76 Report of the Forest Commission, 



According to old soldiers it had an appearance akin to that of a battle in 

 which large armies were engaged. Suddenly from that awful pall of smoke 

 a gleaming sheet of flame would be seen to shoot up. It was the light from 

 some tree taller than its companions, which had been attacked by the fire. 

 Then again a crash would be heard as some tall tree fell in a helpless ruin. 

 As far as the eye could reach the line of white smoke continued. Not one 

 point of attack escaped Mr. McMillan. Amid the deafening roar caused by 

 the flames in the underbrush, he gave his orders as coolly as if the surround- 

 ings were not unusual. A stump which offered an opportunity for the lodg- 

 ment of a spark he would order cut away or the wetting down of some logs 

 into which he feared the flames might spread. Messengers like army soldiers 

 were running to him every minute for orders and to tell him of the situation 

 at various points. These he received and gave instructions as to what should 

 be done. Nothing was forgotten, and no battle with men could have been 

 more skillfully planned and carefully executed. 



Borne on a Hurricane. 



About 3 o'clock the wind increased from a gale to a hurricane. Flames took 

 the place of smoke, and yet not one muscle changed in Mr. McMillan's face. 

 To men who were apparently exhausted he gave encouragement, and in the 

 face of a veritable sea of flames no one hesitated. 



" If I can save that plant till sundown," he said, "I can save it for good, 

 for this wind can not keep up longer than sundown. If we fight it through 

 this gale, we can save it any time and under any circumstances. I have fought 

 fires for 30 years and have never seen as bad a one as this. Even the terrible 

 year of the Peshtigo fire was not a marker." 



Mr. McMillan's prediction was true. At sundown the gale decreased in 

 violence and although a close watch of the plant was kept all night the 

 danger was practically over for the time being, with the lull in the wind. But 

 the terrible fight that he and the gallant band of 400 or more men, who at 

 various times served under him, had in the battle with the flames will long live 

 in the historical annals of northern Wisconsin. The men who were members 

 of that band embraced every profession in life, doctors, merchants and law- 

 yers, and even one minister, the pastor of the Presbyterian church at Marsh- 

 field, who worked side by side with the mill employes, in the fight against the 

 flames. 



Back-Firing at Colby. 



At some of the smaller points other methods than that taken at McMillan 

 were adopted for fighting the flames. At Colby, thousands of feet of logs 

 were saved by back-firing, which consists of burning over all grasses between 

 the spot, which the men fighting the fire are attempting to protect, and the 

 woods in which the flames have their stronghold. In this way the fires are 

 burned out before the property which is endangered by the flames is destroyed. 

 When there is a clearing in front of the fires, the ground there is sometimes 

 plowed and the flames thus hemmed in. These methods are, however, only 

 effective when the line of the active fire is short, and even then the plowing 

 of the ground often does little good, the cinders from the fire leaping over the 

 plowed earth to the groves on the other side. 



