THE FIRE UNDER CONTROL.


For three long days the terrible fire fiend kept up his work, and the
fight went on until late on Friday, when the sweep of the flames was at
length checked and the fire brought under control. The principal agent
in this victory was dynamite, which was freely used. To its work
a separate chapter will be devoted. When at length the area of the
conflagration was limited the wealthiest part of the city lay in embers
and ashes, one of the principal localities to escape being Pacific
Heights, a mile west from Nob's Hill, on which stood many costly homes
of recent construction.

On Friday night the fire that had worked its way from Nob's Hill to
North Beach Street, sweeping that quarter clean of buildings, veered
before a fierce wind and made its way southerly to the great sea wall,
with its docks and grain warehouses. The flames reached the tanks of the
San Francisco Gas Company, which had previously been pumped out, and on
Saturday morning the grain sheds on the water front, about half a mile
north of the ferry station, were fiercely burning. But the fire here was
confined to a small area, and, with the work of fireboats in the bay and
of the firemen on shore, who used salt water pumped into their engines,
it was prevented from reaching the ferry building and the docks in that
vicinity.

The buildings on a high slope between Van Ness and Polk Streets, Union
and Filbert Streets, were blazing fiercely, fanned by a high wind, but
the blocks here were so thinly settled that the fire had little
chance of spreading widely from this point. In fact, it was at length