“It seemed as if every man, woman and child in ’Frisco was running toward the ferry docks. When the boat arrived on our side of the shore it was packed with men and women, none of whom seemed to be in their right senses. Many of them jumped from the boat as soon as it was made fast and ran at top speed through the streets of Oakland until forced to fall through sheer exhaustion.
“One woman in the crowd had nothing on but a night gown. In her arms she carried a 3-year-old girl who was hanging tightly to a rag doll and seemed to be the only one in the vast crowd that was unafraid. Where all these people went to I have no idea.
“I stood on the Oakland side watching ’Frisco devoured. In a space of time so short that it all seems to me like a dream now the whole city, slumbering peacefully but a moment before, presented a perdition beside which Dante’s inferno seems to pale into insignificance.”
The looters early began operations in the stricken city. The vandal thinking that law and order had gone in the general crash filled his pockets as he fled.
It was the relic hunter who opened the door to the looter. The spirit which sends the tourist tapping about the ruins of the Parthenon, awoke in San Francisco. Idle and curious men swarmed into the city, poking about in the ruins in the hope of finding something worth carrying away as a souvenir of the greatest calamity of modern times.
Scores of men and women were seen digging in the ruins of one store. They were disinterring bits of crockery, china and glassware. Strangely enough, a great deal of this sort of ware had been protected by a wall which stood through quake and fire. One woman came toiling out over a pile of brick, covered with ashes and dust, her hair dishevelled and hands grimy, but she was perfectly happy.
“See,” said she, “I found half a dozen cups and saucers as good as new. They are fine china and they will be worth more than ever now.”
I asked her if she needed them.
“Oh, dear no!” said she, laughing. “I live over in Oakland. I just wanted them to keep as souvenirs!”
Some hard-hearted jokers were abroad also. Humor dies hard, and perhaps it is just as well that it does, for the six men who started the bogus bread lines would have needed much of it if the soldiers had caught them.