fire-line had advanced to the steeper slopes it 

 was one vast U about three miles long. Its 

 closed end was around the peninsula toward me. 

 The fire-front rushed upward through the dense 

 forest of the peninsula steeps more swiftly than 

 the wildest avalanche could have plunged down. 

 The flames swept across three-hundred-foot 

 grassy openings as easily as breakers roll in 

 across a beach. Up the final two thousand feet 

 there were magnificent outbursts and sheets of 

 flame with accompanying gale and stormy- 

 ocean roars. Terrific were the rushes of whirled 

 smoke-and-flame clouds of brown, ashen green, 

 and sooty black. There were lurid and volcanic 

 effects in molten red and black, while tattered 

 yellow flames rushed, rolled, and tumbled every- 

 where. 



An uprushing, explosive burst of flames from 

 all sides wrapped and united on the summit. 

 For a minute a storm of smoke and flame filled 

 the heavens with riot. The wild, irresistible, 

 cyclonic rush of fiery wind carried scores of tree- 

 limbs and many blazing treetops hundreds of 

 feet above the summit. Fire and sparks were 



144 



