36 HUNTING SPORTS OF THE WEST. 



sound, like distant thunder, proceeding from the depths 

 of the forests, as made the inhabitants of the district fear 

 that there was something worse than the mere ordinary 

 burning of the woods. The sky also became obscured 

 with the rolling smoke, and speedily the surrounding 

 woods flashed out into flames, whose long forky tongues 

 licked and twined in all directions, around the tall boles 

 of the' forest trees, and even leaped high into air, thirty 

 or forty yards above their tops. Two towns were almost 

 immediately involved in the fire, many of whose inhabi- 

 tants were suffocated or burnt to death, and others 

 dreadfully injured. Those who escaped death, had no 

 time to ^ave any of their property ; but, hurrying to the 

 banks of the river, sought in canoes, on rafts, logs of 

 timber, or indeed anything that could float, to make 

 their escape from the horrid death that threatened them 

 on shore. Nor, stripped of everything, were they safe 

 even there ; since the violence of the tempest whirled 

 aloft burning logs, fragments of houses, and even trees, 

 and dashed them, flaming, into the water. Of how 

 many of the backwoodsmen perished in the forest, where 

 they had made their homes, no account could be taken ; 

 but it is supposed that, altogether, at least five hundred 

 human beings lost their lives in this dreadful fire. 



One poor lumberer, (a backwoodsman is so named 

 from his occupation of felling timber or lumber, as it is 

 called,) had just built his "shanty" or log-hut, and was 

 beginning to cut timber when the fire broke out. He 

 was told of it by some of his men who had passed 

 through the wood to bring provisions to the little camp, 

 but thought nothing of it, till one of them, leaving the 



