This was the region of the newspaper offices, and they quickly
succumbed. The Examiner, standing across Third Street from Spreckles,
collapsed from the earthquake shock. A flimsy edifice, it had long been
looked upon as dangerous. Another building in the rear of this alone
resisted both flames and smoke. Across Market Street from the Examiner
stood the Chronicle building, a dozen stories high. Firmly built, it
had borne the earthquake assault unharmed, but the flames were an enemy
against which it had no defense, and it was quickly added to the victims
of the fire-fiend.

Farther down Market Street, the chief business thoroughfare of the city,
stood that great caravansary, the Palace Hotel, which for thirty years
had been a favorite hostelry, housing the bulk of the visitors to the
Californian metropolis. Its time had come. Doom hovered over it. Its
guests had fled in good season, as they saw the irresistible approach of
the conquering flames. Soon it was ablaze; quickly from every window of
its broad front the tongues of flame curled hotly in the air; it became
a thrice-heated furnace, like so many of the neighboring structures,
adding its quota to the vast cloud of smoke that hung over the burning
city, and rapidly sinking in red ruin to the earth.

All day Wednesday the fire spread unchecked, all efforts to stay its
devouring fury proving futile. In the business section of the city
everything was in ruins. Not a business house was left standing.
Theatres crumbled into smouldering heaps. Factories and commission
houses sank to red ruin before the devouring flames. The scene was like
that of ancient Babylon in its fall, or old Rome when set on fire by
Nero's command, as tradition tells. In modern times there has been
nothing to equal it except the conflagration at Chicago, when the flames
swept to ruin that queen city of the Great Lakes.