The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1871-10-25
THE HOMELESS MULTITUDE
CONTINUED FROM FIRST PAGr,

east to Wabash and Michigan avenues
and was moving north toward the riv.
er. The Board of Trade building. tla
Court House, the Metropolitan Hotel
the Post Office, st. James Hotel, S.cr.
man House, fremont House, Maltese,
| House, and vast number of the host
| business houses in the very centre of
the city, were all burning. Before
daylight the Whole district between
the river and Wabash avenue. ard
from Jackson street TO Lake street. was
one great fiery furnace. Several blocks
of magnificent structures on Wabash
avenue, extending east to Michigan
avenue, which it was thought for
time would resist the fury of the fiery
tornado, at last saccumbed, and was
speedily made into shapeless heap of
ruins.
ALONG TIE LAKE SHORE.
The intense heat OF the ire in the
city had forced the vast multitude coI-
lected along Michigan avenue back to
the furtherest verge of the beach, and
southwark into Lake Park and even
down to Cottage Grove. The day
dawn found not fewer than IS, 600 peo--
pls exposed 10 the wind and mist Of
the lake, who had been hut few short
hours before surrounded by the COM
forts of home.
1t is impossible to describe the scene
presented by these bouseless, home
less, and in many cases, pennless pco-
pie. Hitler had been brought the old.
the infirm, and the sick, rescued from
burning homes. 1t was indeed pitias
bic sight to see the pale, emaciated and
suffering men, women and children,
removed from comfortable couches,
and laid out in the open air with per-
haps only blanket or two under
them, and only the smoke-hazed sky
for q covering above them. Tho
amount of suffering thus entailed upon
the helpless sick, cannot be estimated.
A sLEEPLEss NIGHT AND HOPELESS
DAWN.
All night the fire fiend continued it's
dread work of-destruction. Strangers
had been hurried from their quarters
in the hotels and compelled to take
their chances, in the general chaos into
which everything was thrown by the
untoward calamity to the city.
All night the hurrying throngs had
been driven before the fast travelin,
flames. Goods taken from burning
houses to localities supposed to be safe
were soon endangered again, and had
to be removed to still more remote sec
tions of the city, or abandoned ut last
as prey to the flames. Suddenly, en-
yeloped in dense clouds of suffocatiug
smoke, great crowds rushed into tho
lake or the river. The number of lives
thus lost must have been great. Reii-.
able persons state that they saw num-
bers of people throwing themselves
into the lake to escape a more horrible
fate by being strangied by the sitting
clouds of hot smoke from the raging
cauldron of fire On the south side of
the river.
| If the night had been one of alarms
and ceaseless anxiety to scores of thou
sands, the dawn found them hopeless
and despailins. The wind, which had
been blowing from the first breeze
that amounted almost to gale, seem
ed to gather strength with the coming
day, and careercd over the doomed
city, creating whirlwinds of FIRE, which
seemed to clutch every object, and
reach far out in quest of more food to
appease its insatiatc fury.
/ No pen can adequately describe the
awful sublimity of the scene. Tho
light from the first buildings which had
fallen prey to the flames had not IA
ded away before the advance columns
OF lire were two miles away, in the
North division, leaving in its track but
glowing fires and drifting ashes.
THE EXTENT OF THE RUIN WROUGHT.
1t is impossible even to conjecture
the full extent of the losses wrought by
this unparalleled confagration. The
track of the fire is a mile and half in
width and between three and four
miles in length, embracing the most
substantial of the once fourishing and
great city of Chicago. All the great
hotels, public buildings, and extensive
mercantile houses are but rude heaps
, of ashes, and fragments of brick and
stone.
SOME STRIKING INCIDENTS.
At one time, after the fire had been
raging in the centre of the city, ard
while the fire was raging on the south
side Of the river, considerable num-
Der of persons were cut off from cross
ing and could not retreat on account
of the flames. The water or The FIRE
was the alternative presented. Not
long did they hesitate, and the whole
. party was soon struggling in the river.
1t is not known if all safely reached
the shore, bnt one brave fellow seized