FOREST FIRES IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 48, 23 December 1871, Page 5

FOREST FIRES IN AMERICA.

[The “ New York Tribune” publishes the following account of the destruction of the town of Peshtego, by the great bush fire which swept across the States of Wisconsin and Minnesota in October last. It is one of the most harrowing narratives we ever read, and is from the pen of that journal’3 Special Reporter.] Peshtego, October 20. THE STORY OF PESHTEGO. This letter, to give it a local habitation and name, is dated where Peshtego was. Calcined fragments are all that remain of imposing edifices and hundreds of peaceful homes. This ominous clearing is in the centre of a blackened, withered forest of oak, pine, and tamarack, with a swift river—the Peshtego —gliding silently through the centre from north-east to south-west Situated seven miles from the Green Bay, on the Peshtego River, the town commanded all the lumber trade of the northern, peninsula, and grew rapidly into importance as a frontier mart of Chicago. Little heed was at first given to the busli fires, for the first rain would inevitably quench the flames. But the rain never came, and finally a valiant battle was waged far and near against the slowly increasing fires. In this, as in other towns, the danger was thought well warded off by the general precautions. The fire had raged up to the very outskirts of the town weeks before that fatal Sunday, and the fires set outward to fight the enemy. Everything inflammable had been taken out of harm’s way on that memorable day. One careful citizen traversed the western outskirt, and assured his people that no danger could come from that quarter. The sharp air of early October had sent the people in from the evening church services more promptly than usual, although numbers delayed to speculate on a great noise and ado which set in ominously from the west. The house-wives looked tremblingly at the

fires and lights within, and the men took a last look at the possibilities without; for many it was truly a last glimpse. The noise grew in volume, and came nearer and nearer with teriffic crackling and detonations. A deafening roar, mingled with blasts of electric flame, filled the air. There was no beginning to the work of ruin; the flaming whirlwind swirled in an instant through the town; all heard the first inexplicable roar; moved by a common instinct, for all they knew the woods that encircled the town were impenetrable, every liabitatien was deserted, and the gasping multitude flocked to the river. Three hundred people wedged themselves in between the rolling booms, swayed to and fro by the current, where they were roasted in the hot breath of flame that hovered above them, and singed the hair on each head momentarily exposed above the water. Here despairing men and women held their children till the cold water came as an ally to the flames, and deprived them of strength. Meantime the eastern bank was densely crowded by the dying and the dead. Rushing to the river from this direction, the swirling blasts met the victims full in the face and mowed a swath through the fleeing throng. Scores fell before the first blast. A few were able to crawl to the pebbly flats, but so dreadfully disfigured that death must have been preferable. All that could break through the stifling simoon had come to the river. In the red glare they could see the sloping bank covered with the bodies of those that fell by the way. Few living in the back streets succeeded in reaching the river. But here a new danger befel them. The cows, terrified by smoke and flame, rushed in a great lowing drove to the river bank. Women and children were trampled upon by the frightened brutes, and many losing their hold on the friendly logs were swept under the waters. Although the onslaught of fire and wind had been instantaneous, and the destruction almost simultaneous, the fierce stifling currents of heat were more fatal than the flames of the burning village. Ignorant of the extent of the fire, many of the company’s workmen, some with wives and children, shut themselves up in the great brick building, and perished in the raging heats of the next half hour. Others in the remote streets broke for the clearing beyond the woods, but few ever passed the burning barrier. Within the boundaries of the town and accessible to the multitude the river accommodation was rather limited, and when the animals had crowded in, the situation was full of despair. The flat.? w@r@ covered with prone figures with backs all ablaze Mid faces pressed rigidly into the cooling moist earth. The.flames played about and above all with ail incessant, deafening roar. When the hapless dwellers in the remote streets saw themselves cut off from the river, groups broke in all directions in a wild panic of fright and terror. A few took refuge in a cleared field bordering on the town. Here flat upon the ground, with faces pressed in the sand, the helpless sufferers lay and roasted. But few survived the dreadful agony. The next day revealed a picture exceedingin horror any batttle-field. Mothers with children hugged closely lay in rigid groups, the clothes burned off and the poor flesh seared to a crisp. One mother, solicitous only for her babe, embalms her unatterable love in the terrible picture left on these woeful sands. With her bare fingers she had scraped out a pit, as the soldiers had done before Betersburglj, and pressing the little one into this, she put her own body above it as a shield, and when the daylight came both were dead—the little baby face unscarred, but the mother burnt almost to cinders.

No vestage of human habitation remained, and the steaming, freezing, wretched group, crazed by the unutterable terror and despair, plead with each other to restore the lost ones. The hot blasts of the night had blinded them, and they could but vaguely recognize one another in the murky light of the new day.

On Sunday night something over 2,000 people were assembled within the confines of this industrious, prosperous city; the dreadful morning light came upon a haggard, maniacal multitude of less than 700. When the work of rescue began it was found that a great number

had escaped by the bed of the river and the northern road to the port, and, as the day advanced, half naked stragglers, unkempt and blackened, began to stream into the sparse settlement. Fatuous tradesmen had thrown their valuables into wells for security ; every well in the city was turned into a flaming pit, and the very waters were half evaporated by the heat. Survivors attest that women and children, cut off from the rivers, were put into the wells and covered with bedding. I have looked into every well in the ash-covered clearing, and there is no possibility that a living thing could have endured the flames that boiled and seethed in them. The next night the long-prayed for rain came, gratefully to the living, and kindly to the fleeting ashes of the dead. The great dread that hovered over the bay cities and towns was allayed, and the threatened danger nearly gone. By Tuesday the sweeping miles of fire had been quenched by Monday night’s rain. A slight drizzle still further aided the work of rescue. The ravages of the one night’s tornado left unmistakeable traces on every hand. A clean swath of blackened stumps marked the course of the fiery tempests. The roads were encumbered with roasted cattle, and frequently with the carcases of bears and deer, while the ditches and cleared fields were strewn with smaller game and wild birds. Save where the houses were built with cellars, which was very rare, there is no trace of a former habitation. Here and there are metallic remnants of sewing machines and cracked stones. The material loss is estimated at three million dollars, the greater portion of which falls on William B. Ogden, who suffered simultaneously greater losses in Chiago. But undaunted by his accumulating misfortunes, that energetic man instantly sent an agent on to rebuild the mills and shops, and gather a new people in the place if possible. There are 400 dead fully ascertained; there are beside half as many missing who cannot be accounted for, and probably never will be. Many of the mill hands and company’s employees were utter strangers in the place, and the majority of them, something like one hundred, trusting to the stout walls of the company’s building, perished en masse.