When the
earthquake had passed this den of squalor and infamy was no more. The
Chinese theatres and joss-houses tumbled into ruins, rookery after
rookery collapsed, and hundreds of their inhabitants were buried alive.
Panic reigned supreme among the fugitives, who filled the streets in
frightened multitudes, dragging from the wreck whatever they could save
of their treasured possessions. Much the same was the case with the
Japanese quarter, which fire quickly invaded, the people fleeing in
terror, carrying on their backs what few of their household effects they
were able to rescue.
As for the people of Chinatown, however, no one knows or will ever know
the extent of the dread fate that overcame them, for no one knows
the secrets of that dark abode of infamy and crime, whose inhabitants
burrowed underground like so many ants; and hid their secrets deep in
the earth.
THE RUIN OF CHINATOWN.
W. W. Overton, of Los Angeles, thus describes the Chinatown dens and the
revelations made by the earthquake and the flames:
"Strange is the scene where San Francisco's Chinatown stood. No heap of
smoking ruins marks the site of the wooden warrens where the Orientals
dwelt in thousands. Only a cavern remains, pitted with deep holes and
lined with dark passageways, from whose depths come smoke wreaths. White
men never knew the depth of Chinatown's underground city. Many had gone
beneath the street level two and three stories, but now that the place
had been unmasked, men may see where its inner secrets lay.
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