=CAMP KITCHEN.=
Cooking in Baseball Park.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright 1906 by Tom M. Phillips.
=SHACKS ERECTED IN A FEW HOURS.=
Another view in Golden Gate Park.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: =GOVERNOR PARDEE OF CALIFORNIA.=
The prompt help in relief work rendered by Gov. Pardee stamps him as one of the greatest humanitarians of the present day.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, Clinedinst, Washington.
=MAJOR GENERAL ADOLPHUS W. GREELY.=
Commander of the Pacific Division of the U. S. Army in the earthquake district. General Greely is well known for his Arctic expedition.]
I met men who claimed to have seen men shot down by the soldiers for defying orders for unlicensed looting. Also there is a story of a negro being shot dead by a policeman for robbing a dead body.
One story I would like to believe--that a poor wretch pinned in among the blazing ruins roasting to death begged to be shot and some cavalry trooper had the moral courage to send a bullet through his brain.
Although I walked probably fifteen miles back and forth through the city, I saw very little unlicensed looting. Many grocery stores which did not seem to be in immediate danger, were thrown open; one very oddly. The proprietor nailed up one window with slats about four inches wide. He made the refugees line up, and each was privileged to take all he could reach through the window slats.
Some grocers and tradesmen were not so charitable. In other places I saw them demanding from people in danger of starving, 75 cents a loaf for bread.
Bread was the scarcest article except water.
The last of the tragedy that I witnessed was not only the most dramatic but the most tremendous.
It should be called the "Exodus," for it was a Biblical scene. It was the headlong flight of those who were most terror-stricken to get out of the doomed city.
All day long a procession of almost countless thousands was to be seen hurrying with all the possessions they could carry. There were people with bundles, packs, laden express wagons, hacks bulging with plunder, brewery wagons pressed into service, automobiles, push carts, even fire hose wagons.
I happened along at a crucial moment. One of the lieutenants whose peculiar and melancholy function seemed to be to p.r.o.nounce the doom of one section after another, had just sent warning to n.o.b Hill, the center of fashion in San Francisco.
For hours I had been working my way toward the Oakland ferries. As a last hope, some one told me I might get there by going over these hills and following the line of the water front.
I got there after the warning had been given. It was San Francisco"s wealthiest and most exclusive society who had to pack and sling their bundles over their shoulders.
And they did it with just as good grace and courage as the others. All were making a frantic attempt to hire expressmen with any kind of vehicle that would move, and most of them were failing.
During the first of the fire, some young society women with very poor taste, went autoing around the stricken districts as though it were a circus. They were stopped by a sentry and were made to get out of their car and hand it over to a posse of special officers being hurried to some district in new peril.
As I gained the top of n.o.b Hill and turned to look back, it was clear why the warning had been given. In one direction, hospitals were burning south of Market street.
In the center distance the big car barns were on fire and roaring with flames. Ordinarily this would have been a sensation of a week. Now it wasn"t even considered worth while to send fire engines and n.o.body stopped to look as they walked by.
The main streets, where the business part of the city had been, were black with an immense throng of people who were walking up and down among the ruins.
Looking toward the ferries, I could count nine big skysc.r.a.pers, all crowned with fire, outlined in a lurid row against the sky line. The flames were creeping slowly, but with deadly persistence, toward n.o.b Hill, with several lesser fires blazing in between.
It was high time n.o.b Hill was moving.
One old man had chartered an express wagon, and was on top of the wagon frantically interfering with the work of removing the goods from a big, aristocratic-looking house.
"The books!" he shrieked, "Why in heaven"s sake don"t you bring the books?"
A swagger young woman came to the door with a handsome mantel clock and walked calmly down the stairs. "Please put this in some especially safe place, please," she said, as composedly as though this were nothing more than any ordinary moving day.
Down the street I saw a woman with the bearing of a patrician shoving at the rear of a push cart, loaded with all of the few things she could save; a servant was drawing it.
Behind came a young girl, who half turned for a last look at the house, and burst out crying. Her mother left the load for a moment and comforted her. "Never mind, dear," she said. "Don"t cry! See, mamma isn"t crying."
"Mamma" knew that in a few minutes her home and all the property she had in the world would die in the fire just as her husband"s business had already done; but mamma wasn"t crying.
On the corner of Van Ness avenue and Broadway, I saw a girl well dressed, who had evidently been driven out from there. All she had saved was a bed tick filled with something. As it was very hot, and she was very tired, she had spread it on the pavement, and was watching the throng from under her parasol.
I saw another girl in a trig outing suit and little patent-leather shoes, toss a bundle, done up in a sheet, over her shoulder and walk away in the procession with the most fascinating nonchalance.
One woman I saw going away in an elegantly-fitted private carriage. It was drawn by two horses with tails about two inches long and soaring; so she must have been near the top of the Upper Crust.
She, too, joined in the flight. Just as she got to the bottom of the hill she had the driver stop. I saw her turn and take a last wistful look from her carriage window at her doomed home. She was not attempting to take anything with her. Like many others, she had simply locked her door and gone.
Many of these people, rich one day, are practically paupers on the morrow. Many of them slept outdoors in the parks under a blanket, afraid to sleep in their own palatial homes.
What I call the "Exodus" fled down Van Ness avenue to the water front, thence along the Barbary Coast and tough water front by an enormously long detour to the ferries; it was the only way, the town streets being on fire and closed by the military.
The farther you went along the more conglomerate the throng became.
The inhabitants of the foreign quarters began pouring out to join the flight.
I was so tired with a long day spent walking about the burning city that it seemed an impossibility that I should keep on. Every step was actual physical pain.
Twenty pa.s.sing cabs, returning from the ferries, I stopped and tried to charter. The drivers, after bigger game, would wave me aside and say "Nothin" doin"."
One cabby said that he had to hurry out to the other end of the city to rescue his own family who were in danger. Another young autocrat on the cabby"s box took a long puff on his cigarette before he replied to my appeal.
"Fellow, you couldn"t hire this hack for a million dollars," he said.
There was one amusing feature in the terrible procession. She was a haughty dame from Van Ness avenue. All that she could save she had stuffed into a big striped bed tick. She was trying to drag this along, and at the same time trying to maintain the dignity of a perfect lady. Candidly, it was not a success. One can stick pretty nearly everything into a striped bed quilt, but not dignity.
All along the way were women who had dropped out from exhaustion and were sitting there with their bundles in utter despair.