Jfre 



its orbit. Toward morning the wind began to 

 blow, this slow-burning surface fire began to 

 leap, and before long it was a crown fire, tra- 

 veling rapidly among the tree-tops. It swiftly 

 expanded into an enormous delta of flame. At 

 noon I looked back and down upon it from a 

 mountain-top, and it had advanced about three 

 miles into a primeval forest sea, giving off more 

 smoke than a volcano. 



I went a day's journey and met a big fire that 

 was coming aggressively forward against the 

 wind. It was burning a crowded, stunted growth 

 of forest that stood in a deep litter carpet. The 

 smoke, which flowed freely from it, was dis- 

 tinctly ashen green; this expanded and main- 

 tained in the sky a smoky sheet that was several 

 miles in length. 



Before the fire lay a square mile or so of old 

 burn which was covered with a crowded growth 

 of lodge-pole pine that stood in a deep, criss- 

 crossed entanglement of fallen fire-killed timber. 

 A thousand or more of these long, broken dead 

 trees covered each acre with wreckage, and in 

 this stood upward of five thousand live young 



i57 



