indeed, who had been flung to quick if not to instant death under their
ruined homes.

Those seconds of the reign of the elemental forces had turned the
gayest, most careless city on the continent into a wreck which no words
can fitly describe. Those able to move stumbled in wild panic across the
floors of their heaving houses, regardless of clothing, of treasures, of
everything but the mad instinct for safety, and rushed headlong into the
streets, to find that the earth itself had yielded to the energy of its
frightful interior forces and had in places been torn and rent like the
houses themselves. New terrors assailed the fugitives as fresh tremors
shook the solid ground, some of them strong enough to bring down
shattered walls and chimneys, and bring back much of the mad terror of
the first fearful quake. The heaviest of these came at eight o'clock.
While less forcible than that which had caused the work of destruction,
it added immensely to the panic and dread of the people and put many of
the wanderers to flight, some toward the ferry, the great mass in the
direction of the sand dunes and Golden Gate Park.

The spectacle of the entire population of a great city thus roused
suddenly from slumber by a fierce earthquake shock and sent flying into
the streets in utter panic, where not buried under falling walls or
tumbling debris, is one that can scarcely be pictured in words, and can
be given in any approach to exact realization only in the narratives of
those who passed through its horrors and experienced the sensations to
which it gave rise. Some of the more vivid of these personal accounts
will be presented later, but at present we must confine ourselves to a
general statement of the succession of events.

The earthquake proved but the beginning and much the least destructive