"The fire having continued all this night (if I may call that night which was light as day for ten miles round about, after a dreadful manner) when conspiring with a fierce eastern wind in a very dry season; I went on foot to the same place, and saw the whole south part of the city burning from Cheapside to the Thames and all along Cornhill.... Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save, as, on the other [side], the carts, etc., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle! such as haply the world had not seen the like since the foundation of it, nor be outdone till the universal conflagration of it! All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above ten thousand houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like a hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for near two miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds also of smoke were dismal, and reached, upon computation, near fifty-six miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom or the last day." On Monday the Royal Exchange perished in the sea of flame. By evening Cheapside had fallen, and beside the water's edge it was blazing in Fleet Street; while it had also burned backward, even against the wind, along the eastern part of Thames Street, toward Tower Hill. The heat was so terrible that persons could not approach within a furlong, while the very pathways were glowing with fiery heat. Some persons chartered barges and boats, and, filling them with such property as they could save, sent them down the Thames. Others paid large sums for carts to convey property far beyond the city walls. A piteous exodus of sick and sound, aged and young, crawled or fled to the spacious fields beyond the gates. The ground was strewn with movables for miles, and tents were erected to shelter the burned-out multitude. At length St. Paul's succumbed. It had stood tall and strong in the space of its churchyard, lifting its head loftily amid the billows of flame; but at last the terrible fire, driven toward it by the east wind, lapped the roof, and seized some scaffold-poles standing around. The lead on the roof melted in the fierce heat, and ran down the walls in streams; the stones split, and pieces flew off with reports like cannon-shots; and beams fell crashing like thunder to the ground.