Daily press and Dakotaian. [volume] (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1875-1880, 1877-07-12
AN SEA.
SON.
Has There Been Any Mysterious
Influence at Work?

influence at Work?
From the Philadelphia Ledger.
Even the dullest of newspaper rea-
must have observed something
extraordinary IN the atmosphere and
other phenomena Of this season. 1t
has been marked by mer des
tructive storms, and by an unusual
taumber of DISASTROUS CONGREGATIONS.
Both series began very early in the
season. There were forest fires in the
east, north and. northwest within a
very short time after the evaporation
of the last moisture from the melted
SHOWS of the winter months 5sand hur-
%ricanes began to set in as early as the
third week in April. We printed al
list OF these last Saturday, and by
that our readers were advised of the
great number OF them for so early a
period of the spring and summer, and
also of their very destructive charac-
ter. Since then there has been an
other, the most furious and extensive
of all, ranging and raging over a
stretch Of country from the Missouri
river to the upper Ohio-some of the
~out-tiairkihg guests reaching eve to
our own city. All of these showed
great electrical disturbance, and, TAX
ing them and the forest fires and the
widespread destruction by fires in
two cities, they furnish coincidence
entitled to consideration. We can
not, of course, arrest or escape the
tornado, but we can do something to
reduce tie risks of FIRE; and this lat
ter is a thing to be done most care
fully at a season when there seems
to be an extraordinary susceptibility
to fire in the air. When a c~onfagr.-
ton half a city in a few
hours; and a day or two after that
another sweeps away the valua-
bic half Of another town; and when
both disasters are the product of fires
that, under ordinary circumstances,
would have been confined to the
buildings IN which they originated ,or,
at the, worst, to two or three others
in the close vicinity-surely such
occurrences should arouse the sus-
picion that some extraordinary agency
or influence is at work. Both the
confiagration at st. John and that at
Marblehead were uncomfortable from
the first, just as the enormous des.
truction at Chicago was. The con
suming element seemed to have for
the time an augmented power far be-
You'd the reach ofthe usual appliances,
The fire leaped from street % street
over spaces broad enough to afford
ample protection at other times. II
advanced like greatIirresistible waves
as long as any consumable materia,
was left in its path. These were
i characteristics of all fearful confagra-
tions mentioned. 1t is not so gener.
ally. Ninety-nine times out of a hun.
bred, the fires which reduced SO much
Of the cities Of Chicago, St. John and
Marblehead to ruin, would have been
extinguished before the second house
! was destroyed. But all the power o
3 the FIRE departments of the cities nam
! ed was Of. no more avail than if strick
1 en- by paralysis by the petty fires
: petty at the time of their origin
which grew into such wide-sweepine
. calamities. These are, however, cir
cumstances,, characteristic Of them all
Not one Of them at first seemed to b
anything different from the usual FIRE
that destroys a single dwelling, o
workshop or mill; yet each of then
, almost Immediately got beyond con
: troll, and at each of them the fire leap
; ed from street to street, over broae
3 spaces, and advanced until there wa,
nothing more in its path to burn.
Was there anything in the atmos
pheric conditions at the times of these
fires to give unusual potency to tn,
consuming element? This is no
!. asked as a question that can be ans
= wered, but as a question to suggesr
! inquiry, in its relations to the extra
ordinary atmospheric disturbanc,
which have marked this season, ane
which, to some extent, characterized
c the period at which the Chicago fire
occurred. In this last mentioned
. yesr, and near about the time of tn,
, Chicago calamity, there were mos
. disastrous forest and prairie fires il
Minnesota and Wisconsin and intelli
gent persons who were eyewitness,
+ to them, in Wisconsin, testified tina
t hot blasts swept the country for miles
! in advance of the FIRE; that grear
luminous balls traversed the air in the
. afflicted districts; and thal
new flames started up a
considerable distances from the
main body of the conflagration. Assam
ing these statements to be true, and they
! have not been questioned within oul
knowledge, there would seem to have beer
something in the air of that region, at tina
time, which gave it extraordinary potency
. to excite combustion, to feed fire, and t.
carry it over long distances. What Car
our meteorolsgists, PHYSICISTS, chemists