Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

422 . CONCLUSIONS.

Hon. William B. Ogden wrote at the time:

“The fire was accompanied by the fiercest tornado of wind ever known to blow here.” *

“The most striking peculiarity of the fire was its intense heat. Nothing exposed to it escaped. Amid the hundreds of acres left bare there is not to be found a

_ piece of wood of any description, and, wnlike most Jires, at left nothing half burned. . . . The fire swept the streets of all the ordinary dust and rubbish, consuming it instantly.” +

The Athens marble burned like coal !

“The intensity of the heat may be judged, and the thorough combustion of everything wooden may be understood, when we state that in the yard of one of the large agricultural-implement factories was stacked some hundreds of tons of pig-iron. This iron was two hundred feet from any building. To the south of it was the river, one hundred and fifty feet wide. No large building but the factory was in the immediate vicinity of the fire. Yet, 8o great was the heat, that this pile of iron melted and run, and is now in one large and nearly solid mass.” if

The amount of property destroyed was estimated by Mayor Medill at one hundred and fifty million dollars ; and the number of people rendered houseless, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand. Several hundred lives were lost.

All this brings before our eyes vividly the condition of things when the comet struck the earth; when conflagrations spread over wide areas ; when human beings were consumed by the million; when their works were obliterated, and the remnants of the multitude fled before the rushing flames, filled with unutterable conster-

* “History of the Chicago Fire,” p. 87. + Ibid., p. 119. t¢ Ibid., p. 121.