368 OCEAN TO OCEAN ON HORSEBACK. 



600,000 bushels of wheat. She was already becoming 

 a big cattle market, ranchmen further west driving 

 their stock here and helping to increase the impor- 

 tance of the place as a centre of trade. At this time a 

 canal was in process of construction, to connect the 

 Illinois and Chicago rivers, thus making Chicago the 

 centre for commerce between the Southwest and East, 

 and giving her the opportunity to extend her business 

 from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. 



This was a splendid opening, and, with the co-opera- 

 tion of the raih'oads which soon afterwards were ex- 

 tended to this point, the future prosperity of the place 

 was secured. It then only remained for Chicago to 

 improve her appearance and sanitary condition. This 

 she did by having the streets drained, filled up and 

 graded. Local pride was manifesting itself in various 

 improvements and in private and public buildings, so 

 that by 1871 there was plenty of fuel for the great fire 

 which laid so much of the city waste. 



The well-known origin of the conflagration was in 

 a barn where "Mrs. Scully's cow" innocently turned 

 over a lighted lantern on some dry hay. Soon the 

 barn was in flames and the fire quickly spread to the 

 lumber yards along the river and from thence, the dry 

 timber and wind favoring, leaped along and licked up 

 the homes on the North Side and the business 

 houses on the South Side. 



The first stroke of the alarm sounded about nine 

 o'clock in the evening: of October 8, 1871. "Bv eleven 

 o'clock 100,000 peo})le were hurrying through the 

 streets of the doomed city," spreading terror as they 

 went. "All over the city it was as light as day, and, 

 in the remotest suburb fine print was read by the 



