Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/805

1868.] bombarding fleet, and mingled with a variety of discordant and indescribable sounds.

Between four and five o'clock, an immense pillar of smoke rose in a perpendicular direction, at some distance north-east of Newcastle, until the whole firmament was blackened by the outspreading vapor; but shortly after, a light northerly breeze sprang up: it gradually extended, and as it did so, correspondingly decreased in its density, until thoroughly dissipated.

Nothing unusual was discerned by the apprehensive Nova Scotians until about half-past five, when great columns of black smoke were seen to rise from every part of the wood, while in the centre of them could be distinguished the fiery spires of flame which, ensheathed in this black surrounding, shot upward toward the sky.

A murky, suffocating canopy, extending in every direction as far as the eye could reach, and made more impressive by the jets of flame darting through it at the various points, now hung over Newcastle and Douglasstown, while showers of blazing brands, calcined leaves, cinders, and ashes, swept through the woods as if driven by a tornado.

At nine o'clock in the evening, a succession of booming explosions thundered from the forests. Peal after peal, crash after crash, announced the work of destruction. Each rapidly following shock created fresh terror; it was like the bursting crack of lightning, every explosion of which tells where the terrible bolt has fallen. Each clap was charged with its own destructive power; with fierce rapidity did the flames advance upon the withered forest; nothing could check their progress. They removed every obstruction in their way by their own desolating strength, and several hundred miles of smoking, charred woods, marked the broad trail of the destroyer.

The affrighted inhabitants gazed with appalled looks at the woods and sky, and they had good cause for their alarm, for the dreadful crisis was even now upon them.

The broad Miramichi, driven and tortured by the hurricane sweeping for miles along its surface, became angry with waves and foam, like the sea when the tornado whirls across it, and dashed its seething waters against the shores in a manner which had never been witnessed before, and has never been seen since. Such vast conflagrations always destroy the equilibrium of the elements, and are accompanied by lightning, and frequently storm.

Peal after peal of lightning burst overhead, and the red flashes scintillated in every direction, as if a severe storm were preparing, while some of the explosions made the earth tremble, and rattled every window for miles around. Then came a deep and awful quiet—the quiet which precedes the bursting of the storm. All at once a deep, prolonged roar issued from the forests, driving a whirlwind of vast flame before it. And now Newcastle and Douglasstown, and the entire northern side of the Miramichi, extending from Bartibog to the Naashwaak, a hundred miles in length, became wrapped in one immense conflagration.

No pen can adequately describe the terribly sublime scene. When it is remembered that the Miramichi is a goodly sized river, with four thriving towns, two on either side of the river, while for the extent of a hundred miles, the settlers' cabins dotted the banks, and that all these buildings, including the town and scattered houses, were composed of dry wood, almost as ready to ignite as