There was every inducement to indulge the personal side of life. As a consequence, many formed habits they could not break, spent all of their money on women and drink and gambling, ruined themselves in pocket-book and in health, returned home broken, remained sodden and hopeless tramps, or joined the criminal class. Thousands died of cholera or pneumonia; hundreds committed suicide; but those who came through formed the basis of a race remarkable today for its strength, resourcefulness, and optimism. Characters solid at bottom soon come to the inevitable reaction. They were the forefathers of a race of people which is certainly different from the inhabitants of any other portion of the country. The first public test came with the earliest of the big fires that, within the short space of eighteen months, six times burned San Francisco to the ground. This fire occurred on December 4, 1849. It was customary in the saloons to give negroes a free drink and tell them not to come again. One did come again to Dennison's; he was flogged, and knocked over a lamp. Thus there started a conflagration that consumed over a million dollars' worth of property. The valuable part of the property, it must be confessed, was in the form of goods, as the light canvas and wooden shacks were of little worth. Possibly the fire consumed enough germs and germ-breeding dirt to pay partially for itself. Before the ashes had cooled, the enterprising real estate owners were back reërecting the destroyed structures. This first fire was soon followed by others, each intrinsically severe. The people were splendid in enterprise and spirit of recovery; but they soon realized that not only must the buildings be made of more substantial material, but also that fire-fighting apparatus must be bought. In June, 1850, four hundred houses were destroyed; in May, 1851, a thousand were burned at a loss of two million and a half; in June, 1851, the town was razed to the water's edge. In many places the wharves were even disconnected from the shore. Everywhere deep holes were burned in them, and some people fell through at night and were drowned. In this fire a certain firm, Dewitt and Harrison, saved their warehouse by knocking in barrels of vinegar and covering their building with blankets soaked in that liquid. Water was unobtainable. It was reported that they thus used eighty thousand gallons of vinegar, but saved their warehouse.