break of pestilence.

It required the utmost vigilance on the part of the army officers and
the most constant attention by the medical corps to prevent an
outbreak of typhoid, dysentery, and the ordinary train of nearly fatal
diseases which are common to large military camps, and which are
almost inevitable when dealing with an unorganized and unintelligent
mob.

Efforts were made to compel every man, woman, and child to obey
constantly the strict sanitary regulations which the army provides for
its own protection.

Every medical officer and every man in the hospital corps within a
wide range of San Francisco had been ordered to report at once for
duty under General Funston. With the flames practically under control
and with millions of army rations on the grounds or actually in sight
of the people, the efforts of the War Department became directed to
the preservation of health and in a secondary degree to the location
and registration of the dead, the wounded, and the saved.

Following close upon the heels of the rations and the tents there came
tons upon tons of disinfectants unloaded at Oakland and every possible
device was being employed by the medical bureau to make as good a
record in this regard as the quartermaster and commissary departments
had already produced in supplying food and shelter.

Meanwhile the ever-ready American private soldier and his splendid
executive officer, the American noncom., were really the rulers at San
Francisco. They defied the law every minute, but evidently they acted
with characteristic good sense. The price of bread was kept down, the
mob was being systematized and taught to respect authority, and enough
thieves had summarily been shot in San Francisco to render looting a
dangerous and an unprofitable avocation.

People who went through the great fire at Chicago in 1871 remember
that when Gen. Sheridan brought in regular soldiers he established
order within a brief period of time, and there was a feeling of relief
when men under his command began to blow up houses in the vicinity of
Wabash avenue and Congress street.

The laws of the United States had been violated every minute. Supplies
were purchased in the open market, government property had been handed
out without receipts to anybody who seemed to have authority to
receive it, and the distribution of supplies had been wholly free
from the slightest suspicion of red tape.

In spite of these facts, the President and S