Year: 1879

In an article entitled "Some Features Of
Kansas Farming, in ScuJner for November,
Mr.. Henry King gives the following vivid de-
scription Of that beautiful scourge, "a fire on
the prairies


Next to calamities like that the homestead
ers wife told Of the great besetting fear Of set.
tiers on the border-in all the new and thnly
peopled portions of Kansas, in fact-is the
coming Of the autumn prairie fire, which so
frequently menaces their stacks and cribs
their helpless stock, their stables and cabins
and even their lives Were it not for its
known danger and power of havoc, this tenn
pest and scourge of fire would be a 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 vagrant par
tcles deepen gradually, and gather into a
definite volume of smoke, black like rain
cloud, and 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. CA mile
In two minutes is not an exceptional rate of
speed for fire once fairly under way.) 1t
halts an instant, you note, over broad swale
where there is standing water but it is for
an instant only. The next moment it reach
es the upland again and the dry grass and
directly it grasps belt of the tall, thick blue
stem, and the flame leaps suddenly and mad
ly 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 fre-an awful roar, resembling
the sound of artillery in heavy timber. And
it is so 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. But
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
oppressive. And then, all at once, the wind
smites and staggers you, that appalling roar
deafens you, and the sun is blotted out, and
you are in darkness rs of midnight with
out moon or star. 1t is an experience of but
a dozen seconds or So this sudden plunge in
to 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 onward
and there in its track are charred and smoul-
dering 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
sending forward little counter-fres to meet it
and if possible keep it at safe distance The
creek may stop it and smother it when it gets
there, though such a hope has mere chance
for warrant sometimes these mighty con-
fagrations vault across streams twenty or
thirty yards in width, SO swift and resistless
is their momentum and as q rule they are
edectually stayed only when they reach
wide extent of plowed land, and have to
yield, sullenly, for lack of anything more to
feed their inexorable fury