Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

420 CONCLUSIONS.

total destruction of property exceeded one million dollars ; not only villages and cities, but whole townships, were swept bare.

But it is to Chicago we must turn for the most extraordinary results of this atmospheric disturbance. It is needless to tell the story in detail. The world knows it by heart :

“Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone,

On the charred fragments of her shattered throne, Lies she who stood but yesterday alone.”

I have only space to refer to one or two points.

The fire was spontaneous. The story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow having started the conflagration by kicking over a lantern was proved to be false. It was the access of gas from the tail of Biela’s comet that burned up Chicago !

The fire-marshal testified :

“T felt it in my bones that we were going to haye a burn.”

He says, speaking of O’Leary’s barn :

“We got the fire under control, and it would not haye gone a foot farther ; but the next thing I knew they came and told me that St. Paul’s church, about two squares north, was on fire.” *

They checked the church-fire, but—

“The next thing I knew the fire was in Batcham’s planing-mill.”

A writer in the New York “ Evening Post” says he saw in Chicago “ buildings far beyond the line of fire, and in no contact with it, burst into flames from the interior.”

* See “History of the Great Conflagration,” Sheahan & Upton, Chicago, 1871, p. 163.