rd can ever be obtained as many bodies were
buried without permits from the coroner and the board of health.

Whenever a body was found it was buried immediately without any
formality whatever and, as these burials were made at widely separated
parts of the city by different bodies of searchers, who did not even
make a prompt report to headquarters, considerable confusion resulted
in estimating the number of casualties and exaggerated reports
resulted.

CHAPTER V.

THE CITY OF A HUNDRED HILLS.

=A Description of San Francisco, the Metropolis of the
Pacific Coast Before the Fire--One of the Most Beautiful
and Picturesque Cities in America--Home of the California
Bonanza Kings.=

San Francisco has had many soubriquets. It has been happily called the
"City of a Hundred Hills," and its title of the "Metropolis of the
Golden Gate" is richly deserved. Its location is particularly
attractive, inasmuch as the peninsula it occupies is swept by the
Pacific Ocean on the west and the beautiful bay of San Francisco on
the north and east. The peninsula itself is thirty miles long and the
site of the city is six miles back from the ocean. It rests on the
shore of San Francisco Bay, which, with its branches, covers over 600
square miles, and for beauty and convenience for commerce is worthy of
its magnificent entrance--the Golden Gate.

San Francisco was originally a mission colony. It is reported that
"the site of the mission of San Francisco was selected because of its
political and commercial advantages. It was to be the nucleus of a
seaport town that should serve to guard the dominion of Spain in its
vicinity. Most of the other missions were founded in the midst of
fertile valleys, inhabited by large numbers of Indians." Both of these
features were notably absent in San Francisco. Even the few Indians
there in 1776 left upon the arrival of the friars and dragoons. Later
on some of them returned and others were added, the number increasing
from 215 in 1783, to 1,205 in 1813. This was the largest number ever
reported. Soon after the number began to decrease through epidemics
and emigration, until there was only 204 in 1832.

The commercial life of San Francisco dates from 1835, when William A.
Richardson, an Englishman, who had been living in Sausalito since
1822, moved to San Francisco. He erected a tent and began the
collection of hides and tallow, by the use of two 30-ton schooners
leased from the