A STORM OF FIRE IN KANSAS.

Evening Star, Issue 4124, 16 May 1876, Page 3

A STORM OF FIRE IN KANSAS.

A snowstorm is an inconvenient visitation, but even more disagreeable than that is a storm of fire, such as visited Cercley county, in Kansas, the other day. On the 27th October a heavy wind sprang up from the south, the air became densely charged with smoke, and on the 28th cinders and flashes of fire rushed by on the wind alarming the old settlers, who were thus warned of an approaching fire storm some hours before its arrival. About seven o’clock on the evening of the 28th it came in sight. The wind was blowing with the fury of a tempest, and the “rims of fire” could be seen leaping into the air or rushing from hill to hill. From a bluff near Lazette—a village in Grouse Valley—a point of view was obtained from which, says the correspondent of a local paper, the terrible scene could be witnessed in all its magnificence. The fires burned to the timber in the valley, stretched westward and north-

ward for miles, dividing into long lines until the hills presented one continuous wall of fire. Onward and northward raged the storm, leaving in its track burning timber and smoking ruins. Houses, stables, barns, corn-cribs, wheat granaries, corn-fields, ricks of hay by countless hundreds, added to the immense mass of prairie grass all dry and combustible as shavings, perished in the devouring flames as thay swept everything before them on their path of destruction. Many farmers lost hundreds of bushels of wheat, thrashing machines, mowers, reapers, ploughs, horses, waggons, and harness, and were left almost homeless and penniless. It is supposed that the fire was started in the Indian territory by Indians, and it is stated to have burned as far north as Wichita.