dwarfs beside these
mighty agents of destruction whose domain extends for thousands of
miles beneath the earth's surface and which in their convulsions
shake whole continents at once. Such was the case in 1812, when
the eruption of Mont Soufriere on St. Vincent, as told in a later
chapter, formed merely the closing event in a series of earthquakes
which had made themselves felt under thousands of miles of land.
ANCIENT AWE OF VOLCANOES
In olden times volcanoes were regarded with superstitious awe, and
it would have been considered highly impious to make any
investigation of their actions. We are told by Virgil that Mt.
Etna marks the spot where the gods in their anger buried Enceladus,
one of the rebellious giants. To our myth-making ancestors one of
the volcanoes of the Mediterranean, set on a small island of the
Lipari group, was the workshop of Vulcan, the god of fire, within
whose depths he forged the thunderbolts of the gods. From below
came sounds as of a mighty hammer on a vast anvil. Through the
mountain vent came the black smoke and lurid glow from the fires of
Vulcan's forge. This old myth is in many respects more consonant
with the facts of nature than myths usually are. In agreement with
the theory of its internal forces, the mountain in question was
given the name of Volcano. To-day it is scarcely known at all, but
its name clings to all the fire-breathing mountains of the earth.
As before said, at the present day we are little in advance of the
ancients in actual knowledge of what is going on so far beneath our
feet. We speak of forces where they spoke of fettered giants, but
can only form theories where they formed myths. Is the earth's
centre made up of liquid fire? Does its rock crust resemble the
thick ice crust on the Arctic Seas, or is the earth, as later
scientists believe, solid to the core? Is it heated so fiercely,
miles below our feet, that at every release of pressure the solid
rock bursts into molten lava? Is the steam from the contact of
underground rivers and deep-lying fires the origin of the terrible
rending powers of the volcano's depths? Truly we can answer none
of these questions with assurance, and can only guess and
conjecture from the few facts open to us what lies concealed far
beneath.
RARITY OF ANCIENT ACCOUNTS
In the history of earthquakes nothing is more remarkable than the
extreme fewness of those recorded before the beginning of the
Christian era, in comparison with those that have been registered
since that time. It is to be borne in mind, however, that before
the birth of Christ only a small portion of the globe was inhabited
by those likely to make a record of natural events. The vast
apparent increase in the number of earthquakes in recent times is
owing to a greater knowledge of the earth's surface and to the
spread of civilization over lands once inhabited by savages. The
same is to be said of volcanic eruptions, which also have
apparently increased greatly since the beginning of the Christian
era. There may possibly have been a natural increase in these
phenomena, but this is hardly probable, the change being more
likely due to the increase in the number of observers.
The structure of a volcano is very different from that of other
mountains, really consisting of layers of lava and volcanic ashes,
alternating with each other and all sloping away from the center.
These elevations, in fact, are formed in a different manner from
ordinary mountains. The latter have been uplifted by the influence
of pressure in the interior of the earth, but the volcano is an
immediate result of the explosive force of which we have spoken,
the mountain being gradually built up by the lava and other
materials which it has flung up from below. In this way mountains
of immense height and remarkable regularity have been formed.
Mount Orizabo, near the City of Mexico, for instance, is a
remarkably regular cone, undoubtedly formed in this way, and the
same may be said of Mount Mayon, on the Island of Luzon.
In many cases the irregularity of the volcano is due to subsequent
action of its forces, which may blow the mountain itself to pieces.
In the case of Krakatoa, in the East Indies, for instance, the
whole mountain was rent into fragments, which were flung as dust
miles high into the air. The main point we wish to indicate is
that volcanoes are never formed by ordinary elevating forces and
that they differ in this way from all other mountains. On the
contrary, they have been piled up like rubbish heaps, resembling
the small mountains of coal dust near the mouths of anthracite
mines.
It is to the burning heat of the earth's crust and the influence of
pressure, and more largely to the influx of water to the molten
rocks which lie miles below the surface, that these convulsions of
nature are due. Water, on reaching these overheated strata,
explodes into volumes of steam, and if there is no free vent to the
surface, it is apt to rend the very mountain asunder in its efforts
to escape. Such is supposed to have been the case in the eruption
of Krakatoa, and was probably the case also in the recent case of
Mt. Pelee.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF ERUPTIONS
If we should seek to give a general description of volcanic
eruptions, it would be in some such words as follows: An eruption
is usually preceded by earthquakes which affect the whole
surrounding country, and associated with which are underground
explosions that seem like the sound of distant artillery. The
mountain quivers with internal convulsions, due to the efforts of
its confined forces to find an opening. The drying up of wells and
disappearance of springs are apt to take place, the water sinking
downward through cracks newly made in the rocks. Finally the
fierce unchained energy rends an opening through the crater and an
eruption begins. It comes usually with a terrible burst that
shakes the mountain to its foundation; explosions following rapidly
and with increasing violence, while steam issues and mounts upward
in a lofty column. The steam and escaping gases in their fierce
outbreaks hurl up into the air great quantities of solid rock torn
from the sides of the opening. The huge blocks, meeting each other
in their rise and fall, are gradually broken and ground into minute
fragments, forming dust or so-called ashes, often of extreme
fineness, and in such quantities as frequently to blot out the
light of the sun. There is another way in which a great deal of
volcanic dust is made; the lava is full of steam, which in its
expansion tears the molten rock into atoms, often converting it
into the finest dust.
The eruption of Mt. Skaptar, in Iceland, in 1783, sent up such
volumes of dust that the atmosphere was loaded with it for months,
and it was carried to the northern part of Scotland, 600 miles
away, in such quantities as to destroy the crops. During the
eruption of Tomboro, in the East Indies, in 1815, so great was the
quantity of dust thrown up that it caused darkness at midday in
Java 300 miles away and covered the ground to a depth of several
inches. Floating pumice formed a layer on the ocean surface two
and a half feet in thickness, through which vessels had difficulty
in forcing their way.
The steam which rises in large volumes into the air may become
suddenly condensed with the chill of the upper atmosphere and fall
as rain, torrents of which often follow an eruption. The rain,
falling through the clouds of volcanic dust, brings it to the earth
as liquid mud, which pours in thick streams down the sides of the
mountain. The torrents of flowing mud are sometimes on such a
great scale that large towns, as in the instance of the great city
of Herculaneum, may be completely buried beneath them. Over this
city the mud accumulated to the depth of over 70 feet. In addition
to these phenomena, molten lava often flows from the lip of the
crater, occasionally in vast quantities. In the Icelandic eruption
of 1783 the lava streams were so great in quantity as to fill river
gorges 600 ft. deep and 200 ft. wide, and to extend over an open
plain to a distance of 12 to 15 miles, forming lakes of lava 100
feet deep. The volcanoes of Hawaii often send forth streams of
lava which cover an area of over 100 square miles to a great depth.
GREAT OUTFLOWS OF LAVA
In the course of ages lava outflows of this kind have built up in
Hawaii a volcanic mountain estimated to contain enough material to
cover the whole of the United States with a layer of rock 50 feet
deep. These great outflows of lava are not confined to mountains,
but take place now and then from openings in the ground, or from
long cracks in the surface rocks. Occasionally great eruptions
have taken place beneath the ocean's surface, throwing up material
in sufficient quantity to form new islands.
The formation of mud is not confined to the method given, but great
quantities of this plastic material flow at times from volcanic
craters. In the year 1691 Imbaburu, one of the peaks of the Andes,
sent out floods of mud which contained dead fish in such abundance
that their decay caused a fever in the vicinity. The volcanoes of
Java have often buried large tracts of fertile country under
volcanic mud.
An observation of volcanoes shows us that they have three well
marked phases of action. The first of these is the state of
permanent eruption, as in case of the volcano of Stromboli in the
Mediterranean. This state is not a dangerous one, since the steam,
escaping continually, acts as a safety valve. The second stage is
one of milder activity with an occasional somewhat violent
eruption; this is apt to be dangerous, though not often very
greatly so. The safety valve is partly out of order. The third
phase is one in which long periods of repose, sometimes lasting for
centuries, are followed by eruptions of intense energy. These are
often of extreme violence and cause widespread destruction. In
this case the safety valve has failed to work and the boiler
bursts.
OFTEN REST FOR LONG TERMS OF YEARS
Such are the general features of action in the vast powers which
dwell deep beneath the surface, harmless in most parts of the
earth, frightfully perilous in others. Yet even here they often
rest for long terms of years in seeming apathy, until men gather
above their lurking places in multitudes, heedless or ignorant of
the sleeping demons that bide their time below. Their time is sure
to come, after years, perhaps after centuries. Suddenly the solid
earth begins to tremble and quake; roars as of one of the buried
giants of old strike all men with dread; then, with a fierce
convulsion, a mountain is rent in twain and vast torrents of steam,
burning rock, and blinding dust are hurled far upward into the air,
to fall again and bury cities, perhaps, with all their inhabitants
in indiscriminate ruin and death.
CHAPTER XIX.
Theories of Volcanic and Earthquake Action.
Though the first formation of a volcano (Italian, vulcano, from
Vulcan, the Roman god of fire) has seldom been witnessed, it would
seem that it is marked by earthquake movements followed by the
opening of a rent or fissure; but with no such tilting up of the
rocks as was once supposed to take place. From this fissure large
volumes of steam issue, accompanied by hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon
dioxide, hydrochloric acid, and sulphur dioxide. The hydrogen,
apparently derived from the dissociation of water at a high
temperature, flashes explosively into union with atmospheric
oxygen, and, having exerted its explosive force, the steam
condenses into cloud, heavy masses of which overhang the volcano,
pouring down copious rains. This naturally disturbs the electrical
condition of the atmosphere, so that thunder and lightning are
frequent accompaniments of an eruption. The hydrochloric acid
probably points to the agency of sea-water. Besides the gases just
mentioned, sulphuretted hydrogen, ammonia and common salt occur;
but mainly as secondary products, formed by the union of the vapors
issuing from the volcano, and commonly found also in the vapors
rising from cooling lava streams or dormant volcanic districts. It
is important to notice that the vapors issue from the volcano
spasmodically, explosions succeeding each other with great rapidity
and noise.
All substances thrown out by the volcano, whether gaseous, liquid
or solid, are conveniently united under the term ejectamenta
(Latin, things thrown out), and all of them are in an intensely
heated, if not an incandescent state. Most of the gases are
incombustible, but the hydrogen and those containing sulphur burn
with a true flame, perhaps rendered more visible by the presence of
solid particles. Much of the so-called flame, however, in popular
descriptions of eruptions is an error of observation due to the
red-hot solid particles and the reflection of the glowing orifice
on the over-hanging clouds.
ENORMOUS FORCE DISPLAYED
Solid bodies are thrown into the air with enormous force and to
proportionally great heights, those not projected vertically
falling in consequence at considerable distances from the volcano.
A block weighing 200 tons is said to have been thrown nine miles by
Cotopaxi; masses of rock weighing as much as twenty tons to have
been ejected by Mount Ararat in 1840; and stones to have been
hurled to a distance of thirty-six miles in other cases. The solid
matter thrown out by volcanoes consists of lapilli, scoriae, dust
and bombs.
Though on the first formation of the volcano, masses of non-
volcanic rock may be torn from the chimney or pipe of the mountain,
only slightly fused externally owing to the bad conducting power of
most rocks, and hurled to a distance; and though at the beginning
of a subsequent eruption the solid plug of rock which has cooled at
the bottom of the crater, or, in fact, any part of the volcano, may
be similarly blown up, the bulk of the solid particles of which the
volcano itself is composed is derived from the lake of lava or
molten rock which seethes at the orifice. Solid pieces rent from
this fused mass and cast up by the explosive force of the steam
with which the lava is saturated are known as lapilli. Cooling
rapidly so as to be glassy in texture externally, these often have
time to become perfectly crystalline within.
Gases and steam escaping from other similar masses may leave them
hollow, when they are termed bombs, or may pit their surfaces with
irregular bubble-cavities, when they are called scoriae or
scoriaceous. Such masses whirling through the air in a plastic
state often become more or less oblately spheroidal in form; but,
as often, the explosive force of their contained vapors shatters
them into fragments, producing quantities of the finest volcanic
dust or sand. This fine dust darkens the clouds overhanging the
mountain, mixes with the condensed steam to fall as a black mud-
rain, or lava di aqua (Italian, water lava), or is carried up to
enormous heights, and then slowly diffused by upper currents of the
atmosphere. In the eruption of Vesuvius of A.D. 79, the air was
dark as midnight for twelve or fifteen miles round; the city of
Pompeii was buried beneath a deposit of dry scoriae, or ashes and
dust, and Herculaneum beneath a layer of the mud-like lava di aqua,
which on drying sets into a compact rock. Rocks formed from these
fragmentary volcanic materials are known as tuff.
VOLCANIC CONES HAVE SIMILAR CURVATURES
It is entirely of these cindery fragments heaped up with marvellous
rapidity round the orifice that the volcano itself is first formed.
It may, as in the case of Jorullo in Mexico in 1759, form a cone
several hundred feet high in less than a day. Such a cone may have
a slope as steep as 30 or 40 degrees, its incline in all cases
depending simply on the angle of repose of its materials; the
inclination, that is, at which they stop rolling. The great
volcanoes of the Andes, which are formed mainly of ash, are very
steep. Owing to a general similarity in their materials, volcanic
cones in all parts of the world have very similar curvatures; but
older volcanic mountains, in which lava-streams have broken through
the cone, secondary cones have arisen, or portions have been blown
up, are more irregular in outline and more gradual in inclination.
In size, volcanoes vary from mere mounds a few yards in diameter,
such as the salses or mud volcanoes near the Caspian, to Etna,
10,800 feet high, with a base 30 miles in diameter; Cotopaxi, in
the Andes, 18,887 feet high; or Mauna Loa, in the Sandwich Isles,
13,700 feet high; with a base 70 miles in diameter, and two
craters, one of which, Kilauea, the largest active crater on our
earth, is seven miles in circuit. Larger extinct craters occur in
Japan; but all our terrestrial volcanic mountains are dwarfed by
those observed on the surface of the moon, which, owing to its
smaller size, has cooled more rapidly than our earth. It is, of
course, the explosive force from below which keeps the crater
clear, as a cup-shaped hollow, truncating the cone; and all stones
falling into it would be only thrown out again. It may at the
close of an eruption cool down so completely that a lake can form
within it, such as Lake Averno, near Naples; or it may long remain
a seething sea of lava, such as Kilauea; or the lava may find one
or more outlets from it, either by welling over its rim, which it
will then generally break down, as in many of the small extinct
volcanoes ("puys") of Auvergne, or more usually by bursting through
the sides of the cone.
LAVA VARIES VERY MUCH IN LIQUIDITY
It is not generally until the volcano has exhausted its first
explosive force that lava begins to issue. Several streams may
issue in different directions. Their dimensions are sometimes
enormous. Lava varies very much in liquidity and in the rate at
which it flows. This much depends, however, upon the slope it has
to traverse. A lava stream at Vesuvius ran three miles in four
minutes, but took three hours to flow the next three miles, while a
stream from Mauna Loa ran eighteen miles in two hours. Glowing at
first as a white-hot liquid, the lava soon cools at the surface to
red and then to black; cinder-like scoriaceous masses form on its
surface and in front of the slowly-advancing mass; clouds of steam
and other vapor rise from it, and little cones are thrown up from
its surface; but many years may elapse before the mass is cooled
through. Thus, while the surface is glassy, the interior becomes
crystalline.
As to what are the causes of the great convulsions of nature known
as the volcano and the earthquake we know very little. Various
theories have been advanced, but nothing by any means sure has been
discovered, and considerable difference of opinion exists. In
truth we know so little concerning the conditions existing in the
earth's interior that any views concerning the forces at work there
must necessarily be largely conjectural.
Sir Robert S. Ball says, in this connection: "Let us take, for
instance, that primary question in terrestrial physics, as to
whether the interior of the earth is liquid or solid. If we were
to judge merely from the temperatures reasonably believed to exist
at a depth of some twenty miles, and if we might overlook the
question of pressure, we should certainly say that the earth's
interior must be in a fluid state. It seems at least certain that
the temperatures to be found at depths of two score miles, and
still more at greater depths, must be so high that the most
refractory solids, whether metals or minerals, would at once yield
if we could subject them to such temperatures in our laboratories.
But none of our laboratory experiments can tell us whether, under
the pressure of thousands of tons on the square inch, the
application of any heat whatever would be adequate to transform
solids into liquids. It may, indeed, be reasonably doubted whether
the terms solid and liquid are applicable, in the sense in which we
understand them, to the materials forming the interior of the
earth.
"A principle, already well known in the arts, is that many, if not
all, solids may be made to flow like liquids if only adequate
pressure be applied. The making of lead tubes is a well-known
practical illustration of this principle, for these tubes are
formed simply by forcing solid lead by the hydraulic press through
a mould which imparts the desired shape.
"If then a solid can be made to behave like a liquid, even with
such pressures as are within our control, how are we to suppose
that the solids would behave with such pressures as those to which
they are subjected in the interior of the earth? The fact is that
the terms solid and liquid, at least as we understand them, appear
to have no physical meaning with regard to bodies subjected to
these stupendous pressures, and this must be carefully borne in
mind when we are discussing the nature of the interior of the
earth."
THE VOLCANO A SAFETY VALVE
Whatever be the state of affairs in the depths of the earth's
crust, we may look upon the volcano as a sort of safety-valve,
opening a passage for the pent-up forces to the surface, and thus
relieving the earth from the terrible effects of the earthquake,
through which these imprisoned powers so often make themselves
felt. Without the volcanic vent there might be no safety for man
on the earth's unquiet face.
Professor J. C. Russell, of Michigan University, presents the
following views concerning the status and action of volcanoes:--
"When reduced to its simplest terms, a volcano may be defined as a
tube, or conduit, in the earth's crust, through which the molten
rock is forced to the surface. The conduit penetrates the cool and
rigid rocks forming the superficial portion of the earth, and
reaches its highly heated interior.
"The length of volcanic conduits can only be conjectured, but,
judging from the approximately known rate of increase of heat with
depth (on an average one degree Fahrenheit for each sixty feet),
and the temperature at which volcanic rocks melt (from 2,300 to
2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, when not under pressure), they must
seemingly have a depth of at least twenty miles. There are other
factors to be considered, but in general terms it is safe to assume
that the conduits of volcanoes are irregular openings, many miles
in depth, which furnish passageways for molten rock (lava) from the
highly-heated sub-crust portion of the earth to its surface. . . .
ERUPTIONS OF QUIET TYPE
"During eruptions of the quiet type, the lava comes to the surface
in a highly liquid condition--that is, it is thoroughly fused, and
flows with almost the freedom of water. It spreads widely, even on
a nearly level plain, and may form a comparatively thin sheet
several hundred square miles in area, as has been observed in
Iceland and Hawaii. On the Snake River plains, in Southern Idaho,
there are sheets of once molten rock which were poured out in the
manner just stated, some four hundred square miles in area and not
over seventy-five feet in average thickness. When an eruption of
highly liquid lava occurs in a mountainous region, the molten rock
may cascade down deep slopes and flow through narrow valleys for
fifty miles or more before becoming chilled sufficiently to arrest
its progress. Instances are abundant where quiet eruptions have
occurred in the midst of a plain, and built up 'lava cones,' or low
mounds, with immensely expanded bases. Illustrations are furnished
in Southern Idaho, in which the cones formed are only three hundred
or four hundred feet high, but have a breadth at the base of eight
or ten miles. In the class of eruption illustrated by these
examples, there is an absence of fragmental material, such as
explosive volcanoes hurl into the air, and a person may stand
within a few yards of a rushing stream of molten rock, or examine
closely the opening from which it is being poured out, without
danger or serious inconvenience.
"The quiet volcanic eruptions are attended by the escape of steam
or gases from the molten rock, but the lava being in a highly
liquid state, the steam and gases dissolved in it escape quietly
and without explosions. If, however, the molten rock is less
completely fluid, or in a viscous condition, the vapors and gases
contained in it find difficulty in escaping, and may be retained
until, becoming concentrated in large volume, they break their way
to the surface, producing violent explosions. Volcanoes in which
the lava extruded is viscous, and the escape of steam and gases is
retarded until the pent-up energy bursts all bounds, are of the
explosive, type. One characteristic example is Vesuvius.
"When steam escapes from the summit of a volcanic conduit--which,
in plain terms, is a tall vessel filled with intensely hot and more
or less viscous liquid--masses of the liquid rock are blown into
the air, and on falling build up a rim or crater about the place of
discharge. Commonly the lava in the summit portion of a conduit
becomes chilled and perhaps hardened, and when a steam explosion
occurs this crust is shattered and the fragments hurled into the
air and contributed to the building of the walls of the inclosing
crater.
"The solid rock blown out by volcanoes consists usually of highly
vesicular material which hardened on the surface of the column of
lava within a conduit and was shattered by explosions beneath it.
These fragments vary in size from dust particles up to masses
several feet in diameter, and during violent eruptions are hurled
miles high. The larger fragments commonly fall near their place of
origin, and usually furnish the principal part of the material of
which craters are built, but the gravel-like kernels, lapilli, may
be carried laterally several miles if a wind is blowing, while the
dust is frequently showered down on thousands of square miles of
land and sea. The solid and usually angular fragments manufactured
in this manner vary in temperature, and may still be red hot on
falling.
"Volcanoes of the explosive type not uncommonly discharge streams
of lava, which may flow many miles. In certain instances these
outwellings of liquid rock occur after severe earthquakes and
violent explosions, and may have all the characteristics of quiet
eruptions. There is thus no fundamental difference between the two
types into which it is convenient to divide volcanoes.
MOUNTAINS BLOW THEIR HEADS OFF
"In extreme examples of explosive volcanoes, the summit portion of
a crater, perhaps several miles in circumference and several
thousand feet high, is blown away. Such an occurrence is recorded
in the case of the volcano Coseguina, Nicaragua, in 1835. Or, an
entire mountain may disappear, being reduced to lapilli and dust
and blown into the air, as in the case of Krakatoa, in the Straits
of Sunda, in 1883.
"The essential feature of a volcano, as stated above, is a tube or
conduit, leading from the highly heated sub-crust portion of the
earth to the crater and through which molten rock is forced upward
to the surface. The most marked variations in the process depend
on the quantity of molten rock extruded, and on the freedom of
escape of the steam and gases contained in the lava.
"The cause of the rise of the molten rock in a volcano is still a
matter for discussion. Certain geologists contend that steam is
the sole motive power; while others consider that the lava is
forced to the surface owing to pressure on the reservoir from which
it comes. The view perhaps most favorably entertained at present,
in reference to the general nature of volcanic eruptions, is that
the rigid outer portion of the earth becomes fractured, owing
principally to movements resulting from the shrinking of the
cooling inner mass, and that the intensely hot material reached by
the fissures, previously solid owing to pressure, becomes liquid
when pressure is relieved, and is forced to the surface. As the
molten material rises it invades the water-charged rocks near the
surface and acquires steam, or the gases resulting from the
decomposition of water, and a new force is added which produces the
most conspicuous and at times the most terrible phenomena
accompanying eruptions."
The active agency of water is strongly maintained by many
geologists, and certainly gains support from the vast clouds of
steam given off by volcanoes in eruption and the steady and quiet
emission of steam from many in a state of rest. The quantities of
water in the liquid state, to which is due the frequent enormous
outflows of mud, leads to the same conclusion. Many scientists,
indeed, while admitting the agency of water, look upon this as the
aqueous material originally pent up within the rocks. For instance
Professor Shaler, dean of the Lawrence Scientific School, says:
"Volcanic outbreaks are merely the explosion of steam under high
pressure, steam which is bound in rocks buried underneath the
surface of the earth and there subjected to such tremendous heat
that when the conditions are right its pent-up energy breaks forth
and it shatters its stone prison walls into dust. The process by
which the water becomes buried in this manner is a long one. Some
contend that it leaks down from the surface of the earth through
fissures in the outer crust, but this theory is not generally
accepted. The common belief is that water enters the rocks during
the crystalization period, and that these rocks through the natural
action of rivers and streams become deposited in the bottom of the
ocean. Here they lie for many ages, becoming buried deeper and
deeper under masses of like sediment, which are constantly being
washed down upon them from above. This process is called the
blanketing process.
"Each additional layer of sediment, while not raising the level of
the sea bottom, buries the first layers just so much the deeper and
adds to their temperature just as does the laying of extra blankets
on a bed. When the first layer has reached a depth of a few
thousand feet the rocks which contain the water of crystalization
are subjected to a terrific heat. This heat generates steam, which
is held in a state of frightful tension in its rocky prison.
Wrinklings in the outer crust of the earth's surface occur, caused
by the constant shrinking of the earth itself and by the
contraction of the outer surface as it settles on the plastic
centers underneath. Fissures are caused by these foldings, and as
these fissures reach down into the earth the pressure is removed
from the rocks and the compressed steam in them, being released,
explodes with tremendous force."
This view is, very probably, applicable to many cases, and the
exceedingly fine dust which so often rises from volcanoes has,
doubtless, for one of its causes the sudden and explosive
conversion of water into steam in the interior of ejected lava,
thus rending it into innumerable fragments. But that this is the
sole mode of action of water in volcanic eruptions is very
questionable. It certainly does not agree with the immense volumes
at times thrown out, while explosions of such extreme intensity as
that of Krakatoa very strongly lead to the conclusion that a great
mass of water has made its way through newly opened fissures to the
level of molten rock, and exploded into steam with a suddenness
which gave it the rending force of dynamite or the other powerful
chemical explosives.
As the earthquake is so intimately associated with the volcano the
causes of the latter are in great measure the causes of the former,
and the forces at work frequently produce a more or less violent
quaking of the earth's surface before they succeed in opening a
channel of escape through the mountain's heart. One agency of
great potency, and one whose work never ceases, has doubtless much
to do with earthquake action. In the description of this we cannot
do better than to quote from "The Earth's Beginning" of Sir Robert
S. Ball.
CAUSE OF EARTHQUAKES
"As to the immediate cause of earthquakes there is no doubt
considerable difference of opinion. But I think it will not be
doubted that an earthquake is one of the consequences, though
perhaps a remote one, of the gradual loss of internal heat from the
earth. As this terrestrial heat is gradually declining, it follows
from the law that we have already so often had occasion to use that
the bulk of the earth must be shrinking. No doubt the diminution
in the earth's diameter due to the loss of heat must be exceedingly
small, even in a long period of time. The cause, however, is
continually in operation, and, accordingly, the crust of the earth
has from time to time to be accommodated to the fact that the whole
globe is lessening. The circumference of our earth at the equator
must be gradually declining; a certain length in that circumference
is lost each year. We may admit that loss to be a quantity far too
small to be measured by any observations as yet obtainable, but,
nevertheless, it is productive of phenomena so important that it
cannot be overlooked.
"It follows from these considerations that the rocks which form the
earth's crust over the surface of the continents and the islands,
or beneath the bed of the ocean, must have a lessening acreage year
by year. These rocks must therefore submit to compression, either
continuously or from time to time, and the necessary yielding of
the rocks will in general take place in those regions where the
materials of the earth's crust happen to have comparatively small
powers of resistance. The acts of compression will often, and
perhaps generally, not proceed with uniformity, but rather with
small successive shifts, and even though the displacements of the
rocks in these shifts be actually very small, yet the pressures to
which the rocks are subjected are so vast that a very small shift
may correspond to a very great terrestrial disturbance.
"Suppose, for instance, that there is a slight shift in the rocks
on each side of a crack, or fault, at a depth of ten miles. It
must be remembered that the pressure ten miles down would be about
thirty-five tons to the square inch. Even a slight displacement of
one extensive surface over another, the sides being pressed
together with a force of thirty-five tons on the square inch, would
be an operation necessarily accompanied by violence greatly
exceeding that which we might expect from so small a displacement
if the forces concerned had been of more ordinary magnitude. On
account of this great multiplication of the intensity of the
phenomenon, merely a small rearrangement of the rocks in the crust
of the earth, in pursuance of the necessary work of accommodating
its volume to the perpetual shrinkage, might produce an excessively
violent shock, extending far and wide. The effect of such a shock
would be propagated in the form of waves through the globe, just as
a violent blow given at one end of a bar of iron by a hammer is
propagated through the bar in the form of waves. When the effect
of this internal adjustment reaches the earth's surface it will
sometimes be great enough to be perceptible in the shaking it gives
that surface. The shaking may be so violent that buildings may not
be able to withstand it. Such is the phenomenon of an earthquake.
"When the earth is shaken by one of those occasional adjustments of
the crust which I have described, the wave that spreads like a
pulsation from the centre of agitation extends all over our globe
and is transmitted right through it. At the surface lying
immediately over the centre of disturbance there will be a violent
shock. In the surrounding country, and often over great distances,
the earthquake may also be powerful enough to produce destructive
effects. The convulsion may also be manifested over a far larger
area of country in a way which makes the shock to be felt, though
the damage wrought may not be appreciable. But beyond a limited
distance from the centre of the agitation the earthquake will
produce no destructive effects upon buildings, and will not even
cause vibrations that would be appreciable to ordinary observation.
THE RADIUS OF DISTURBANCE.
"In each locality in which earthquakes are chronic it would seem as
if there must be a particularly weak spot in the earth some miles
below the surface. A shrinkage of the earth, in the course of the
incessant adjustment between the interior and the exterior, will
take place by occasional little jumps at this particular centre.
The fact that there is this weak spot at which small adjustments
are possible may provide, as it were, a safety-valve for other
places in the same part of the world. Instead of a general
shrinking, the materials would be sufficiently elastic and flexible
to allow the shrinking for a very large area to be done at this
particular locality. In this way we may explain the fact that
immense tracts on the earth are practically free from earthquakes
of a serious character, while in the less fortunate regions the
earthquakes are more or less perennial.
"Now, suppose an earthquake takes place in Japan, it originates a
series of vibrations through our globe. We must here distinguish
between the rocks--I might almost say the comparatively pliant
rocks--which form the earth's crust, and those which form the
intensely rigid core of the interior of our globe. The vibrations
which carry the tidings of the earthquake spread through the rocks
on the surface, from the centre of the disturbance, in gradually
enlarging circles. We may liken the spread of these vibrations to
the ripples in a pool of water which diverge from the spot where a
raindrop has fallen. The vibrations transmitted by the rocks on
the surface, or on the floor of the ocean, will carry the message
all over the earth. As these rocks are flexible, at all events by
comparison with the earth's interior, the vibrations will be
correspondingly large, and will travel with vigor over land and
under sea. In due time they reach, say the Isle of Wight, where
they set the pencil of the seismometer at work. But there are
different ways round the earth from Japan to the Isle of Wight, the
most direct route being across Asia and Europe; the other route
across the Pacific, America, and the Atlantic. The vibrations will
travel by both routes, and the former is the shorter of the two."
TRANSMISSIONS OF VIBRATIONS
Some brief repetition may not here be amiss as to the products of
volcanic action, of which so much has been said in the preceding
pages, especially as many of the terms are to some extent technical
in character. The most abundant of these substances is steam or
water-gas, which, as we have seen, issues in prodigious quantities
during every eruption. But with the steam a great number of other
volatile materials frequently make their appearance. Though we
have named a number of these at the beginning of this chapter, it
will not be out of order to repeat them here. The chief among
these are the acid gases known as hydrochloric acid, sulphurous
acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, carbonic acid, and boracic acid; and
with these acid gases there issue hydrogen, nitrogen ammonia, the
volatile metals arsenic, antimony, and mercury, and some other
substances. These volatile substances react upon one another, and
many new compounds are thus formed. By the action of sulphurous
acid and sulphuretted hydrogen on each other, the sulphur so common
in volcanic districts is separated and deposited. The hydrochloric
acid acts very energetically on the rocks around the vents, uniting
with the iron in them to form the yellow ferric-chloride, which
often coats the rocks round the vent and is usually mistaken by
casual observers for sulphur.
Some of the substances emitted by volcanic vents, such as hydrogen
and sulphuretted hydrogen, are inflammable, and when they issue at
a high temperature these gases burst into flame the moment that
they come into contact with the air. Hence, when volcanic fissures
are watched at night, faint lambent flames are frequently seen
playing over them, and sometimes these flames are brilliantly
colored, through the presence of small quantities of certain
metallic oxides. Such volcanic flames, however, are scarcely ever
strongly luminous, and the red, glowing light which is observed
over volcanic mountains in eruption is due to quite another cause.
What is usually taken for flame during a volcanic eruption is
simply, as we have before stated, the glowing light of the surface
of a mass of red-hot lava reflected from the cloud of vapor and
dust in the air, much as the lights of a city are reflected from
the water vapor of the atmosphere during a night of fog.
Besides the volatile substances which issue from volcanic vents,
mingling with the atmosphere or condensing upon their sides, there
are many solid materials ejected, and these may accumulate around
the orifice's till they build up mountains of vast dimensions, like
Etna, Teneriffe, and Chimborazo. Some of these solid materials are
evidently fragments of the rock-masses, through which the volcanic
fissure has been rent; these fragments have been carried upwards by
the force of the steam-blast and scattered over the sides of the
volcano. But the principal portion of the solid materials ejected
from volcanic orifices consists of matter which has been extruded
from sources far beneath the surface, in highly-heated and fluid or
semi-fluid condition.
It is to these materials that the name of "lavas" is properly
applied. Lavas present a general resemblance to the slags and
clinkers which are formed in our furnaces and brick-kilns, and
consist, like them, of various stony substances which have been
more or less perfectly fused. When we come to study the chemical
composition and the microscopical structure of lavas, however, we
shall find that there are many respects in which they differ
entirely from these artificial products, they consisting chiefly of
felspar, or of this substance in association with augite or
hornblende. In texture they may be stony, glassy, resin-like,
vesicular or cellular and light in weight, as in the case of pumice
or scoria.
FLOATING PUMICE
The steam and other gases rising through liquid lava are apt to
produce bubbles, yielding a surface froth or foam. This froth
varies greatly in character according to the nature of the material
from which it is formed. In the majority of cases the lavas
consist of a mass of crystals floating in a liquid magma, and the
distension of such a mass by the escape of steam from its midst
gives rise to the formation of the rough cindery-looking material
to which the name of "scoria" is applied. But when the lava
contains no ready-formed crystals, but consists entirely of a
glassy substance in a more or less perfect state of fusion, the
liberation of steam gives rise to the formation of the beautiful
material known as "pumice." Pumice consists of a mass of minute
glass bubbles; these bubbles do not usually, however, retain their
globular form, but are elongated in one direction through the
movement of the mass while it is still in a plastic state. The
quantity of this substance ejected is often enormous. We have seen
to what a vast extent it was thrown out from the crater of
Krakatoa. During the year 1878, masses of floating pumice were
reported as existing in the vicinity of the Solomon Isles, and
covering the surface of the sea to such extent that it took ships
three days to force their way through them. Sometimes this
substance accumulates in such quantities along coasts that it is
difficult to determine the position of the shore within a mile or
two, as we may land and walk about on the great floating raft of
pumice. Recent deep-sea soundings, carried on in the Challenger
and other vessels, have shown that the bottom of the deepest
portion of the ocean, far away from the land, is covered with
volcanic materials which have been carried through the air or have
floated on the surface of the ocean.
Fragments of scoria or pumice may be thrown hundreds or thousands
of feet into the atmosphere, those that fall into the crater and
are flung up again being gradually reduced in size by friction.
Thus it is related by Mr. Poulett Scrope, who watched the Vesuvian
eruption of 1822, which lasted for nearly a month, that during the
earlier stages of the outburst fragments of enormous size were
thrown out of the crater, but by constant re-ejection these were
gradually reduced in size, till at last only the most impalpable
dust issued from the vent. This dust filled the atmosphere,
producing in the city of Naples "a darkness that might be felt."
So excessively finely divided was it, that it penetrated into all
drawers, boxes, and the most closely fastened receptacles, filling
them completely. The fragmentary materials ejected from volcanoes
are often given the name of cinders or ashes. These, however, are
terms of convenience only, and do not properly describe the
volcanic material.
Sometimes the passages of steam through a mass of molten glass
produces large quantities of a material resembling spun glass.
Small particles of this glass are carried into the air and leave
behind them thin, glassy filaments like a tail. At the volcano of
Kilauea in Hawaii, this substance, as previously stated, is
abundantly produced, and is known as 'Pele's Hair'--Pele being the
name of the goddess of the mountain. Birds' nests are sometimes
found composed of this beautiful material. In recent years an
artificial substance similar to this Pele's hair has been
extensively manufactured by passing jets of steam through the
molten slag of iron-furnaces; it resembles cotton-wool, but is made
up of fine threads of glass, and is employed for the packing of
boilers and other purposes.
The lava itself, as left in huge deposits upon the surface, assumes
various forms, some crystalline, others glassy. The latter is
usually found in the condition known as obsidian, ordinarily black
in color, and containing few or no crystals. It is brittle, and
splits into sharp-edged or pointed fragments, which were used by
primitive peoples for arrow-heads, knives and other cutting
implements. The ancient Mexicans used bits of it for shaving
purposes, it having an edge of razor-like sharpness. They also
used it as the cutting part of their weapons of war.
CHAPTER XX.
The Active Volcanoes of the Earth.
It is not by any means an easy task to frame an estimate of the
number of volcanoes in the world. Volcanoes vary greatly in their
dimensions, from vast mountain masses, rising to a height of nearly
25,000 feet above sea-level, to mere molehills. They likewise
exhibit every possible stage of development and decay: while some
are in a state of chronic active eruption, others are reduced to
the condition of solfataras, or vents emitting acid vapors, and
others again have fallen into a more or less complete state of ruin
through the action of denuding forces.
NUMBER OF ACTIVE VOLCANOES
Even if we confine our attention to the larger volcanoes, which
merit the name of mountains, and such of these as we have reason to
believe to be in a still active condition, our difficulties will be
diminished, but not by any means removed. Volcanoes may sink into
a dormant condition that at times endures for hundreds or even
thousands of years, and then burst forth into a state of renewed
activity; and it is quite impossible, in many cases, to distinguish
between the conditions of dormancy and extinction.
We shall, however, probably be within the limits of truth in
stating that the number of great habitual volcanic vents upon the
globe which we have reason to believe are still in active
condition, is somewhere between 300 and 350. Most of these are
marked by more or less considerable mountains, composed of the
materials ejected from them. But if we include mountains which
exhibit the external conical form, crater-like hollows, and other
features of volcanoes, yet concerning the activity of which we have
no record or tradition, the number will fall little, if anything,
short of 1,000.
The mountains composed of volcanic materials, but which have lost
through denudation the external form of volcanoes, are still more
numerous, and the smaller temporary openings which are usually
subordinate to the habitual vents that have been active during the
periods covered by history and tradition, must be numbered by
thousands. There are still feebler manifestations of the volcanic
forces--such as steam-jets, geysers, thermal and mineral waters,
spouting saline and muddy springs, and mud volcanoes--that may be
reckoned by millions. It is not improbable that these less
powerful manifestations of the volcanic forces to a great extent
make up in number what they want in individual energy; and the
relief which they afford to the imprisoned activities within the
earth's crust may be almost equal to that which results from the
occasional outbursts at the great habitual volcanic vents.
In taking a general survey of the volcanic phenomena of the globe,
no facts come out more strikingly than that of the very unequal
distribution, both of the great volcanoes, and of the minor
exhibitions of subterranean energy.
Thus, on the whole of the continent of Europe, there is but one
habitual volcanic vent--that of Vesuvius--and this is situated upon
the shores of the Mediterranean. In the islands of that sea,
however there are no less than six volcanoes: namely, Stromboli,
and Vulcano, in the Lipari Islands; Etna, in Sicily; Graham's Isle,
a submarine volcano, off the Sicilian coast; and Santorin and
Nisyros, in the Aegean Sea.
The African continent is at present known to contain about ten
active volcanoes--four on the west coast, and six on the east
coast, while about ten other active volcanoes occur on islands
close to the African coasts. On the continent of Asia, more than
twenty active volcanoes are known or believed to exist, but no less
than twelve of these are situated in the peninsula of Kamchatka.
No volcanoes are known to exist in the Australian continent.
The American continent contains a greater number of volcanoes than
the continents of the Old World. There are twenty in North
America, twenty-five in Central America, and thirty-seven in South
America. Thus, taken altogether, there are about one hundred and
seventeen volcanoes situated on the great continental lands of the
globe, while nearly twice as many occur upon the islands scattered
over the various oceans.
ASIATIC INLAND VOLCANOES
Upon examining further into the distribution of the continental
volcanoes, another very interesting fact presents itself. The
volcanoes are in almost every instance situated either close to the
coasts of the continent, or at no great distance from them. There
are, indeed, only two exceptions to this rule. In the great and
almost wholly unexplored table-land lying between Siberia and Tibet
four volcanoes are said to exist, and in the Chinese province of
Manchuria several others. More reliable information is, however,
needed concerning these volcanoes.
It is a remarkable circumstance that all the oceanic islands which
are not coral-reefs are composed of volcanic rocks; and many of
these oceanic islands, as well as others lying near the shores of
the continents, contain active volcanoes.
Through the midst of the Atlantic Ocean runs a ridge, which, by the
soundings of the various exploring vessels sent out in recent
years, has been shown to divide the ocean longitudinally into two
basins. Upon this great ridge, and the spurs proceeding from it,
rise numerous mountainous masses, which constitute the well-known
Atlantic islands and groups of islands. All of these are of
volcanic origin, and among them are numerous active volcanoes. The
Island of Jan Mayen contains an active volcano, and Iceland
contains thirteen, and not improbably more; the Azores have six
active volcanoes, the Canaries three; while about eight volcanoes
lie off the west coast of Africa. In the West Indies there are six
active volcanoes; and three submarine volcanoes have been recorded
within the limits of the Atlantic Ocean. Altogether, no less than
forty active volcanoes are situated upon the great submarine ridges
which traverse the Atlantic longitudinally.
But along the same line the number of extinct volcanoes is far
greater, and there are not wanting proofs that the volcanoes which
are still active are approaching the condition of extinction.
VOLCANOES OF THE PACIFIC
If the great medial chain of the Atlantic presents us with an
example of a chain of volcanic mountains verging on extinction, we
have in the line of islands separating the Pacific and Indian
Oceans an example of a similar range of volcanic vents which are in
a condition of the greatest activity. In the peninsula of
Kamchatka there are twelve active volcanoes, in the Aleutian
Islands thirty-one, and in the peninsula of Alaska three. The
chain of the Kuriles contains at least ten active volcanoes; the
Japanese Islands and the islands to the south of Japan twenty-five.
The great group of islands lying to the south-east of the Asiatic
continent is at the present time the grandest focus of volcanic
activity upon the globe. No less than fifty active volcanoes occur
here.
Farther south, the same chain is probably continued by the four
active volcanoes of New Guinea, one or more submarine volcanoes,
and several vents in New Britain, the Solomon Isles, and the New
Hebrides, the three active volcanoes of New Zealand, and possibly
by Mount Erebus and Mount Terror in the Antarctic region.
Altogether, no less than 150 active volcanoes exist in the chain of
islands which stretch from Behring's Straits down to the Antarctic
circle; and if we include the volcanoes on Indian and Pacific
Islands which appear to be situated on lines branching from this
particular band, we shall not be wrong in the assertion that this
great system of volcanic mountains includes at least one half of
the habitually active vents of the globe. In addition to the
active vents, there are here several hundred very perfect volcanic
cones, many of which appear to have recently become extinct, though
some of them may be merely dormant, biding their time.
A third series of volcanoes starts from the neighborhood of
Behring's Straits, and stretches along the whole western coast of
the American continent. This is much less continuous, but
nevertheless very important, and contains, with its branches,
nearly a hundred active volcanoes. On the north this great band is
almost united with the one we have already described by the chain
of the Aleutian and Alaska volcanoes. In British Columbia about
the parallel of 60 degrees N. there exist a number of volcanic
mountains, one of which, Mount St. Elias, is believed to be 18,000
feet in height. Farther south, in the territory of the United
States, a number of grand volcanic mountains exist, some of which
are probably still active, for geysers and other manifestations of
volcanic activity abound. From the southern extremity of the
peninsula of California an almost continuous chain of volcanoes
stretches through Mexico and Guatemala, and from this part of the
volcanic band a branch is given off which passes through the West
Indies, and contains the volcanoes which have so recently given
evidence of their vital activity.
In South America the line is continued by the active volcanoes of
Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile, but at many intermediate points in the
chain of the Andes extinct volcanoes occur, which to a great extent
fill up the gaps in the series. A small offshoot to the westward
passes through the Galapagos Islands. The great band of volcanoes
which stretches through the American continent is second only in
importance, and in the activity of its vents, to the band which
divides the Pacific from the Indian Ocean.
The third volcanic band of the globe is that, already spoken of,
which traverses the Atlantic Ocean from north to south. This
series of volcanic mountains is much more broken and interrupted
than the other two, and a greater proportion of its vents are
extinct. It attained its condition of maximum activity during the
distant period of the Miocene, and now appears to be passing into a
state of gradual extinction.
Beginning in the north with the volcanic rocks of Greenland and
Bear Island, we pass southwards, by way of Jan Mayen, Iceland and
the Faroe Islands, to the Hebrides and the north of Ireland.
Thence, by way of the Azores, the Canaries and the Cape de Verde
Islands, with some active vents, we pass to the ruined volcanoes of
St. Paul, Fernando de Noronha, Ascension, St. Helena, Trinidad and
Tristan da Cunha. From this great Atlantic band two branches
proceed to the eastward, one through Central Europe, where all the
vents are now extinct, and the other through the Mediterranean to
Asia Minor, the great majority of the volcanoes along the latter
line being now extinct, though a few are still active. The
volcanoes on the eastern coast of Africa may be regarded as
situated on another branch from this Atlantic volcanic band. The
number of active volcanoes on this Atlantic band and its branches,
exclusive of those in the West Indies, does not exceed fifty.
THIAN SHAN AND HAWAIIAN VOLCANOES
From what has been said, it will be seen that the volcanoes of the
globe not only usually assume a linear arrangement, but nearly the
whole of them can be shown to be thrown up along three well-marked
bands and the branches proceeding from them. The first and most
important of these bands is nearly 10,000 miles in length, and with
its branches contains more than 150 active volcanoes; the second is
8,000 miles in length, and includes about 100 active volcanoes; the
third is much more broken and interrupted, extends to a length of
nearly 1,000 miles, and contains about 50 active vents. The
volcanoes of the eastern coast of Africa, with Mauritius, Bourbon,
Rodriguez, and the vents along the line of the Red Sea, may be
regarded as forming a fourth and subordinate band.
Thus we see that the surface of the globe is covered by a network
of volcanic bands, all of which traverse it in sinuous lines with a
general north-and-south direction, giving off branches which often
run for hundreds of miles, and sometimes appear to form a
connection between the great bands.
To this rule of the linear arrangement of the volcanic vents of the
globe, and their accumulation along certain well-marked bands,
there are two very striking exceptions, which we must now proceed
to notice.
In the very centre of the continent formed by Europe and Asia, the
largest unbroken land-mass of the globe, there rises from the great
central plateau the remarkable volcanoes of the Thian Shan Range.
The existence of these volcanoes, of which only obscure traditional
accounts had reached Europe before the year 1858, appears to be
completely established by the researches of recent Russian and
Swedish travelers. Three volcanic vents appear to exist in this
region, and other volcanic phenomena have been stated to occur in
the great plateau of Central Asia, but the existence of the latter
appears to rest on very doubtful evidence. The only accounts which
we have of the eruptions of these Thian Shan volcanoes are
contained in Chinese histories and treatises on geography.
The second exceptionally situated volcanic group is that of the
Hawaiian Islands. While the Thian Shan volcanoes rise in the
centre of the largest unbroken land-mass, and stand on the edge of
the loftiest and greatest plateau in the world, the volcanoes of
the Hawaiian Islands rise in the northern centre of the largest
ocean and from almost the greatest depths in that ocean. All round
the Hawaiian Islands the sea has a depth of from 2,000 to 3,000
fathoms, and the island-group culminates in several volcanic cones,
which rise to the height of nearly 14,000 feet above the sea-level.
The volcanoes of the Hawaiian Islands are unsurpassed in height and
bulk by those of any other part of the globe.
With the exception of the two isolated groups of the Thian Shan and
the Hawaiian Islands, nearly all the active volcanoes of the globe
are situated near the limits which separate the great land-and-
water-masses of the globe--that is to say, they occur either on the
parts of continents not far removed from their coast-lines, or on
islands in the ocean not very far distant from the shores. The
fact of the general proximity of volcanoes to the sea is one which
has frequently been pointed out by geographers, and may now be
regarded as being thoroughly established.
VOLCANOES PARALLEL TO MOUNTAIN CHAINS
Many of the grandest mountain-chains have bands of volcanoes lying
parallel to them. This is strikingly exhibited by the great
mountain-masses which lie on the western side of the American
continent. The Rocky Mountains and the Andes consist of folded and
crumpled masses of altered strata which, by the action of denuding
forces, have been carved into series of ridges and summits. At
many points, however, along the sides of these great chains we find
that fissures have been opened and lines of volcanoes formed, from
which enormous quantities of lava have flowed and covered great
tracts of country.
This is especially marked in the Snake River plain of Idaho, in the
western United States. In this, and the adjoining regions of
Oregon and Washington, an enormous tract of country has been
overflowed by lava in a late geological period, the surface covered
being estimated to have a larger area than France and Great Britain
combined. The Snake River cuts through it in a series of
picturesque gorges and rapids, enabling us to estimate its
thickness, which is considered to average 4000 feet. Looked at
from any point on its surface, one of these lava-plains appears as
a vast level surface, like that of a lake bottom. This uniformity
has been produced either by the lava rolling over a plain or lake
bottom, or by the complete effacement of an original, undulating
contour of the ground under hundreds or thousands of feet of lava
in successive sheets. The lava, rolling up to the base of the
mountains, has followed the sinuosities of their margin, as the
waters of a lake follow its promontories and bays. Similar
conditions exist along the Sierra Nevada range of California, and
to some extent placer mining has gone on under immense beds of
lava, by a process of tunneling beneath the volcanic rock.
In some localities the volcanoes are of such height and dimensions
as to overlook and dwarf the mountain-ranges by the side of which
they lie. Some of the volcanoes lying parallel to the great
American axis appear to be quite extinct, while others are in full
activity. In the Eastern continent we find still more striking
examples of parallelism between great mountain-chains and the lands
along which volcanic activity is exhibited--volcanoes, active or
extinct, following the line of the great east and west chains which
extend through southern Europe and Asia. There are some other
volcanic bands which exhibit a similar parallelism with mountain
chains; but, on the other hand, there are volcanoes between which
and the nearest mountain-axis no such connection can be traced.
AREAS OF UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE
There is one other fact concerning the mode of distribution of
volcanoes upon the surface of the globe, to which we must allude.
By a study of the evidences presented by coral-reefs, raised
beaches, submerged forests, and other phenomena of a similar kind,
it can be shown that certain wide areas of the land and of the
ocean-floor are at the present time