the cupola of that building. The attention of the government was at once
directed to the spot. The bay of San Francisco was speedily drained by a
system of patent siphons, and the city, deeply embedded in mud, brought
to light after a burial of many centuries. The City Hall, Post-Office,
Mint, and Custom-House were readily recognized by the large full-fed
barnacles which adhered to their walls. Shortly afterwards the first
skeleton was discovered; that of a broker, whose position in the
upper strata of mud nearer the surface was supposed to be owing to the
exceeding buoyancy or inflation of scrip which he had secured about his
person while endeavoring to escape. Many skeletons, supposed to be those
of females, encompassed in that peculiar steel coop or cage which seems
to have been worn by the women of that period, were also found in
the upper stratum. Alexis von Puffer, in his admirable work on San
Francisco, accounts for the position of these unfortunate creatures
by asserting that the steel cage was originally the frame of a
parachute-like garment which distended the skirt, and in the submersion
of the city prevented them from sinking. "If anything," says Von Puffer,
"could have been wanting to add intensity to the horrible catastrophe
which took place as the waters first entered the city, it would have
been furnished in the forcible separation of the sexes at this trying
moment. Buoyed up by their peculiar garments, the female population
instantly ascended to the surface. As the drowning husband turned his
eyes above, what must have been his agony as he saw his wife shooting
upward, and knew that he was debarred the privilege of perishing with
her? To the lasting honor of the male inhabitants, be it said that but
few seemed to have availed themselves of their wives' superior levity.
Only one skeleton was found still grasping the ankles of another in
their upward journey to the surface."

For many years California had been subject to slight earthquakes, more