HISTORIC FOREST FIRES. 79 



change of wind may check a fire, or may turn it off in 

 a new direction and perhaps threaten the lives of the 

 men at work by driving it suddenly down upon them. 



HISTORIC FOREST FIRES. 



When all the conditions are favorable, forest fires 

 sometimes reach gigantic proportions. A few such 

 fires have attained historic importance. One of these 

 is the Miramichi fire of 1825. It began its greatest 



FIG. 74. A forest fire on the Yukon River, Alaska. Bow of a canoe to the left. 



destruction about 1 o'clock in the afternoon of October 

 7 of that year, at a place about GO miles above the town 

 of Newcastle, on the Miramichi River, in New Bruns- 

 wick. Before 10 o'clock at night it was 20 miles below 

 Newcastle. In nine hours it had destroyed a belt of 

 forest 80 miles long and 25 miles wide. Over more than 

 two and a half million acres almost every living thing 

 was killed. Even the fish were afterwards found dead 

 in heaps on the river banks. Five hundred and ninety 

 buildings were burned, and a number of towns, includ- 



