American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1872-11-23
PICTURES OF THE FIRE.
The Carouse Of the FIames---Be-
havior of the Crowd--- FIRES
March Against the Wind---Ruins
Of the Fire by Moonlight.

O'A e"o Do'ech pdpCiS No COi-
lect the following very interesting
incident of the great fire:
THE FIRES MARCH AGAINST THE
WIND.
No one who has not gazed upon
such scene can appreciate the full
force of the representations of
great rollers of flame striding for
ward with steady movement.
breaking into forks of fire and roll
ing up volumes of smoke. The air
seemed burned out and the heavens
had dull lifeless look. The air
had a singular clearness which was
almost unaccOuntable. and which,
from a reference below, will be seen
to have followed the great fire. Why
the flames should have marched
steadily to the windward, against
all common reason, but repeats
what great CONGREGATIONS have be-
fore exhibited as a curiosity of fire.
At the Journal Office, when the fire
broke out, there was no sense of in
security when the fire was first dis
covered, and even after Sumner
street was a mass of flames. Why
should there BET The wind blew
steadily in a direction to carry the
fire away from us. There was no
cause for alarm. Still, with a ma
lignant relentlessnesst the fire march
ed toward us against the wind. 1t is
said by those who have reflected on
this singular fact, that the rarifying
of the air, aided by the wind, Gre
ates a vacuum, which is filled again
by the flames, and creeps along,
licking everything in its way, and
making its march really a blacken-
ed one. We leave the theorizing
to those who can solve successfully
the singular problem. The stub
born and relentless facts were bad
enough for us, as the advance of
the fire gave no hope for the saliva
ton of the Journal building,
THE RUINS BY MOONLIGHT.
A walk through the ruins by
night reveals the desolateness OF
the scene more impressively even
than one by daylight. There Is a
weird. grotesque beauty in the pros
pect that is strangely fascinating.
Among the crulnbling heaps of rub
bish in the cellars, there are small
fires Pickering sufficient to reveal
the fantastic proportions of the sur
rounding fragments of walls, and
lend a ruddy glow to the rear can
Opy of smoke Overhanging all, suffi
cient, too, to enable the pedestrian
to pick his way over the debris that
fills the streets. The mysterious,
intense Rembrandt effects of fitful
light and shade, the moonlight oc-
casionally penetrating through riffs
in the smoke, blending with the
Pickering firelights, the exaggerated
shapes of lonely columns aud irreg
uiar masses of wall. the silence bro
ken only by the occasional hOarsely
given order of a fireman. or mayhap
the distant clatter of a party of wo-
men whom some one is escOrting
through the wonderful scene, all
combine to produce an impression
of which nothing we can liken it to
will convey an adequate conception.
The imagination may conjecture up
such a scene, genius might perhaps
represent it on canvaSs-nO words
we can command can at all describe
it. ShadOwy, lurid, silent, grand,
awful, desolate, fantastic, it pos
sesses the imagination, and the adj
venturer wonders whether he is
still i'm the body, a creature of senses
and instincts, or a being as unsub-
stantial and strange and dreary as
the phantasmagOria by which he is
surrounded. If it were not now for
the occasional group of firemen di
recting stream of water on some
comparative violence of passion, and
the half-dozen explorers like him
self, whom he meets, and who stare
at him in a wondering way, as if
his appearance in such a place, and
not theirs, was the Questionable
thing, one might well suppose that
he had left the abOdes of men and
fallen upon the chaotic surface of
another planet, whose fires had been
but incompletely quenched.
THE CAROUsE OF THE FLAMES.
Bare walls started fol- tn from solid
masses of granite stores with APP
palling quickness, and stood like
ghOstly monitors of ruin III the
midst of sea of fire. Without the
slightest warming a dart of fire would
leap up through the darkness. and,
in a flash, another large building
was in flames, and presently went
down as though it was so much tin
der. Now one or two windows of
some large warehouse would reflect
faint light from within, then the
whole pile would brighten up the
darkness from the myriads of panes,
and, before there was time for sur
prise, flames belched forth from ev-
cry sash, winding about cOrnices,
licking the cOplngs, and darting in
an eager, hungry way, as though
for something upon which to glut
its ravenuus appetite, till. almost as
soon as it takes to tell il, a sheet of
flame wraps the building from found
at on to chimney, and it goes down
like a house of cards before puff
of breath.
The roar of the flames, the heavy
rumbling thuds that rolled forth as
masses of masonry dashed TO the
ground. the swelling groan that in
cessantly issued from the threats of