t 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.