ection toward the west, the destruction of
San Francisco would be virtually complete. The district west of Van
Ness Avenue and north of McAllister constitutes the finest part of the
metropolis. Here are located all of the finer homes of the well-to-do
and wealthier classes, and the resolution to destroy them was the last
resort of desperation.

Hundreds of police, regiments of soldiers and scores of volunteers
were sent into the doomed district to warn the people to flee. They
heroically responded to the demand of law and went bravely on their way,
leaving their loved homes and trudging painfully over the pavements with
the little they could carry away of their treasured possessions.

The reply of a grizzled fire engineer standing at O'Farrell Street and
Van Ness Avenue, beside a blackened engine, may not have been as terse
as that of Hugo's guardsman at Waterloo, but the pathos of it must have
been as great. In answer to the question of what they proposed to do, he
said:

"We are waiting for it to come. When it gets here we will make one more
stand. If it crosses Van Ness Avenue the city is gone."

THE SAVERS OF THE CITY.

Yet the work now to be done was much too important to be left to the
hands of untrained volunteers. Skilled engineers were needed, men used
to the scientific handling of explosives, and it was men of this kind
who finally saved what is left to-day of the city. Three men saved San
Francisco, so far as any San Francisco existed after the fire had worked
its will, these three constituting the dynamite squad who faced and
defied the demon at Van Ness Avenue.

When the burning city seemed doomed and the flames lit the sky farther
and farther to the west, Admiral McCalla sent a trio of his most trusted
men from Mare Island with orders to check the conflagration at any cost
of property. With them they brought a ton and a half of guncotton. The
terrific power of the explosive was equal to the maniac determination
of the fire. Captain MacBride was in charge of the squad, Chief Gunner
Adamson placed the charges and the third gunner set them off.

Stationing themselves on Van Ness Avenue, which the conflagration was
approaching with leaps and bounds from the burning business section of
the city, they went systematically to work, and when they had ended a
broad open space, occupied only by the dismantled ruins of buildings,
remained of what had been a long row of handsome and costly residences,
which