"I once witnessed the firing of a two thousand acre tract thus logged over. It was noon in the month of August, and not a breath of air moved the most delicate ferns on the hillsides. The birds had hushed their songs for their midday siesta, and the babbling brook at our feet had grown less garrulous, as if in sympathy with the rest of nature, when the torch was applied. A dozen or more neighbors had come together to witness the exhibition of the unchained element about to hold high carnival in the amphitheater of the hills, and each one posted himself, rifle in hand, in some conspicuous place at least a quarter of a mile from the slashing in order to get a shot at any wild animal fleeing from the 'wrath to come.' "The tract was fired simultaneously on all sides by siwashes, who rapidly circled it with long brands, followed closely by rivers of flame in hot pursuit. "As soon as the fire worked its way to the massive winrows of dry brush, piled in making roads in every direction, a circular wall of solid flame rose half way to the tops of the tall trees. Soon the rising of the heated air caused strong currents of cooler air to set in from every side. The air currents soon increased to cyclones. Then began a race of the towering, billowy, surging walls of fire for the center. Driven furiously on by these ever-increasing, eddying, and fiercely contending tornadoes, the flames lolled and rolled and swayed and leaped, rising higher and higher, until one vast, circular tidal wave of liquid fire rolled in and met at the center with the whirl and roar of pandemoniac thunder and shot up in a spiral and rapidly revolving red-hot cone, a thousand feet in mid-air, out of whose flaring and crater-like apex poured dense volumes of tarry smoke, spreading out on every side, like unfolding curtains of night, till the sun was darkened and the moon was turned to blood and the stars seemed literally raining from heaven, as glowing firebrands that had been carried up by the fierce tornado of swirling flame and carried to immense distances by upper air currents, fell back in showers to the ground. The vast tract, but a few moments before as quiet as a sleeping infant in its cradle, was now one vast arena of seething, roaring, raging flame. The long, lithe limbs of the tall cedars were tossing wildly about, while the strong limbs of the sturdier firs and hemlocks were freely gyrating like the sinewy arms of mighty giant athletes engaged in mortal combat. Ever and anon their lower, pitch-dripping branches would ignite from the fervent heat below, when the flames would rush to the very tops with the roar of contending thunders and shoot upward in bright silvery volumes from five to seven hundred feet,