The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1882-04-21
Seeking Safety Together.

0UontuE 0111bJ 4uSctaSIs =
In 1868, the gold coast Of Oregon, .
several hundred miles was the scene d
| 1 great forest-frs. Mighty woods
stretched the length of tie coast and
back from the Very edge Of the sea.
Ldnnber1nen had cut down the best trees
ana used the best parts OF each tree.
The remaining part was left to dry,
which with the annual increase Of
leaves, mess and cones, made strata
of combustible material. Joaquin Mil
Ter tells, in The Independent, the story
of the fire: 4EM @sG4 - as 3sa 48 ss 9
Il In the autumn of 1868, the long-dread-
ed fire was famed into unconfrollable
fury by = strong wind from the sea, and
this once most magnificent forest in
America was doomed. ,o 8
Il did not see this fire; but / think,
from what those few survivors who saw
it have told me, it was the most fearful
as well as most magnificent sight that
has ever been. 90
A young settler, with his wife and two
children, the youngest an infant of only
q few days old, told me only few weeks
after the fire his sad experience in this
conflagration, and I know Of nothing
more dreadful. eT.ss. - =
His cabin lay a mile from the sea by
the side of 1umber-road, and he had a
little garden and some fruit-trees plant
ed about the door-yard. e
The autumn was late and hot and the
whole woods were hazy and dim, so
that one could not see far, even down
the road towards the sea. fzSoe
b Suddenly, one afternoon, he saw a
California lion leap over his garden
fence and creep up the path towards his
door. The man took down his gun.
But the lion had her young whelp in
her mouth and kept creeping closer and
closer to him, looking back over heA
shoulder with her eyes large and lumi-
nous, yet with such pleading human
look that he did not shoot.
I 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- as4e9 N as
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. was,sof course, now an i'm
possible one. f...-....-.s.. s......
The coast was not so populous by
&tOdSt 0C1A <S 40 A10 oCCus OlIJ q lew
hundred people now remained, and the
houses in the towns were not half in
habited. .s.- -r.
But the only escape for any one was
the sea, and even here the smoke soon
fell SO dense that men could hardly see
each others faces and children died
from suffocation.
One woman, who had got separated
from her husband in trying to reach the
sea- had three children with her, all Of
whom died, from one cause and anoth-
er, during the dark and dreadful days
that followed.
She was found wandering up and
down the beach by Government ship,
which touched here soon after, and Ia
ken 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. 49,.
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 sands, with his
dying children in his arms.
Another man, who was fortunate
enough to. find boat to escape in, told
deer, elk, and, indeed, all kinds !, of
beasts or creatures that inhabit the Ore
gon forests, crowded together as if one
family and did not attempt to harm each
other.
This man, with his friends in the boat,
fearing they should suffocate il they re-
manned, or have their boat swamped by
the millions Of creatures that crowded
into the sea, put out to q little group of
islands which lie few miles out from
the shore
But even there they found they had
been preceded by bear, elk, deer, and
other large quadrupeds- -
He asserts that he sat side BY side
with an enormous brown bear that
night, looking back at the FIRE, which
swept twenty miles up the mountain
from the sea and up and down the coast
one solid sheet of flame.
He says the beasts howled dolefully
for their lost young, and that even the
sea-eows came up out of the sea on the
little islands and, lifting up their large
melancholy eyes towards the burning
forest. joining in the universal wall.
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