106 FRUIT RAXCHING. 



almost entirely destroyed. Those tiny fires were known 

 to be lurking in the forests on three sides of the town ; 

 but they were so insignificant that nobody paid atten- 

 tion to them. Suddenly a high wind sprang up and 

 swept through the pass, and instantly the whole of the 

 town of Fernie was enveloped in flames. The houses, 

 being built, as the great majority of Canadian houses 

 are, of wood, licked up the flames, crackled, collapsed, 

 and sank into ashes. Several lives were lost, a great 

 amount of property was destroyed, and much suffer- 

 ing was inflicted upon the survivors before they were 

 able to get themselves comfortably housed again. 



To read of a disastrous conflagration like this at 

 Fernie, two hundred miles though it may be distant 

 from you, is distressing enough. But when the 

 danger appears at your own back door, you realise 

 what it means with very much greater vividness. 

 Within less than a fortnight after the Fernie outbreak 

 we did have the danger appear quite close to Welland 

 Ranch, and that in three separate places. Two were 

 on our own property. The third, a far more serious 

 affair, was not more than two miles distant. 



One night, when Calaby had gone into Nelson 

 with the waggon and team after tea, he had not 

 returned at considerably over an hour beyond his 

 usual time. Only a week or two before, while he 

 had been hauling a load of earth for the greenhouses 

 over a steep ridge which strikes across the road, the 

 waggon, when half-way up the ridge, had suddenly 

 begun to run backwards, and before the teamster was 

 able to prevent it, it had slipped ofi" the road, down 

 the embankment, and turned right over on its side. 

 Luckily, Calaby had the horses well under control, 



