THE GEEAT FIRE. 35 



horrors of that time arc still fresh, interested us much by 

 graphic details of his personal experiences when the fire 

 appeared among them. It was an excessively hot summer, 

 and fires were burning in numerous places upon the Mira- 

 michi and St John rivers and their tributaries and the 

 air was everywhere hot, and obscured with smoke. But 

 on the 7th of October, it began to blow from the south 

 west, and the fire to spread over the country in the same 

 direction. The wind increased gradually to a hurricane, 

 and the fire advanced with proportionate rapidity. At 

 one o clock in the afternoon, it was still seventy miles up 

 the river; and in the evening, it was at Douglastown. 

 It travelled eighty-five miles in nine hours, so that 

 scarcely on a fleet horse could a man have escaped from it. 

 Lumberers already in the woods were caught, and solitary 

 settlers with their families ; and while all their pro 

 perty was destroyed, some saved their lives by rolling 

 themselves in the rivers, till the scorching blast had 

 passed over them. Instances of miraculous escape he told 

 us of parental devotion, and of selfish desertion ; but the 

 most striking things he mentioned were, that the flame, 

 as it advanced, was twenty-five miles in breadth ; that, 

 coming from the west, it rushed past the towns of New 

 castle and Douglastown, leaving a green margin of some 

 miles in breadth between its southern edge and the river ; 

 and that when, in its easterly course, it reached Burnt- 

 church Kiver, the wind lulled, turned round, and drove the 

 fire up the river again. It then came back along the 

 green fringe it had left as it descended, and by the way 

 licked up the towns of Douglastown and Newcastle of 

 their 254 houses leaving only 14. It was doubtless the 

 rushing of the sea-wind from the Gulf of St Lawrence, 

 into the huge fiery vortex, that drove back the flame when 

 it had reached the open mouth of the Miramichi Kiver. 



At these towns, men and cattle rushed into the river ; 

 and though a hurricane was raging on its surface, people 



