The Fremont weekly journal. [volume] (Fremont, Sandusky County, Ohio) 1867-1877, 1871-10-20


There is a universal feeling of hOp'
There is no more despondencJ
. Country debtors are remittting; th
banks give hearty encouragement
land the insurance solvency become
more and more promising. Chicag,
is again on her feet. The Genera
Agent of the Home Insurance Com
lpany of New York announces thai
their losses in the fire aggregat,
about two and one-half millions, and
that they will pay every dollar with.
out delay. The Secretary of the
Union Stock Yards and Transition
pany announces that business there
including shipments for the east, will
now move along as usual. They will
furnish drafts on New York for live
stock sales tomorrow. The live
stock commission firms are all doing
business, and live stock shipments
can be handled and payments for
them made as usual.
General Sheridan makes a request
to the people of the country, to dis
suade those who are anxious to fisit
Chicago from mere curiosity,
from coming. Thousands Of
this class are here now,
thronging the streets, without shelter
or accommodation, and who must be
fed and cared for the same as the
sufferers.
Ofthe employees of the post office,
one hundred are sufferers by the fire.
The vast distribution Of this office
has been divided between Cincinna-
ii, St. Louis and Detroit. Three of
the old distributors left for Cincin-
natl to-day. Postmaster Foulds, of
that city, is here assisting to rear
range the service.
The following is furnished by a
correspondent Of the New York
Tribune: 1 have just returned from
the ghastliest promenade ever seen
in the world. From Congress street
to Lincoln Park, and beyond
Wright's Grove, four miles of what
was last week the busiest, most Wig
orous city Of the West, there is now
one widespread desolation, mared
by seorched and calcined chimneys,
by mounds of glowing brick and
stones, all covered like wintry plain
with a fall of whitening ashes. The
vastnes and mOnotonoHsness of the
view is as wearisome and distressing
as that of the desert. Formerly
every quarter of the city had its dis
tinctive character, and along the
banks of Lake Michigan to the south
of the river, were the stately man
sions of the men whose economy,
and industry had made Chicago
whatit was. Few streets in any city
could present so uniform a display
of wealth and taste in their resi-
dences as Wabash and Michigan
avenues. In the square bounded on
three sides by the Lake and the
Chicago river, and on the south by
Van Buren street, there were en-
braced some of the finest business
houses on the continent, and high
er average of beautiful and costly
architecture than had ever been ap-
piled in the world to the purpose Of
trade. Along the river on either
side, the tall ungainly forms of the
elevators, those monstrous growths
of the commerce of the Northwest,
mirrored their awkward angles in the
turbid water, mixed by unnumbered
keels.. In the North division, the
ground to the west was occupied by
large manufacturing establishments,
and to the east by the modest and
tasteful houses of the trading class
es. All this variety and distinction
have been obliterated in q day by
the travelling hand of the confagra
tion. The loYeliest garden on thC
avenue, which was just below my
window, is as squalId and miserable
with the wild tramping of the hof:
of this disaster, as any backyard Of
a soap boiler on Commercial street
The wretched tenement houses which
sheltered the laboring poor, are nov
clean and white in their ashes, anC
their chimneys form q shapelesl
monument. There is equality a
last between hovel and palace il
their shrowds of devastation. Wha
most impresses one in the aspect O
the burnt district, is its utter Ioneli
ness. The debris which numbered
the streets the day after the fire, has
in a great measure been cleared
away. The sidewalks are somewhat
Uttered still by the ruins, but circu-
lation is perfectly free throughout
the quarter. In the center Of the
city, there is a certain number of Gu
rious spectators lounging and chat
ting among the ragged and tottering
walls. There are many Of the build
ings in this quarter, which were so
strongly and solidly built that their
shells still stand stubbornly defiant,
after all the fury of the confagra-
ton. The Tribune Office, the Gus
tom house, the court house (still i'm
posing in its ruin, which took TWEEN
ty years to build and twenty minutes
to burn, the great Pacific Hotel and
the Lyon block, attract most atten-
ton from the aesthetic tourists and
idlers. They are certainly very pic
turesque and one may even say beau
tiful, with their cold grey walls,
blotched here and there with an
angry stain of smoke like patch of
lichens, and showing the pale blue
of the mottled sky through their
riffs and wide windows.
But when you get away from the
center of the town and cross over to
the North Division, it is most strik-
ing to see how sudden a silence and
solitude has fallen upon this great
and once beautiful supurb. You
can drive for an hour over the smoth
firm Nicholson pavement, very little
harmed by the fire, and see scarcely
a living thing in ali the ashen waste.
saw an old man up to his knees in
the ashes of an extensive brewery,
fishing out some pots and kettles.
He looked up and dropped his rusty
looking tinware, as if he had been
caught robbing a grave. A few clev-
er fellows have already invented an
apparatus for lifting safes out of the
fire. and you may occasionally meet
them moving about in search of a
Job, but throughout these miles of
wide streets there is less life. less