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sides — and now, curling again to the earth, they seem to lick up every substance upon which they breathe. . Checked for a 
moment by some sluggish stream until a concentration of heat shall have sucked up the moisture—like an army impatiently 
awaiting the operations of a battering train to open its way to death and desolation —it is compelled to pause; but quickly 
overcoming the barrier, on again rolls the devouring element with a loud crackling noise, in long red lines, the dry bushes 
exploding as they take fire with a succession of sounds that form a correct imitation of the snipping of skirmishing parties of 
sharp shooters, With devastating fury it sweeps along the heights, brilliantly illuminating the landscape, and threatening to 
denude the whole universe of its vegetation; until, the entire aérial expanse being at last charged and quivering with rays of 
intense heat, which play around the crackling stems of the trees that crown the higher ground, with a noise resembling that 
of the stormy ocean the destroyer envelopes each in succession : 
“Seizes the trunks, amid the branches soars, 
Sweeps through the blazing leaves, and fiercely roars ; 
From bough to bough the insulting victor spreads, 
Pursues his conquest o'er the top-most heads, 
Sheets the whole wood in flame, and upwards driven, 
Rolls in thick clouds that dim the copse of heaven." 
As the night wears on, the crash of falling branches, and occasionally the thundering echo of some prostrated trunk, is heard 
amid the awful stillness that pervades the air, and which, with the dark clouds that continue to gather in the horizon, portend 
a coming crisis in the atmosphere. Hark! the thunder of heayen’s artillery begins now to roll among the mountains. The 
flames, as if aware that a mightier Hand were about to arrest their progress, no longer whirl in the uncertain current of their 
own eddies, but blaze brightly and steadily upwards—the more distant lines appearing like streams of burning lava. The piles 
of smoke, ‘06, which float above the valley begin to ascend, and streaks of vivid lightning come dancing through the black 
clouds that hang about the hills. Suddenly the storm has burst above the scene. The wind which has hitherto been increasing, 
is instantly hushed. A death-like stillness sueceeds to the crackling of the flames, and every spark of the conflagration being 
extinguished in an instant by the deluge that descends, the Egyptian-like darkness of the night is unbroken even by a solitary 
star ! 
