1892
July 27
Concord, Massachusetts.
Mass.
Concord.- Another cloudless day of intense heat but with
a dryer and hence less oppressive atmosphere. Wind W. to
N.W., varying greatly in force, at times dying quite away.
[margin]To Ball's Hill.[/margin]

  I spent the entire morning in the house writing
but at 2 P.M. hearing that the fire at Davis's Hill had
broken out again badly and that the fire department
of Concord had been sent [delete]down[/delete], at this "eleventh hour",
[delete]to try[/delete] to suppress it I took one of my canoes and
started down river. On reaching the hill I found that
the fire had, since yesterday, spread over practically the
whole unburned portion. The flames had been everywhere
smothered by throwing sand over the leaves and the two
men left as watchers had no difficulty in suppressing
them when, as happened every little while, they blazed
up again but smoke was rising from a hundred
different places where the fire was smouldering beneath
the surface, eating its way slowly but relentlessly deep
into the ground and doubtless undermining and
destroying [delete]the roots of[/delete] most of the fine old trees
for which these woods are, or perhaps I should now
say have been, famous. I dug down about several of
the largest pines and found not only the superficial
mat of needles & leaf mould but even the sandy loam
beneath a glowing mass of fire while [delete]the[/delete] roots as
large around as my leg were reduced, outwardly at least,
to charcoal. In many places this subterranean fire
had excavated pits several feet in diameter and
from one to four feet in depth while in others
what looked like solid ground was completely
undermined for yards giving way beneath [delete]the foot[/delete]
[margin]Fire at
Davis's Hill[/margin]