Shortly after its brief blaze over North America the great “New York Fire” laid waste the entire business section of the biggest city in the New World. All the commercial centre of the city, including the richest firms and largest commercial warehouses, were laid in ashes. The fire raged through days and nights. In all, 530 houses burned down and $18,000,000 of property was consumed. Owing to the intense cold, the sufferings of the homeless were pitiable. Down in Florida, at the same time, Osceola, the chieftain of the Seminole Indians, called upon the Comet as a signal for war against the whites. The Indians called the Comet “Big Knife in the Sky.” The war began with a bloody massacre of American soldiers under General Wiley Thompson at Fort King. All were slaughtered. Osceola scalped General Thompson with his own hands. On the same day, Major Dade of the American Army, who was leading a relief expedition into Florida from Tampa Bay, was ambushed by the Indians near Wahoo Swamp and was massacred with his men. Of the whole expedition only four men escaped death. Within forty-eight hours of this horrible massacre came another bloody Indian fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee. With the passing of the Comet to the Southern Hemisphere, bloody wars broke out one after another in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All those countries were in a welter of blood. At the same time the American settlers of Texas declared themselves independent and made open war on Mexico. The war began with the bloody battle of Gonzales, in which 500 American frontiersmen fought and defeated over a thousand Mexican soldiers. This was followed by other fierce fights at Goliad and Bexar. Next came the bloody massacre of the Alamo, when all of Jim Bowie’s and Davy Crockett’s American followers were killed in an all night fight. Out of 200 Americans every man fell at his post. This was the deed of blood on which Joaquin Miller wrote his stirring Ballad of the Alamo. “Santa Ana came storming as a storm might come,— There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade; There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,— Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade, The chivalry, flower of Mexico, And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo.” One month before the final disappearance of the Comet, the Texas War came to an end with the bloody battle of San Jacinto, when Sam Houston, with 800 American frontiersmen, defeated 1,500 Mexicans, and made a prisoner of President Santa Ana of Mexico. When the Comet had passed to the Southern Hemisphere, it was seen at its brightest in South Africa. The pious Boers of Cape Colony understood it to be a sign from heaven and forthwith set out on their great trek across the Orange and Vaal rivers, where they founded the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic. Thus the Comet was the signal for the first blood drawn in the long fight between the British and Boers.