The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire

On the splendid Bay of San Francisco, one of the noblest harbors on the whole vast range of the Pacific Ocean, long has stood, like a Queen of the West on its seven hills, the b...

The terrors of the earthquake are momentary. One fierce, levelling shock and usually all is over. The torment within the earth has passed on and the awakened forces of the earth...

Shaken by earthquake, swept by flames, the water supply cut off by the breaking of the mains, the authorities of the doomed city for a time stood appalled. What could be done to...

Rarely, in the whole history of mankind, has a great city been overwhelmed by destruction so suddenly and awfully as was San Francisco. One minute its inhabitants slept in seemi...

The scene that was visible in the streets of San Francisco on that dread Wednesday morning was one to make the strongest shudder with horror. Those three minutes of devastating...

Frightful was the emergency of the vast host of fugitives who fled in terror from the blazing city of San Francisco to the open gates of Golden Gate Park and the military reserv...

While multitudes escaped from toppling buildings and crashing walls in the dread disaster of that fatal Wednesday morning of April 18th in San Francisco, hundreds of the less fo...

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 a...

The first news that the world received of the earthquake came direct from San Francisco and was confined largely to descriptions of the disaster which had overwhelmed that city....

During the first three days after the terrible news had been flashed over the world the relief fund from the nation had leaped beyond the $5,000,000 mark. New York took the lead...

The story of San Francisco’s history and tragedy appeal with extraordinary force to the imagination of all civilized men. For several generations the city was looked upon as an...

Brought up in a bountiful country, where no one really has to work very hard to live, nurtured on adventure, scion of a free and merry stock, the real, native Californian is a d...

Almost as soon as the terrible conflagration had been checked and gotten under control by the heroic efforts of the soldiers and firemen, a little group of the leading citizens...

The outbreak of earth forces at San Francisco did not stand alone. There were others elsewhere at nearly the same time, the whole seeming to indicate a general disturbance in th...

We have in other chapters described the terrible work of Mount Vesuvius in the past, from the far-off era of the destruction of Pompeii down to the end of the last century. Ther...

To our account of the great earth convulsions of San Francisco it is in place to append a description of some similar events of older date. It is due to the same causes, whateve...

The twin continents of America have rivalled the record of the Old World in their experience of earthquakes since their discovery in 1492. The first of these made note of was in...

To most of us, dwellers upon the face of the earth, this terrestrial sphere is quite a comfortable place of residence. The forces of Nature everywhere and at all times surround...

Though the first formation of a volcano (Italian, vulcano, from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire) has seldom been witnessed, it would seem that it is marked by earthquake movements...

It is not by any means an easy task to frame an estimate of the number of volcanoes in the world. Volcanoes vary greatly in their dimensions, from vast mountain masses, rising t...

The famous volcano of southern Italy named Vesuvius, which is now so constantly in eruption, was described by the ancients as a cone-shaped mountain with a flat top, on which wa...

Mount Vesuvius is of especial interest as being the only active volcano on the continent of Europe--all others of that region being on the islands of the Mediterranean--and for...

The far-northern island of Iceland, on the verge of the frozen Arctic realm, is one of the most volcanic countries in the world, whether we regard the number of volcanoes concen...

We cannot do better than open this chapter with an account of the work of volcanoes in the mountain-girdled East Indian island of Java. This large and fertile tropical island ha...

In the central region of the North Pacific Ocean lies the archipelago formerly known as the Sandwich Islands, now collectively designated as Hawaii. The people of the United Sta...

Mexico is very largely a vast table-land, rising through much of its extent to an elevation of from 7,000 to 8,000 feet above sea-level, and bounded east and west by wide strips...

Popocatapetl, the hill that smokes, in the Mexican language, the huge mountain clothed in eternal snows, and regarded by the idolaters of old as a god, towers up nearly 18,000 f...

The most destructive volcanic explosion of recent times, one perhaps unequalled in violence in all times, was that of the small mountain island of Krakatoa, in the East Indian A...

St. Pierre, the principal city of the French island of Martinique, in the West Indies, lies for the length of about a mile along the island coast, with high cliffs hemming it in...

Among all the islands of the Caribbees St. Vincent is unique in natural wonders and beauties. Situated about ninety-five miles west of Barbados, it has a length of eighteen and...

In November, 1867, a volcano suddenly began to show signs of activity beneath the deep sea of the Pacific Ocean. There are some islands nearly two thousands miles to the east of...

Our usual impression of a volcano is indicated in the title of “burning mountain,” so often employed, a great fire-spouting cone of volcanic debris, from which steam, lava, rock...