ulk _Niantic_
had a hotel upon her decks, and the first city prison was in the hold
of the brig _Euphemia_.

[Illustration: INDIAN BASKETS.]

While most of the miners were steady, hard-working men, honest, and
very kind and generous to each other, some drank and gambled their
hard-earned gold-dust away with a get of men who were ready to do any
wrong thing for money. The gamblers and bad characters grew so
troublesome by '51 that the police could do little or nothing with
them. Every day some one was robbed, or murdered, and thieves often
set fire to houses that they might plunder. As the judges and police
could not control these criminals, nearly two hundred good citizens
formed a "vigilance committee." It was agreed that bad characters
should be told to leave town, and that robbers and murderers should
be punished by the committee. Not long after, the vigilance committee
hanged four men, and roughs and law-breakers left town for the mines.
Men soon learned to keep the laws and do right.

Since almost all the houses in San Francisco were light frames of wood
covered with cloth or paper, and since there was no fire department,
there were six great fires, each of which nearly burnt up the town.
The only way to stop the flames was to pull down houses or to blow
them up with gunpowder. But almost before the ashes of one fire had
cooled, wooden, cloth and paper buildings would cover whole blocks, to
be burned again before long. The fifth great fire, in '51, destroyed a
thousand houses and ten million dollars' worth of property in a night.
One warehouse containing many barrels of vinegar was saved by covering
the roof with blankets dipped in the vinegar, as no water could be
had. The iron houses that had been thought fire-proof were of no use.
Men who stayed in them found too late that the iron doors swelled with
the heat and could not be opened, so that those within were smothered
to death.

Then people began to guard against such fires by building new houses
of stone or of brick. The sixth great fire destroyed most of the
wooden buildings in the business part of the city. After that,
with two or three fire companies and engines and better houses,
people no longer dreaded the fire-bell. Water was piped into the city
from Mountain Lake, and there was plenty for all purposes.

[Illustration: SEAL ROCKS, SAN FRANCISCO.]

[Illustration: THE NEW CLIFF HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO.]

So the city grew larger, until in '53 there w