caravan composed of homeless persons
in its wild flight to the hills for safety, and in that great procession
women, harnessed to vehicles, trudging along and tugging at the shafts,
hauling all that was left of their earthly belongings, and a little food
that foresight told them would be necessary to stay the pangs of hunger
in the hours of misery that must follow.

We give below an especially accurate picture from the description of the
well-known writer, Jane Tingley, who, an eye-witness of it all, did so
much to help the sufferers, and who, with all the unselfishness of true
American womanhood, sacrificed her own comfort and needs for those of
others.

"May God be merciful to the women and children in this land of
desolation and despair!" she wrote on April 21st.

"Men have done, are doing such deeds of sublime self-sacrifice, of
magnificent heroism, that deserve to make the title of American manhood
immortal in the pages of history. The rest lies with the Almighty.

"I spent all of last night and to-day in that horror city across the
bay. I went from this unharmed city of plenty, blooming with abounding
health, thronged with happy mothers and joyous children, and spent hours
among the blackened ruins and out on the windswept slopes of the sand
hills by the sea, and I heard the voice of Rachel weeping for her
children in the wilderness and mourning because she found them not.

"I climbed to the top of Strawberry Hill, in Golden Gate Park, and saw
a woman, half naked, almost starving, her hair dishevelled and an
unnatural lustre in her eyes, her gaze fixed upon the waters in the
distance, and her voice repeating over and over again: 'Here I am, my
pretties; come here, come here.'

"I took her by the hand and led her down to the grass at the foot of the
hill. A man--her husband--received her from me and wept as he said: 'She
is calling our three little children. She thinks the sounds of the ocean
waves are the voices of our lost darlings.'

"Ever since they became separated from their children in that first
terrific onrush of the multitude when the fire swept along Mission
Street these two had been tramping over the hills and parks without food
or rest, searching for their little ones. To all whom they have met they
have addressed the same pitiful question: 'Have you seen anything of our
lost babies?' They will not know what has become of them until order has
been brought out of chaos; until the registration he