As for the people of Chinatown, however, no one knows or will ever know
the extent of the dread fate that overcame them, for no one knows
the secrets of that dark abode of infamy and crime, whose inhabitants
burrowed underground like so many ants; and hid their secrets deep in
the earth.


THE RUIN OF CHINATOWN.


W. W. Overton, of Los Angeles, thus describes the Chinatown dens and the
revelations made by the earthquake and the flames:

"Strange is the scene where San Francisco's Chinatown stood. No heap of
smoking ruins marks the site of the wooden warrens where the Orientals
dwelt in thousands. Only a cavern remains, pitted with deep holes and
lined with dark passageways, from whose depths come smoke wreaths. White
men never knew the depth of Chinatown's underground city. Many had gone
beneath the street level two and three stories, but now that the place
had been unmasked, men may see where its inner secrets lay. In places
one can see passages a hundred feet deep.

"The fire swept this Mongolian quarter clean. It left no shred of the
painted wooden fabric. It ate down to the bare ground, and this lies
stark, for the breezes have taken away the light ashes. Joss houses
and mission schools, groceries and opium dens, gambling resorts and
theatres, all of them went. These buildings blazed up like tissue paper.

"From this place I saw hundreds of crazed yellow men flee. In their arms