“The devastation he met exceeded his worst fears; for the settlements he went to visit no longer existed. The fire seems to have burst in every quarter at once; for it broke out at Miramichi the same moment as at Fredericktown, though one hundred and fifty miles lay between. But here its aspect was even more dreadful, and its ravages more appalling, as Miramichi stood in the forest completely girt round except where escape was shut off by the river. Many were in bed when they heard the alarm; many were first startled by the flames, or were suffocated in their sleep, leaving no vestige but charred bones; others leaped from roof or window, and rushed into the forest, not knowing where they went, or took fire in the street, and blazed up like torches. A number succeeded in gaining the river, and threw themselves in boats or on planks, and pushed off from the banks, which the fire had almost reached, and where it presently raged as fiercely as in the town. One woman was aroused from sleep by the screams of her children, whom she found in flames, and caught fire herself as she snatched up an infant and ran into the river, where mother and child perished together. Then came the hurricane, tearing up burning trees and whirling them aloft, lashing the river and channel to fury, and snapping the anchors of the ships, which flew before it like chaff, dashing on the rocks, and covering the waves with wreck. Blazing trees lighted on two large vessels, and they fired like mines, consuming on the water, which became so hot in the shallows that large salmon and other fish leaped on shore, and were afterwards found dead in heaps along the banks of the river. What can be said of such horrors, combining a conflagration of one thousand miles with storm and shipwreck, and surprising a solitary community at midnight? Happily the greater number contrived to reach Chatham by the river; but floating corpses showed how many perished in the attempt, and nearly three hundred lost their lives by fire or drowning.” No small portion of Sir Howard’s time henceforth was spent in devising means for the relief of the unfortunate people whom this calamity had ruined. He made strong appeals to the benevolence of the British public, which were not disregarded, and he advanced from his own funds more than he could well spare. Nor was he inattentive to other matters. He made a voyage from harbour to harbour throughout the extent of his military command, and, with his usual luck, twice narrowly escaped shipwreck. Indeed, so completely was his name up as a Jonah, that the captain of the Niemen frigate, with whom he had been a passenger, took the alarm.