Year: 1879

In an article entitled Some Features
Of Kansas Farming" in Scrib'.er,
Mr.. Henry King embodied the fol-
lowing vivid description Of that beau
tiful scourge-a fire on the prairies:
3Next to calamities like that the home
steader's wife told of, the great beset-,
: ting fear of the settlers on the border
in all the new and thinly peopled por-
tions of Kansas, in fact-is the coming
of the autumn prairie fire, which SO FREE
qnertly menaces their stacks and cribs,
their helpless stock, their stables and
cabins. and even their lives. We're it
not for its known danger and power of
havoc, this tempest and scourge of fire
would be spectacle of commanding
force and beauty. First, you will catch
glimpses of what you take to be gray
wisps of haze away off on the horizon;
and, Watching, you will see these va
grant particles deepen gradually, and
gather into definite volume of smoke,
black, like rain-cloud, snd bronze
about the edges. Then the strange,
somber bulk starts forward across the
prairie, and you hold your breath at
sight of the rapid progress of it. "a
mile in two minutes is not an excep-
tional rate of speed for fire once fairly
under way.) It halts an instant, you
note, over broad swale where there is
standing water; but it is for an instant
only. The next moment it reaches the
upland again and the dry grass; and di-
rectly it grasps belt of the tall, thick
blue-stem, and the flame leaps suddenly
and madly out above the. smoke, then
subsidies again, and the black mass
grows blacker than ever, and rolls
higher and higher, and you
can scent the burning grass and hear
the distant roar of the fire-an awful
roar, resembling the sound of artillery
in heavy timber. And it is
70 calm Immediately about you
that you do not SO much as miss the
ticking of your watch in your pocket;
there is no breath of air stirring, and
the sun is shining, and the heavens
above you are blue and placid. Butt the
stiffness will be broken soon. The on
coming cloud is only few miles away
now, and you easily trace the scarlet
and terrific energy at its base; the
smoke begins to hurt your eyes, too,
and the heat becomes heavily oppres-
sive. And then, all at once, the wind
snites and staggers you, that appalling
roar deafens you, and the sun is blotted
out, and you are in darkness as of q
midnight without moon or star. tits an
experience of but q dozen seconds or so,
this sudden plunge into darkness,
though it seems an hour, and when you
look out again you find that the fire
has passed you mile or more to your
right, and is still rolling desperately on
g ward; and there in its track are charred
and smoldering stacks of hay, and an
occasional house afame and tottering
to its fall, and group of men and boys
beating back the outer line of the fire
with brush and old clothes, and send
ing forward little counter fires to meet
it and if possible keep it at safe dis
4tance.Th creek may stop it and
smother it when it gets there, though
such hope has mere chance for war
rant; sometimes these mighty confa-
grations vault across streams, twenty or
thirty yards in width, SO swift and re-
sistless is their momentum; and as a
rule they are effectually stayed only
when they reach wide extent of plswed
land, and have to yield, sullenly, for
lack of anything more to feed their in
e1orable fury