es, in fact it was
hard to keep me in when a large one was burning. From our house I
have seen the greater part of the city swept away twice, and a
grander sight cannot be imagined, seen from an eminence, and maybe at
night, too. I was off like a shot, and, running all the way, was soon
on the scene. Anyone and everyone volunteered to help carry goods to
a place of safety, and hot work it was, I can tell you, for being
mostly of wood, and maybe redwood, they (the houses) burnt like
tinder. From running to so many fires and falling down in my haste
I got my shins bruised and bleeding, and my trousers, of course,
torn. I was showing my children these scars only lately, they being
still much in evidence after fifty-four years.

As I have before stated, the stores were built of redwood, and with
cellars. The floors of many had trapdoors, and when the fire got near
them the storekeeper opened the trapdoor, and all the goods were
swept off the shelves into the cellar, and covered up. After this the
owner of the building took a bee-line for the lumber yard to get in
his order for lumber for a new building ahead of his neighbor. They
were the exciting days and no mistake! A week after one of these
devastating fires all was built up and looked the same as usual. I
might state that the firebells rang on all occasions to bring the
citizens together in those times of tumult, and all prominent men
were firemen.

I can well remember the election of President Buchanan, and if I
remember right, the voting was in the open air in each ward of the
city, the ballots being placed in large glass globes. At one of these
polling-places I saw a fight, the result of a dispute between a
Democrat and a Republican over an accusation by one that the other
had put in a double ticket (I think this was the cause).

To close this history, I might say that my father and his partner put
all they had, some ten thousand dollars, into a venture which
eventually brought us to Vancouver Island to live. They bought a
vessel, and sent her in ballast to Alberni or Sooke for a load of
lumber, and it was arranged that on her return to San Francisco she
was to take the lumber to England, and we all were to go home again
in her. But "L'homme propose et Dieu dispose" was here exemplified,
for the ship never came back. After weeks of anxiety when the ship
was overdue, one day either the captain, or the mate came to my
father with the news that the ship was wrecked