The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1904-02-26

out to mere lime and cinders. HEAPS
Of barren brick; rugged mounds Of
scorched, splintered and calcined stone:
q chevaux de frise of contorted steel
girders and gigantic beams Of iron: an
inextricable tangle Of wires Of all sizes;
the low ramparts of walls which had
been lofty, charred with the breath
and bitten by the tooth Of the intolera-
BILE flame; now and then the entire
facade of a great building, lettering in
air, destitute of support, which q gust
OF wind might blow over; isolated pin
nacles OF masonry, still more threaten
ing, all that was left Of some massive
four square structure.
I'm n place a towering edifce over
fifteen stories in height, with all four
walls standing, but as hollow and
empty as a house Of cards, and scorch-
ed and defaced with smoke: telegraph
posts which had become mere crooked
sticks of charcoal; pillars of iron which
had supported trolley wires, corroded
BY fire as by the erosion of centuries;
the tracks of the street railways i'm
bedded in the pavement, visible here
and there through the crowding rub
bish; a wilderness, an emptiness, a
labyrinth of defaced nothings.
Nothing vas in sight in this region
which the other Sunday morning had
been an array Of commercial palaces
worth a hundred millions of money
but agglomerations of d%esolation for
which no man would have given a
cent! And the ruins did not look re-
cent; you would have said that they
might have stood there for a hundred
years. The dust Of antiquity seemed
already to have fallen upon them.
I'm spite Of the omnipresent thin
pail of smoke and the strange, sickish
smell of burning that pervaded the at
mosphere and the Pickering tongues Of
fire which rose from some of the brick
heaps and the intense, white hot places
which glowed In the interior of some
Of the ruins, all appeared so dead that
you might have fancied you were con-
templating the remains Of Nineveh or
Babylon.
yet there was a profound living in
terest in these rubbish heaps. l came
upon a dreary looking parsonage stand
ing in front of one of them, as If fas-
cinated to the spot. / had glanced at
a similar heap on the opposite side of
the street, and he volunteered the
name of the merchant who had occu-
pied it as a chemical warehouse.
Then you were acquainted down
here?' I asked him. That was my
place. was his reply, pointing to the
forlQrn brick pile. I'm watching my
safe,' he added, and with difficulty I
distinguished the blackened corner of
an iron box p%rotruding from the jum-
BILE. 4 guess it's all right 1 hope it
was.
"Here and there were objects recog-
nizable as letter boxes. One of them
had a hole burned through 1t. The
contents Of all were doubtless ashes.
Noticeable, too, were the business
signs that remained legible on the
walls of some of the buildings. They
still stoutly announced the presence Of
what had ceased to exist, and, together
with some of the isolated facades
which partly screened the emptiness
behind them, they had the air of being
absurdly unconscious Of the calamity
which had befallen.
Squads of workmen in blouses and
overalls were trooping about in the
lonely vistas or laboring with pickaxes
at the ruins. Now and then the ear
woc cfo 1s%1n1 hy n J0ovo 1yVJo,;o,o WIZ,
some dangerous standing pile was
blown down. In some of the lonely
places there would sound out a dry,
rafting noise, as a sheet of tin roofing,
hanging by a shred, shook in the
breeze. For the most part the brick
walls as they came down had scattered
In all directions, but not a few had
fallen as they stood. still adherent.
and lay in a serried mas
"Over some Of the smoking ruins
fountains of water were gushing out,
freezing as they fell, where a water pipe
had broken or been burned through.
1t was a world without form and with
out reason. vacant Of all save dust and
ashes. But l wandered about fasci-
mated for hours perhaps. turning this
way and that at random. In one place
l saw the sign of somebody's Turkish
baths-'never. closed There was no
longer any Turkish bath there. But it
must have been hot enough on Sunday
night!
"At last I unexpectedly found my
self on the wharfs, with the smooth,
cold tide of the river tapping in be-
tween the piers, and tugboats plying
indolently in and out. l had reached
the limit of the fire on this side. I
strolled along Pratt street, with the
wharfs on my left and the smoldering
ruins on my right. On one block there
was a long wooden shed, which, though
facing the fury of the fire at a dis
lance of not more than twenty yards,
had escaped with scarce a blistering of