Report of the Forest Commission. 57 



morning train returned to his post. Many of the tents were set up at Pine 

 City, where all those injured in the fire had been removed. 



For an hour this morning a drizzling rain fell, a mocking shower that came 

 too late to save. The fires themselves had not even done the small good of 

 clearing the lands they scourged. 



It is like a journey through Inferno, this trip through these burned pine 

 lands. It is the terrible loneliness of it all that is most oppressive. How many 

 men, women and children have died by this fire no one can guess to-night, 

 and perhaps no one will ever know. The forests about Sandstone and Hinck- 

 ley and Shell Lake and Baronette were speckled with the clearings of thrifty 

 settlers. These clearings the fiery storm swept over. How many of the 

 inhabitants fled in safety to railway towns; how many of them were trapped 

 in their cabins and miserably consumed; how many of them were run down 

 by the fiery tide as they fled into nothingness, nobody will ever be able to do 

 more than guess. Many a settler, unknown, almost, to his near neighbor, has 

 been burned. 



Still More Dead. 



By 5 o'clock this evening 150 bodies had received burial, and the laborers 

 thought their day's toil was over, but it was not. Searching parties found 30 

 bodies along the line of the Duluth road. Each lay with its head to the nortn- 

 west, and, with th^ exception of the women, with arms extended as if making 

 a last appeal for aid when caught by the relentless whirlwind of flame. The 

 women's bodies spoke eloquently of mother's love. Each had a child, some 

 had two, one had five, clasped and sheltered within her poor, burned arms. 

 One mother had absolutely stripped herself of her raiment, wrapped her two 

 babies in it, dug a hole in the ground with her hands, placed her darlings in 

 it, and then calmly laid down over them, yielding her life for a possible 

 chance of saving theirs; but her self-sacrifice was in vain; yet not absolutely 

 so, for the babies died of suffocation, and by their features the identity of the 

 heroic mother was learned. 



By the side of a great stump laid the body of a young woman with a new- 

 born babe by her side. 



In a dried-up drain leading to Skunk lake was found the body of Auditor 

 Rawley, of the Winnipeg railroad. He was on the burned train. Becoming 

 crazed with fear, he jumped into the smoke and flames. The location of the 

 body showed that he made a mad struggle for life. The body, strange to say, 

 was not badly burned. It was taken to Duluth for burial. 



The train brought in ten other bodies, three of males, found in the wood, 

 and a family consisting of a man, woman and four children huddled together 

 on the homestead farm three miles this side of Skunk Lake. 



Night Funerals. 



When these accessions to the list of dead came to hand it was found to be 

 absolutely necessary to bury them at once. There is only one lantern in 

 Hinckley, and that is a red one. The remnants of Saturday's blaze still fur- 

 nishes enough light for the dwellers on the charred sites of their former 

 homes, and with this red signal light another procession started for Birch wood. 

 8 



