ings, veered
before a fierce wind and made its way southerly to the great sea wall,
with its docks and grain warehouses. The flames reached the tanks of the
San Francisco Gas Company, which had previously been pumped out, and on
Saturday morning the grain sheds on the water front, about half a mile
north of the ferry station, were fiercely burning. But the fire here was
confined to a small area, and, with the work of fireboats in the bay and
of the firemen on shore, who used salt water pumped into their engines,
it was prevented from reaching the ferry building and the docks in that
vicinity.

The buildings on a high slope between Van Ness and Polk Streets, Union
and Filbert Streets, were blazing fiercely, fanned by a high wind, but
the blocks here were so thinly settled that the fire had little
chance of spreading widely from this point. In fact, it was at length
practically under control, and the entire western addition of the city
west of Van Ness Avenue was safe from the flames. The great struggle was
fairly at an end, and the brave force of workers were at length given
some respite from their strenuous labors.

During the height of the struggle and the days of exhaustion and
depression that followed, exaggerated accounts of the losses and of the
area swept by the flames were current, some estimate making the extent
of the fire fifteen square miles out of the total of twenty-five square
miles of the city's area. It was not until Friday, the 27th, that an
official survey of the burned district, made by City Surveyor Woodward,
was completed, and the total area burned over found to be 2,500 acres, a
trifle less than four square miles. This, however, embraced the heart of
the business section and many of the principal residence streets, much
of the saved area being occupied by the dwellings of the poorer people,
so that the money loss was immensely greater than the percentage of
ground burned over would indicate.

CHAPTER III.

Fighting the Flames With Dynamite.

Shaken by earthquake, swept by flames, the water supply cut off by the
breaking of the mains, the authorities of the doomed city for a time
stood appalled. What could be done to stay the fierce march of the
flames which were sweeping resistlessly over palace and hovel alike,
over stately hall and miserable hut? Water was not to be had; what was
to take its place? Nothing remained but to meet ruin with ruin, to make
a desert in the path of the fire a