LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A PRAIRIE FIRE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"] SIE,—The accompanying extract from a letter recently received from a son in Canada may interest some of your readers.—I " On Sunday week (October 30th), we had a great fight with a prairie fire. I had driven into Calgary the day before. On Sunday morning I saw the fire, and made out that it was about seventeen miles off, and not far from home. I started at once, and driving back as fast as I could, got here at 12 30. D— and H— were just setting off. We changed horses, had something to eat, and started. The fire was then about a mile away, and we reached the place at 1.15. About twenty men were already there. We set to work beating with wet sacks, and kept this up till 10 p.m., when a waggon came along with a supply of food and a raw hide. The food was very welcome— we had had nothing, you will remember, since midday—the bide we hitched with long ropes to two saddle-horses, and started one horse on each side of the line of fire, the ropes being about twenty yards long, so that the animals were out of the reach of the flames. We had put a sack of earth on the hide to weigh it down, and there were long ropes at the side with men holding them. This was to guide. it. The rest of the fellows at work went behind with their sacks to put out any spots of fire left by the hide. D— and I were among these, and very fast we had to run most of the time, for the horses were terribly
scared by the flames, and went at a great pace. We had to keep np with them as well as we could, for a spot of fire, if left for a minute, would have spread and spoilt all the work of the hide. This we kept up till 4.30 a.m., with not more than five minutes' rest now and then, when we had to stop and wet the hide. Altogether, we went rather over thirty miles, going round the fire, and leaving off about five miles from home. By that time every one was dead-beat, the horses as much as the men. There were two teams and thirteen saddle-horses at work ; and those that had dragged the hide, in one little maga (or valley) where the flames were ten or twelve feet high, were singed all over. When we got across, after the hottest three minutes I ever had or wish to have, every one's clothes were on &re. D— had four large holes burnt in his breeches, and one side of my shirt was burnt off. The fire destroyed a few stacks, but did no serious damage. What would have happened had it been left, no one can tell. Such a job I hope never to see again. In the little cadge I spoke of, it was like a furnace. Every now and then the wind would come in a gust, and then the fire would travel faster than a horse could go. We got it out jest in time, for when we had just finished the wind began to blow very strongly, and a small piece which we had not put out got up steam and rushed away east at a fearful pace. It reached Bow River (which was six miles off) in less than twenty minutes, and burnt a streak as clear as if a road had been made."
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