The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1906-04-27

tCl uiitil bhNN NouSho thSi tioih III
Portland
"We were driven first here and then
there by the enveloping flames that
spread with awful swiftness," he said.
when we started from the Palace no
tel following the crowd there were fiji
teen fires that had broken out aroun
u.s. All that day we tramped here an
there. The smoke was awful. A blacl
pail hung over us. Cinders dropped lik'
rain. Through the smoke clouds til
great red sun shone and the heat wa
expressing. Everywhere they were blow
ing up great buildings.
THAT afternoon the Call buildin:
caught fire. From every one of its my
Rad windows tongues of fire swept to
ward the street Hot bricks fell inces
sanity to the pavement. Whole storie'
would crumble and fall at once, bu'
through the smoke and through the
flames one could see the steel frame
that survived the shock and confagra
ton. Steel proved itself that day.
necessarily we heard explosions
They were not all dynamite. The,
wrecked dozens of huge, magnificent
buildings, but the boilers in others die
the same while the flames perhaps had
only small start. The iron boiler
would get heated till the steam pressure
was too great for them to bear an'
then they would burst. That brought
many building to the earth.
But in wrecked Chinatown | saw
the most awful sights, that will live
with me always. The fiimsy wooder
buildings stood right in the path of the
flames The firemen said they must &c
by dynamite; they hoped to make .
stand. Twenty bugers went through
the street, up every stairway and into
every passage, to warn the frantic
sChinese, who in the hour of DANCE
rushed headlong into their quarters.
Thirty or, forty old Chinese-somo
the pioneers of the yellow race in Sar
Francisco-would not leave. All arouno
them their breathren, reused by the bug
lers, scampered to safety with trinkets
gay -colored clothes and anything they
could seize in the rush. Children stream
ed behind, but the old Chinese would not
move. The buglers tugged at then
long queues, but still they would not
90 And so they were left to perish
smoking their opium pipes calmly to be
drugged into oblivion of their fate.
"Then came the explosion. Higf
above the street, mingled with flying
boards and dirt and cinders, were dozens
of human bodies that whirled and spun
and twisted in the air a hundred times
They were the martyrs of Chinatown
Another second and they were on the
earth, battered, mangled and torn out OF
all semblance to human beings, and the
fire swept over them.
1.-TWO nights we slept in parks. The
first day we bought a can of sardine
we had. There We're many worse.
"The second day we hired an express,
man for $l5 to drive us to the Preside
where we heard government steameI
was going to leave. No sooner had we
gotten there than the rig was confiscat
ed and a blue coated soldier ordered III
to get down and help unload shiJ
filled with potatoes and provisions. We
worked there for two hours before we
could 60.
"Next day we got another express,
man and started for the ferry. 1t took
us from $3.50 in the morning to three
that afternoon and part of the time
we were nearly surrounded by fire. In
stead of getting better the flames seem
ed to get worse. On either hand they
stretched a mile. When we got over into
Oakland and got our train you can be-
lieve we were thankful
"The soldiers, especially the regulars
were godsend to San Francisco. They
kept the mobs down and did wonders
to help the dead and dying. We saw
scores of dead people and those terribl,
wounded conveyed to the Presidio."