was that the roaring was less
loud, and then, though it was still almost intolerably hot, I found that
it was possible to keep one's head in the open air and one's eyes open.
Looking back, I saw that the line of flame had already swept far away,
and was even now surmounting the top of the next high ridge; and it was,
I knew, at that moment devouring the familiar cedars by our home, just
as it had devoured the trees on either side of the beavers' pool. On all
sides of us the bigger trees were still in flames, and from everywhere
thick white smoke was rising, and over all the mountain-side, right down
to the water's edge, there was not one green leaf or twig. Everything
was black. The brushwood was completely gone. The trees were no more
than bare trunks, some of them still partially wreathed in flames. The
whole earth was black, and from every side rose columns and jets and
streams of smoke. It seemed incredible that such a change could have
been wrought so instantaneously. It was awful. Just a few minutes and
what had been a mountain-side clothed in splendid trees, making one
dense shield of green, sloping down to the bottom-land by the stream,
with its thickets of undergrowth, and all the long cool green herbage by
the water, had been swept away, and in its place was only a black and
smoking wilderness. And what we saw before our eyes was the same for
miles and miles to north and south of us, for a hundred miles to the
west from which the fire had come; and every few minutes, as long as the
wind held, carried desolation another mile to eastward.

And what of all the living things that had died? Had the animals and
birds that had passed us earlier in the day escaped? The deer which had
fled from the pool at the last moment--they, I knew, must have been
overtaken in that first terrible rush of the flames; and I wondered what
the chances were that the bears who had declined to stay with us, the
squirrels, the coyote, the pumas, and the hosts of birds that had been
hurrying eastward all day, would be able to keep moving long enough to
save themselves. And what of all the insects and smaller things that
must be perishing by millions every minute? I do not know whether I was
more frightened at the thought of what we had escaped or grateful to my
father for the course he had taken.

It is improbable that I thought of all this at the time, but I know I
was dreadfully frightened; and it makes me laugh now to think what a
long