58 Report of the Forest CoMmrssLON. 



To the north was a solid line of flame, fed by tons of coal which line the tracks 

 of what were once the Minnesota yards. To the east a fiftul light hung in the 

 sky, tongues of fire every once in a while shooting upward and proclaiming 

 that the end was not yet. 



There were graves and caskets waiting for the newcomers, and side by side 

 in the great trench they were placed, then came the benediction, then a fear- 

 ful wail from a Swedish woman whose reason fled when she returned from 

 St. Paul last night to find herself a widow. Friendly hands sought to conduct 

 her to one of the half-dozen tents which stand in what was Main street, but 

 she would have none of their sympathy, none of their advice — she could not 

 tell where her dead lay, she would watch over all, and she did. 



Terrible Suffering. 



Mrs. E . M. Saunders, one of the most delicate and refined society women of 

 St. Paul, was bound home on the limited that awful Saturday afternoon. 

 She had in her car her own four children and four others. At 4 o'clock the 

 smoke was so thick that it was impossible to see across the car. Then the 

 blaze burst in through the car windows. Mrs. Saunders and her children 

 crouched in a corner of the car, and C. D. O'Brien, an attorney well known 

 in St. Paul, did what he could to fight the growing fire off them. Mrs. Saund- 

 ers covered the children with her skirts as best she could. 



When the heroic engineer, Root, stopped the train at a place where every- 

 body thought was Skunk Lake, Mrs. Saunders marshalled her little ones and 

 started despairingly through the flaming forest. They came upon a place that 

 looked like water, but it was only a barren waste of hot sand. In this sand 

 Mrs. Saunders buried all the children and herself. But the heat grew more 

 and more terrible, and they had to hunt a new place of shelter. They finally 

 floundered into the morass of Skunk Lake . There the brave woman buried 

 all the youngsters in the mud and muck and slime of the lake, and protected 

 herself in like fashion. There they all lay half smothered from 5 o'clock Sat- 

 urday afternoon until 4 o'clock Sunday morning, and they all came out alive 

 and but little hurt. 



Duluth, Minn., September 3. — It is the opinion of railroad surgeons who 

 have been over the burned district in this State that the number of dead will 

 reach fully 1,000. Four hundred bodies have already been found, while all 

 through the woods for a distance of 40 miles hundreds of others are doubtless 

 scattered thickly. 



Every bit of news from the front increases the previously made estimates 

 of losses of life. There will be no accurate statement until parties of search- 

 ers are sent out and dropped off the trains at intervals of a mile or two, and a 

 thorough patrol of the burned district is made. 



St. Paul, September 3. — D. C. O'Brien, a well-known St. Paul attorney, 

 and his son Richard a* ere passengers on the train that was burned at Skunk 

 Lake. They were both badly prostrated. Richard tells this story : 



"We reached Hinckley about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and found the town 

 on fire. Fleeing residents stormed our train and crowded into it until there 

 was not room for another soul on board. We did not realize that it was so 



