met, and, with fifty substantial citizens who joined them, formed a
Committee of Safety, to take in hand the direction of affairs and
to seek safe quarters for the dying and the dead. Strangely enough,
Mechanics' Pavilion, opposite City Hall, had escaped injury from the
earthquake, though it was only a wooden building. It had the largest
floor in San Francisco, and was pressed into service at once. The police
and the troops, working in harmony together, passed the word that the
dead and injured should be brought there, the hospitals and morgue
having become choked, and the order was quickly obeyed, until about
400 of the hurt, many of them terribly mangled, were laid in improvised
cots, attended by all the physicians and trained nurses who could be
obtained.

The corpses were much fewer, the workers being too busy in fighting the
fire and caring for the wounded to give time and attention as yet to
the dead. But one of the first wagons to arrive brought a whole
family--father, mother and three children--all dead except the baby,
which had a broken arm and a terrible cut across the forehead. They had
been dragged from the ruins of their house on the water front. A large
consignment of bodies, mostly of workingmen, came from a small hotel on
Eddy Street, through the roof of which the upper part of a tall building
next door had fallen, crushing all below.


FIRE ATTACKS THE MINT.


To return to the story of the conflagration, the escape of the United
States Mint was one of the most remarkable incidents. Within the vaults
of this fine structure was the vast sum of $300,000,000 in gold and