BY W, KING, ESQ. 



97 



in wandering thus through these forests in the quiet night, 

 the silence only disturbed by the occasional barking of the 

 deer, or the crackling of some burning tree. These burning 

 trees, too, were a strange feature. Now and then, there was 

 a little flame away on one side of the path which, with a 

 few solitary stumps of trees, looked so excessively like 

 a group of men beside their fire, that our people on one or 

 two occasions shouted out at the supposed friends. Or, at 

 times, solitary trees would burst out into flames from top to 

 bottom, as the breeze rose a little ; or the more frequent 

 sight was the stump glowing red close to the ground, while, 

 stretched away from it, was a broad line of ghastly white 

 ash deposited on the sward, all that was left of the great 

 trunk. But I think the most solemn sight of all was a 

 great tree standing up in the air, from root to the further- 

 most twig a red smouldering mass within the dark shell of 

 bark. As the breeze fluttered up, we saw the open seams and 

 crevices in the bark redden out, casting off sparks of fire ; 

 and long after passing it we could see this natural bit of 

 pyroteclmy throwing out, as the wind freshened, thick 

 showers of sparks from the branches and trunk which would 

 so soon all sink quietly to the ground. I call this a solemn 

 sight, because all this destruction was going on so quietly, as 

 it were without an effort, in the great forest, which ap- 

 peared to be endless in the distant darkness of the night, 

 quite a different sight to the spirit-stirring roar and flare of 

 the forest fire in the day time. 



All this time, the path had been going along a tolerably 

 level valley without rising much ; but now, the branch cast 

 on the road directed us away to the north-west over such a 

 rocky bit of ground, leading straight for a high ridge of hills 

 which we did not expect to cross until much further north, 

 that we began to doubt the sign we had seen. There were 

 however, more dead branches lying on the path 3 and we rose 



