Having procured a parcel of splinters split from the dry and resinous roots of some old pine stub,--that never-failing and by no means contemptible substitute for lamp or candle among the pioneers of a pine-growing country,--he proceeded rapidly to the edge of the _slash_, as a tract of felled forest is generally denominated by the first settlers, especially of the northern States. Here, pausing a moment to mark with his eye the most favorable places to communicate the fire, he picked his way along the southern end to the farthest side of the tangled mass of trees of every description composing the slash, which was a piece of some four or five acres, lying on the western border and extending north and south the whole length of the opening. And, having reached his destination, and kindled all his splinters into a blaze, he threw one of them into the thickest nest of pine or other evergreen boughs at hand, and darted back to his next marked station, where he threw in another of his blazing torches, and so on till he reached the cleared ground, which was not one moment too soon for his safety. For so dry and inflammable had every thing there become, under the scorching sun of the preceding fortnight, which had been relieved by neither rain nor cloud, that, the instant the fire touched the tinder-like leaves, it flashed up as from a parcel of scattered gunpowder; and, bursting with almost explosive quickness all around, and swiftly leaping from bough to bough and treetop to treetop, it spread with such astonishing celerity that he found it hard on his heels, or whirling in a hot cloud over his head, at every pause he made to throw in a new but now unnecessary torch, in his rapid and constantly quickened run through the slash. And when, after running some distance into the open field, to escape the stifling smoke and heat by which he was even there assailed, he turned round to note more fully the surprising progress that the terrible element he had thus let loose was making, he beheld all that part of the slash which he had a moment before passed through already enveloped, from side to side, in a continuous blaze, whose red, curling crest, mounting every instant higher and higher, was advancing with the seeming speed of a race-horse on its fiery destination. Half-appalled by the sight of such a sudden and unexpected outburst of the fire he had kindled, Elwood hurried on to his house, and joined his startled wife in the yard; when the two took station on an adjoining knoll, and looked down upon the conflagration in progress with increasing wonder and uneasiness,--so comparatively new was the scene to them both, and so far did it promise to exceed all their previous conceptions, in magnitude and grandeur, of any thing of the kind to be met with in the new settlements. And it was, indeed, a grand and fearful spectacle: For, with constantly increasing fury, and with the rapidity of the wind before which it was driving, still raged and rolled on