FIRE IN THE WOODS. 



259 



There has been a long drought in this section, 

 which so dried up everything combustible, that the 

 forest became one great tinder box, needing only a 

 spark to make a conflagration. This was accident- 

 ally furnished by some men burning a fallow. First 

 a column of blue smoke began to ascend through 

 the trees, which rapidly swelled in size and increased 

 in velocity, until at length the fire got under way, and 

 took up its fierce march, and by night the whole 

 mountain was wrapt in a fiery mantle. It came roar- 

 ing down to the clearing where I stood, threatening to 

 leap over the narrow barrier, in its eagerness to burst 

 all bonds that would restrain it. Trees a hundred 

 feet high, and five and six and eight feet in circumfer- 

 ence, were on fire from the root to the top — vast pyr- 

 amids of flame, now surging in the eddies of air that 

 caught them, now bending as if about to yield the 

 struggle, then lifting superior to the foe, and dying, 

 martyr-like, in the vast furnace. One tree enlisted 

 for awhile all my sympathies — it was a noble stem, 

 and stood for a long time erect and motionless amid 

 the enveloping smoke and flame, sometimes buried 

 from my sight and then appearing again — its black 

 form looming mysteriously through the murky cloud 



