ess house was left standing.
Theatres crumbled into smouldering heaps. Factories and commission
houses sank to red ruin before the devouring flames. The scene was like
that of ancient Babylon in its fall, or old Rome when set on fire by
Nero's command, as tradition tells. In modern times there has been
nothing to equal it except the conflagration at Chicago, when the flames
swept to ruin that queen city of the Great Lakes.

When night fell and the sun withdrew his beams the spectacle was one at
once magnificent and awe-inspiring. The city resembled one vast blazing
furnace. Looking over it from a high hill in the western section, the
flames could be seen ascending skyward for miles upon miles, while in
the midst of the red spirals of flame could be seen at intervals the
black skeletons and falling towers of doomed buildings. Above all
this hung a dense pall of smoke, showing lurid where the flames were
reflected from its dark and threatening surface. To those nearer the
scene presented many pathetic and distressing features, the fire glare
throwing weird shadows over the worn and panic-stricken faces of the
woe-begone fugitives, driven from their homes and wandering the streets
in helpless misery. Many of them lay sleeping on piles of blankets and
clothing which they had brought with them, or on the hard sidewalks, or
the grass of the open parks.

THE CARE OF THE WOUNDED.

Through all the streets ambulances and express wagons were hurrying,
carrying dead and injured to morgues and hospitals. But these refuges
for the wounded or receptacles for the dead were no safer than the
remainder of the city. In the morgue at the Hall of Justice fifty bodies
lay, but the approach of the flames rendered it necessary to remove
to Jackson Square these mutilated remnants of what had once been men.
Hospitals were also abandoned at intervals, doctors and nurses being
forced to remove their patients in haste from the approaching flames.

There is an open park opposite City Hall. Here the Board of Supervisors
met, and, with fifty substantial citizens who joined them, formed a
Committee of Safety, to take in hand the direction of affairs and
to seek safe quarters for the dying and the dead. Strangely enough,
Mechanics' Pavilion, opposite City Hall, had escaped injury from the
earthquake, though it was only a wooden building. It had the largest
floor in San Francisco, and was pressed into service at once. The police
and the troops, w