time the fire was advancing behind the green veil of woods.
Volumes of thick smoke were borne off across the pond, alarming the
dwellers in distant shanties and oases of clearing, with suggestion
of the most terrific danger that can befall a settler in the bush.
Before sunset the conflagration came in sight of Cedar Creek. Marching
resistlessly onward, to the sound of great detonations of crashing and
crackling timber, and its own vast devouring roar, the mighty fire
presented a front of flame thirty feet higher than the tree-tops.
Daylight went down before that huge glare. The low hanging clouds were
crimsoned with a glow, not from the sinking sun, but from the billows
of blaze beneath. As the dusk deepened, the terrors of the scene
intensified by contrast, though in reality the triumphant fire recoiled
from that blackened space fringing the stream, where it must die for
want of fuel.

To prevent its spreading up to the concession line, and catching the
forest there, and perhaps destroying the whole township, all the men in
the neighbourhood had assembled to cut down trees, and leave a barrier
of vacancy. If the wind had not been blowing from that direction, it is
improbable that their endeavours would have been sufficient to keep
back the burning. The crestfallen Captain Armytage, author of all the
mischief, wielded an axe among them. Truly he had created a view of
black smoking poles and cheerful charcoal vistas before his dwelling.
Whether that were better than the utilitarian Scotchman's green woods,
he did not say just now, nor have spirit even to answer Davidson's
sarcastic remarks on his 'muckle clearin'.'

Far into the night, the great gaunt boles of trees stood amid wreathing
flame. When all risk was over that it would communicate further, and
destroy the garden or the house, Robert and the rest could admire its
magnificence, and Sam Holt could tell of other forest-burnings of which
he had heard, especially of the great fire which occurred in the year
1825, and consumed about two hundred square miles of woods on the
Miramichi River in New Brunswick, left fourteen houses standing in the
town of Newcastle, and destroyed five hundred people. Two thousand were
thus reduced to pauperism.

'Such things are never heard of in Europe. Why are these forests more
inflammable than those in the old world?' asked Mr. Wynn the elder.

'Because the drought and heat of the climate are so much greater,'
answered Sam Holt; '