GREAT FIRE AT QUEBEC.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 966, 3 August 1881, Page 3

GREAT FIRE AT QUEBEC.

A despatch, dated Quebec, June 4, says : —Our city has again been visited by a devastating fire of greater magnitude than has ever before swept over its fated structures. Nearly one-fifth portion of the city to-day lies a smouldering mass of smoking ruins. Its citizens, in hundreds, are this night destitute of a roof to cover their heads. Property in value, reaching probably 2,000,000 dollars has been swept away, entailing great hardship upon many of the owners, and one of the finest public buildings in the city, the noble Church of St. John, has but its bare and crumbled walls to testify to its late magnificence. At eleven o’clock last night the fire burst out in the suburb of St. John, and for more hours it swept with resistless fury, burning in many directions till wide spaces of open ground before it left it no food for further destruction. The fire department and citizens did xll in their power to check its march, but in most cases their efforts were wholly unavailing. So rapid was the spread of the flames that but little of value was saved from the conflagation. About one-fifth of the whole city is wiped out of existence, the portion burnt over being nearly a third of a mile square. It was a melancholy spectacle that met the eye on every side this morning while walking through the suburbs of Montcalm and St. John, the hitherto handsome avenue, of which Quebecers have always been so proud, the only one in which they could feel any pride. St. John-street Without, is suddenly transformed into a parched and arid road-bed, between two heaps of ruins not less desolate and uninviting to the eye than a coalpit village or the subterranean remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The street railway appears to be a great wreck, as if it had passed bodily through the fire wfiiich swept each of its sides. At spaces of a very few yards the iron railshave been drawn up in loops fully a foot high. At 1 o’clock the clanging of the bells of St. John’s Church in rapid and alarming tones told of danger to that property, and summoned assistance from all who had to give it. The w hole efforts of the Pire Brigade were immediately bent on saving the sacred edifice, but to no avail. Nothing was saved but the sacred vessels and some of the most valuable of the plate and furniture of the sanctuary. The fire had possession of the noble structure in almost less space of time than it * takes to read of it, and the finest and largest church in the city was doomed to destruction. It was a grand site to witness the angry flames climbing the steeples of the church, and to see their fall a few minutes later. The more northerly of the two was the first to go. It gradually tottered over, and the fell right over into the roof of the structure. The other steeple gradually sunk and telescoped. Next, after the church, came the Friar’s School opposite, and still the fire swept swept on. The people in the neighbornood, confident that so majestic an edifice could •‘never fall a prey to any of the elements, had carried their household goods to the front of the church, and there piled them up at the very dooi of the sanctuary. Everything was

consumed by the devouring flames. The church was worth at least 100,000 dols., upon which the insurance amounts to only 10,000dols. The finding of the bodies of some of the dead added new horrors to the scene. It had not even been hinted that death had claimed any vic'ims until late in the afternoon. Some men were poking up the ruins of the house of Mr. Hardy, No. 118, Ohvcrstreet, when to their horror they turned over a human head in a hideously mutilated condition It was at first impossible to recognise it, but finally, when the dirt and ashes were cleared away, it was discovered that it had been that of Mr. Hardy. Further search revealed the body of Mrs. Hardy, or all that was left of it. Their children had been saved. The body of Charles Marois, a joiner, of Richelieu-street, was also found among the ruins, and soon afterward that of Mrs. Lapierre and her two children, all lying in a heap, as though the mother had made a frantic but unsuccessful effort to save them. There are now, of course, various rumors assigned for the origin of the fire. One evening paper alleges that it arose from the stump end of a cigar having been thrown in a back yard from a house in Latourelle-street. The theory most generally credited is that it was started in the stables of Mr. Laperierre, a carter, by accident.