Seattle daily post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, W.T. [Wash.]) 1881-1888, 1882-04-28


We had great fires in the timber re-
gions Of the Pacific coast in 1868, but
the account following, from the psn Of
Joaquin Miller, We believe grossly exag-
gerated:
In 1868, the gold coast of Oregon. a
narrow strip of black sand extending
several hundred miles. was the scene Of
a great forest fire. Mighty woods stretch
I'd along the coast, and back from the
very edge OF the sea. Lumbermen had
cut down the best treSs and used the
best parts of each tree. The remaining
part was left 10 dry, which the annual
increase of leaves, moss and comes,
made a strata of combustibie material.
In the autumn of 1868, the long dread
ed fire was famed into uncomfortable
fury by strong wind from the sea, and
this most magnificent forest in America
was doomed.
l did not see this fire; bat 1 think
from what those survivors who SAW it
have told me, il was the most fearful as
well as the most magnificent sight that
has ever been.
A young settler. with his wife and two
children, the youngest an infant of only
few days old, told me only a few
weeks after the fire his sad experience
in this confiagration, and know OF no.
thing more dreadful.
His cabin lay a mile from the sea by
the side of lumber road. and he had q
little garden and some fruit trees plant
ed about the doorJard.
The autumn WAS late and hot, and the
IL. lx.- hot ro,ttH
not see far, even down the road toward
| the sea.
Suddenly, one afternoon, he saw a
California lion leap over his garden
fence and creep up the path toward his
door. The man took down his gun.
But the lion had her young whelp IN her
| mouth and kept creeping closer TO him.
looking back over her shoulder with her
eyes large and luminous, yet with such
| q pleading. human look that he did not
shoot.
Guessing the awful truth, he went
back into the house, took up the baby
and other child, and leaving his wife
asleep, rushed down the road for the sea.
Before he reached the sea the baby
was dead, and the other child died soon
after from suffocation. His plan of re-
turning for the poor, helpless wife. as
soon as'he had carried the children out
Of danger, of course, now, was an i'm
possible one.
The coast was not so popalous by a
great deal AZ it had been. Only a few
hundred people now remained and the
houses In tic town were not half in
habited.
But the only escape for any ono was
ha nd hnr oGe.s
fell 10 dense that men could hardly see
each others faces and the children died
from suffocation.
from her husband; in trying to reach
the sea, had three children with her. all
of whom died from one cause or another
during the dark and dreadful days that
followed.
She was found wandering up and
down the beach by a government ship,
which touched there soon after, and
taken to San Francisco, where she died
in an asylum for the insane.
Perhaps the most remarkable sight
here Was the bowling mass of wild beasts
driven down to the very narrow beach
by the flames.
The young settler spoken of tells me
he was crowded and pushed about by
bears and other beasts more than once,
as he CROPPED along the sand with his
dying children in his arms.
Another man who was fortunate
enough to find boat to escape in, told
me that rats, reptiles, squirrels, rabbits,
deer, elk and indeed all kinds of beasts
or creatures that inhabit the Oregon
forests, crowded together as if one fam
lily, and did not attempt to harm each
other.
This man, with his family in the boat,
fearing they would suffocate if they re-
manned, or have their boat swamped by
tho millions of creatures that crowded
into the sea, put ont to little group OF
islands which lay a few miles out from
the shore.
But oven there they found they had
been preceded by bear, elk, deer and
other large quadrupeds.
be asserted that he sat side by 81 10
with an enormous brown bear that night,
looking back at the fire, which swept
twenty miles up the mountain from ths
sea and up and down the coast one solid
sheet Of flame.
He says the beasts howled doifully
for their lost young, and that even the
sea COWS came up out of the sea on the
little islands and, lifting up their large
melancholy eyes towards the burning
forest, Joined in the universal vail.