New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-10-17

save the coaholes of private dwellings where small
sepulchral lets continue to burn only visible when
| darkness comes Oh.
GENERAL PRESS DIsPATCHI
| CHICAGO. Oct. 16-There has been wonderful ac-
tivity in the South Division of the burned district
| to-day. Thousands of men have been at work clear
ing away the ruins and putting up temporary build
! ngs &c. Every labOring man willing to work can
find plenty to do at liberal wages The action of the
banks yesterday, in unanimously resolving to open
for business tomorrow, and to pay at once if called
| for every dollar due their depOsitOrs, and the
prOmptness of the insurance companies in settling
their losses, have inspired renewed confidence.
The reports of the loss of life are greatly exag
gerated. The number of dead bodies already dis
covered is less than 1875 A large number of persons
supposed to be lost are alive and well.
The Board of Trade has not yet decided upon the
future location of its building. The Rush Medical
College resumed its usual course in the City Hos
pital to-day.
The Secretary of the Treasury has reconsidered
his recent order instuctng Collectors Of Customs to
cease forwarding goods in bond to Chicago as tenn
porary Custom House has been established here, and
merchandise in bond be shipped to this port
as heretofore
Col. Eastman, Postmaster, announces that the
Money Order Department of the Chicago Post Office
is in operation, and ready to pay all orders
promptly. Postmasters making deposits should
remit National Bank drafts on New York. or send
currency by registered letters. The POstOlce safes
were reached to-day, and their contents found
badly scOrched; $4,000 in money was recovered,
and about $4,000 worth Of postage stamps were
in condition to he returned for exchange although
not fit to be used. The cashiers day book and
ledger were found to be in a condition to be read,
h1ft he hoo vn6 rho oofa off ha
money order superintendent, and that of the
stamped envelope clerk, were yet in the ruins The
United States District Attorney lost all his papers
THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE OF THE FIRE.
IRON THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THB TRBUNBl
CHICAGO, Oct. 14-Man is the only animal who
wastes his time in efforts to find out how things
began tor the pleasure Of knowing. We are
not satisfied with pleasures until we have
poisoned them with that flavor of realism We pur-
sue our Burgundy until we have hunted it down to
the watts where it spirits under the broad feet of the
peasants of Beaune. And we are equally unwise in
dwelling on the source of our troubles instead of
looking forward to the end of them, and then for
getting them wholly. The Nile is better worth see
ing at Karnak and Cairo than at Nyanza. The Mis-
sissippi is far more enjoyable stream at Spunky
Point OF Alton than at ItascaLa Yet good men,
sensible in the main, waste their lives in tracking
them to those savage thckets, where nature has
hidden away their cradles safe from the tread of the
world.
see the folly of all this plainly enough, but the
human nature in me will not let me follow my own
precept. have here before me six miles, more or
less of the finest confagration ever seen have
smoking ruins and ruins which have broken them
selves of smoking churches as romantic in their
dilapidaton as Melrose by moonlight; mountains of
brick and mortar and forests of springng chimneys;
but turned from them all this morning to hunt for
the spot where the fire started 1t is the greatest
and most brilliant appariton Of the nineteenth GEN.
tury-1noTe reckless than Fisk, more remorseless
than Bismarck. Some details of it's early life might
not be without edfcatiOn There may be lessons in
it's cradle and it's grave. These were the thoughts
that justified me in going to Dekoven-st., though
the real reason was that 1 was curious to see the
first footprint of the monster who had trampled
great city out of existence in day.
Nothing could be more ignoble and commonplace
than this quarter of Chicago reached it by Cross
ing over the long drawbridge at Twelfth-st, which
was swinging gracefully on its pivot as came. The
streets were all filled with wagons loaded down with
furniture which exposed to the gaze of the loungerS
the broken life of the family The air of the quarter
was wholly foreign and not quite reputable. Even
the little Church of st. Wenzel added to the Be-
hemian air of the district German volunteers were
guarding the relief stores from hungry Czechs, who
would make irregular forays on the provisions Both
sides thought their dignity required they should
sneak English instead of their native tongue. Keep
your fingers Won dem pretzels of, or you I'll git
het on YOU" eyes! bet you got heap o style,
don't it," These colloquies sometimes give us
moments of conjecture as to the final doom of our
language. found Dekoven-st. at last, q mean lit
tie street of shabby wooden houses, with dirty door
wards and implanted fences falling to decay 1t had
no look of Chicago about it, Take 1t up bodily and
drop II ont on the prairie and its name might be
Lickskillet Station as well as anything else. The
street was unpaved and Uttered with old boxes and
widowed papers, and dozen absurd geese wandered
about with rustic familiarity. slatternly women
loun0ed at the gates and barelegged children kept
nm an evidently traditional warfare Of diminishing
with the geese On the south side Of the street not
a house was touched. On the north only one re-
NAMED All the rest were simply ashes There
were no piles Of ruin here. The wooden novels left
no landmarks except here and there stunted CHM
ney too SQUAT to fall. The grade had been raised
in places and left untouched in Others, 30 that now,
a. in the North Division the roads seemed like via
ducts and scorched and blackened trees seemed
growing out of sodded cellars. But OF all the miser-
able plain stretching out before me to the burning
coal.beape in the northern distance, was only in
terested in the narrow block between Dekoven and
Taylor-sts now quite fat and cool, with small
BOYS marching through the lots, some Kicking
with bare feet in the light ashes for suspected and
sporadic Goals, and others prudently mounted on
stilts which sunk from time to time in the sponRy
soil and caused the young acrobats to descend igno-
minionslv and null them out This was the Mecca
- -.....o for hare the fire began, One