Connecticut western news., 1871-11-10
In the Flames.

There is melancholy interest attach ed to the incidents of the fires in the Northwest A correspondent who was at Peshtigo when that village was burn ed says The sharp air of early Octo- Der had sent the people in from the even ing church services more promptly than usual, although numbers delayed to speculate on a great noise and ado which set in ominously from the vest. The housewives looked tremblingly at the fires and lights within and the men took last look at the possibilities without for many it. was truly last glimpse. The noise grew in volume, and came nearer and nearer with terrific cracking and sdetonations. ssl The forest rocked and tossed unanimously; dire alarm fell upon the imprisoned village, for the swirling blasts came down from every side. In one awful instant, before ex- pectation could give share to the horror, great flame shot up in the western heavens, and in countless fiery tongues struck downward into the village, pierce ing every object that stood in the town like red-hot bolt A deafening roar, mingled with blasts of electric flame, filled the air and paralyzed every soul in the place. There was no beginning to the work of ruin i; the flaming whirl- wind swirled in an instant through the town.
 Moved by common instinct, for all knew that the woods that encircled the town were impenetrable, every habita- tion was deserted to the flames, and the gasping multitude, focked to the river. ,..~.4. ...,. ts,. f.a.E
 Three hundred people wedged them selves in between the rolling booms, swayed to and fro by the current. where they roasted in the hot breath of flame that lowered above them, and singed the hair on each. head momentarily ex- posed above the water Here. despair ing men and women held their children | till the cold water came as an ally to the flames, and deprived them of strength. | The wretched throng neck deep in the water, and the still more hapless beings stretched on the heated sands, were pierced and blistered by these burning particles. They seemed like lancets of red-hot steel, penetrating the thickest covering. .'a -.'''
 Long after the flames had died out, when there was no more to feed on, the hot sands rendered moving about an exquisite torture, and long into the dis nal midday the survivors were confined to the narrow circuit near the river. As the day wore on, help came in slowly from the northward. Several railroad gangs had escaped annihilation, and one gang. led by an ex-prize-fghter named Mulligan, came with promptness and efficiency to the rescue through miles of burning prairie and blockaded roads. When the work of rescue began 1t was found that great number had escaped by the bed of the river and the northern road to the port, and, as the day ad- vanced, half-naked stragglers, unkempt and blackened, began to stream into the sparse settlement. AS the molten sands cooled off. the wofuI work of recognition began. Peering into blackened faces, mothers, fathers, brothers tremblingly sought out missing ones.
 Some, in the immeasureable anguish of the moment, had dashed themselves against the sands and let out the life with their own hands that the licking flames coveted. Men, too distant from the river to hope for rescue or safety, had cut the throats of their choking children, and were found in groups sometimes unccarred by the flames. In the streets, full twenty corpse were found with no apparent iniure or abra- sion. Fatuous tradesmen, in the sudden rush of flame, had thrown their valuables into wells for security; every well in the city was turned into flaming pit, and the very waters half evaporated by the heat. Survivors attest that women and children, cut off from the rivers, were put into wells aud covered with bedding. have looked into every well in the ash covered clearing, and there is no possibility that a living thing could have endured the flames that boiled and | seethed in them ...... ,.