river rose about six feet over my
head. There I took my stand, and awaited the event in breathless
anxiety. I had no time to look around me. The few minutes which had
elapsed, had greatly added to the terrors of the scene.

"As the wall of fire advanced, fresh trees in succession were enveloped
by the flames. A bright glare crimsoned the clouds with a lurid glow,
while the air was filled with a terrible noise. The heat now became
intense. I looked up once more; the trees above me caught fire at that
instant, the next, I was holding my breath a foot beneath the surface
of the running stream. Every few seconds I was compelled to raise my
head to breathe, which I accomplished with great difficulty. In a few
minutes, which seemed ages to me, I was enabled to stand upright, and
look around me. What desolation a short half hour had effected! In
front, the conflagration was still raging with unabated fury, while in
the rear the fire had consumed all the under-brush and limbs of the
trees, leaving a forest of blackened poles still blazing fiercely,
though not with the intense heat caused by the balsam and pine-
brushwood.

"It was several hours before I durst quit my sanctuary to search for my
companions, the blackened remains of whom I found not a quarter of a
mile from the river.

"Our shanty,* and all that it contained, was utterly consumed. I,
however, succeeded in finding in the cellar beneath its ruins, as much
provisions uninjured as served to carry me through to the settlements,
which I ultimately reached, though not without great difficulty."

[* A shanty is a building made with logs, higher in the front than the
back, making a fall to the roof, which is generally covered with
troughs made of pine or bass-wood logs; the logs are first split fair
in the middle, and hollowed out with the axe and adze. A row of these
troughs is then laid from the front or upper wall-plate, sloping down
to the back plate, the hollowed side uppermost. The covering-troughs is
then placed with the hollow reversed, either edge resting in the centre
of the under trough. A door in the front and one window complete the
building. Such is commonly the first dwelling of the settler. The
lumber-shanty differs both in shape and size, being much larger, and
the roof sloping both ways, with a raised hearth in the centre of the
floor, with an aperture directly above for the escape of the smoke. It
has no window. One door at the end, and two tier of b