on account of the crowded population. Many buildings were wrecked,
especially those poorly constructed on land reclaimed from swampy soil
or built up by filling in.

People who had prophesied that, should an earthquake come, the high
buildings such as those of the Call and the Chronicle would surely
collapse, were astonished to see those giant structures apparently
unharmed while buildings of much less height, but without the steel
framework, were completely wrecked.

The earthquake was a sad calamity, but had this been the sum of the
disaster the city would only have paused in its progress long enough to
clear away the wreck and to sorrow with the mourners. It was the fires
which sprang up while the water system was too damaged to be of use that
wiped out old historical San Francisco, leaving in its place a waste of
gray ashes and desolate ruins. Santa Rosa, San Jose, Stanford, Agnews,
all suffered severely from the earthquake; but in few cases did fires
arise to add to their loss. The State Insane Asylum at Agnews, which was
built on swampy ground, was a complete wreck with large loss of life.

The marvelous bravery and cheerfulness with which the people of San
Francisco bore their cruel fate gave a lesson in courage and
unselfishness to humanity. The magnificent generosity with which not
only the people of southern and northern California, but of the whole
country, sprang to the relief of the unhappy city gave a silver lining
to the black cloud of disaster.

Before the embers of their ruined homes had ceased to smoke the people
began the work of rebuilding, and at the time of the visit of the
Atlantic fleet of the United States navy in 1908, business had so