CONCORD. 
To Ball * s Hill. 
1892 
lly 27 
Fire at 
Davi s 1 s 
Hill 
] I spent the entire morning in the house, writing, 
hutja^t 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, at this "eleventh hour" 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 suppress¬ 
ing 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 most of the fine old 
trees for which these woods are, or perhiaps I should now say 
have been, famous.*#’ I dug down about several of the largest 
pines and found not only the superficia.1 mat of needles and 
leaf mould but even the sandy loam beneath a glowing mass of 
fire, while roots as large around as my leg were reduced, 
outwardly at least, to charcoal. In many places this sub¬ 
terranean 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 v/ay beneath the slightest pressure of the foot. A 
pail-full of water poured into such a cavity had little 
