South-eastern Independent. (McConnelsville, Ohio) 1871-1871, 1871-11-10
In the Flames,

There is a melancholy interest attach
ed to the incidents of the fires in tht
Northwest. A correspondent who wal
at Peshtigo when that village was burn
ed says The sharp air of early Octo
ber had sent the people in from theeven
ing church services more promptly thar
usual, although numbers delayed tC
speculate on great noise and ado which
set in ominously from the west. The
housewives looked tremblingly at the
fires and lights within and the men tool
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 detonations. The forest rocked
and tossed unanimously; dine alarm
fell upon the imprisoned village, for the
swirling blasts came down from every
side. In one awful instant, before ex-
pectation eoald give share to the horror,
great fame 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
Ikea red-hot bolt. A deafening roar,
mingled with blasts of electric flame,
filed the air and paralyzed every soul
in the place. There was no beginning
to the work of ruin the flaming whirl-
wind swirled in an instant through the
town.
Moved by common instinct, fer all
knew that the woods that encircled the
town were impenetrable, every habita-
ton. was deserted to the flames, and
the gasping multitude focked to the
river.
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 fame
that hovered 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
steel, penetrating the thickest
covering.
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 dav 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 it was
found that great number had escaped
by the bed of the river and the northern
road to the port, and, as the day adj
half-naked stragglers. unkempt
and blackened, began TO stream into the
sparse settlement As the molten sands
cooled of, the woful work of recognition
began. Peering into blackened faces,
mothers, fathers, brothers tremblingly
sought out missing ones.
Some, in the immeasureable anguish
ST 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
and were found in groups
unccarred by the flames. In
5he streets, full twenty corpse were
iound with no apparent iniure or abra-
;ion. Fatuous tradesmen, in the sudden |
-ush of flame had thrown their voJuahIes |
nto wells for security; every well in
he city was turned into flaming pit,
md the very waters half evaporated by
he heat Survivors attest that women
md children, cut off from the rivers,
we're put into wells and covered with
have looked into every well
n the ash covered clearing, and there is
10 possibility that living thing could
rave endured the flames that boiled and
eethed in them.