I was awakened by the increasing violence of the gale. At times it sank into low wailings, and then would swell again, howling and whistling through the trees. After sitting by the fire for a short time, I again threw myself upon my pallet of dried grass, but could not sleep. There was something dismal and thrilling in the sound of the wind. At times, wild voices seemed shrieking through the woodland. It was in vain that I closed my eyes; a kind of superstitious feeling came over me, and though I saw nothing, my ears drank in every sound. I gazed around in every direction, and sat with my hand on my gun-trigger, for my feelings were so wrought up, that I momentarily expected to see an armed Indian start from behind each bush. At last I rose up, and sat by the fire. Suddenly, a swift gust swept through the grove, and whirled off sparks and cinders in every direction. In an instant, fifty little fires, shot their forked tongues in the air, and seemed to flicker with a momentary struggle for existence. There was scarcely time to note their birth, before they were creeping up in a tall, tapering blaze and leaping lightly along the tops of the scattering clumps of dry grass. In another moment they leaped forward into the prairie, and a waving line of brilliant flame, quivered high up in the dark atmosphere. Another gust came rushing along the ravine. It was announced by a distant moan; as it came nearer a cloud of dry leaves filled the air; the slender shrubs and saplings bent like weeds—dry branches snapped and crackled. The lofty forest trees writhed, and creaked, and groaned. The next instant the furious blast reached the flaming prairie. Myriads and myriads of bright embers were flung wildly up in the air: flakes of blazing grass, whirled like meteors through the sky. The flame spread into a vast sheet, that swept over the prairie, bending forward, illumining the black waste which it had passed, and shedding a red light far down the deep vistas of the forest; though all beyond the blaze was of a pitchy blackness. The roaring flames, drowned even the howling of the wind. At each succeeding blast, they threw long pyramidal streams upwards in the black sky, then flared horizontally, and seemed to bound forward, lighting at each bound, a new conflagration. Leap succeeded leap; the flames rushed onward with a race-horse speed. The noise sounded like the roar of a stormy ocean, and the wild, tumultuous billows of flame, were tossed about like a sea of fire. Directly in their course, and some distance out in the prairie, stood a large grove of oaks—the dry leaves still clinging to the branches. There was a red glare thrown upon them, from the blazing flood. A moment passed, and a black smoke oozed from the nearest tree—the blaze roared among their branches, and shot up for a hundred feet in the air—waving as if in triumph. The effect was transient. In a moment had the fire swept through a grove covering several acres.