Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

BIELA’S COMET. 419

loped on; rushing with fearful speed, their eyeballs dilated and glaring with terror, and every motion betokening delirium of fright. Some had been badly burned, and must have plunged through a long space of flame in the desperate effort to escape. Following considerably behind came a solitary horse, panting and snorting and nearly exhausted. He was saddled and bridled, and, as we first thought, had a bag lashed to his back. As he came up we were startled at the sight of a young lad lying fallen over the animal’s neck, the bridle wound around his hands, and the mane being clinched by the fingers. Little effort was needed to stop the jaded horse, and at once release the helpless boy. He was taken into the house, and all that we could do was done ; but he had inhaled the smoke, and was seemingly dying. Some time elapsed and he revived enough to speak. He told his name—Patrick Byrnes—and said: ‘Father and mother and the children got into the wagon. I don’t know what became of them. Everything is burned up. I am dying. Ob! is hell any worse than this?’ ”*

How vividly does all this recall the book of Job and the legends of Central America, which refer to the multitudes of the burned, maimed, and wounded lying in the caverns, moaning and erying like poor Patrick Byrnes, suffering no less in mind than in body !

When we leaye Wisconsin and pass about two hundred and fifty miles eastward, ever Lake Michigan and across the whole width of the State of Michigan, we find much the same condition of things, but not so terrible in the loss of human life. Fully fifteen thousand people were rendered homeless by the fires ; and their food, clothing, crops, horses, and cattle were destroyed. Of these five to six thousand were burned out the same night that the fires broke out in Chicago and Wisconsin. The

* See “ History of the Great Conflagration,” Sheahan & Upton, Chicago, 1871, p. 383.