Eastern capitalists also talk of
investing $100,000,000 of new capital in the rebuilding of the
city, while the San Francisco authorities have a project of issuing
$200,000,000 of municipal bonds, the payment to be guaranteed by the
United States Government. Thus, two weeks after the earthquake, daylight
was already showing strongly ahead and hope was fast beginning to
replace despair.
CHAPTER VIII.
Wonderful Record of Thrilling Escapes.
Shuddering under the memories of what seems more like a nightmare than
actual reality to the survivors of this frightful calamity, they have
tried to picture in words far from adequate the days of terror and the
nights of horror that fell to the lot of the people of the Golden Gate
city and their guests.
They recount the roar of falling structures and the groans and pitiful
cries of those pinned beneath the timbers of collapsing buildings. They
speak of their climbing over dead bodies heaped in the streets, and of
following tortuous ways to find the only avenue of escape--the ferry,
where men and women fought like infuriated animals, bent on escape from
a fiery furnace.
These refugees tell of the great 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.
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