earthquake. They crawled out just in
time--before every one went mad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was just dawn when we got to San Jose. Sentries from the militia
and special officers were patrolling the streets. A dead