Other conflagrations suffered by American cities have nothing in common with Baltimore experience. Fire destroyed 674 buildings in New York on Dec. 26, 1835, causing a property loss of $17,000,000 without causing loss of life. Thirty-six years later Chicago burned, wiping out 17,450 buildings and 250 lives and entailing a loss estimated at $200,000,000. The following year, 1872, fire laid waste 65 acres of property in Boston, causing a property loss of $80,000,000 and killing fourteen persons. The partial destruction of Ottawa and Hull, Canada, April 26, 1900, inflicted a loss of $17,000,000 and brought death to seven. On June 30 of the same year the North German Lloyd dock fire in Hoboken, N. J., cost 150 lives and $7,000,000 in property. Jacksonville, Fla., lost $10,000,000 through a visitation of fire that swept through an area 13 blocks wide and two miles long. The last in the list was the Paterson, N. J., fire of Feb. 8, 1902, which destroyed 75 buildings valued at $18,000,000. As fire and water have ever been recognized as the most potent agencies of death and destruction it will readily appear that seared, scorched Baltimore was fortunate indeed in the absence of casualties. On the calm of a restful Sabbath, marred only by the presence of a high wind, the consuming storm broke upon the doomed city. To that wind and the presence of hundreds of old fashioned highly inflammable structures nestling among the sky scrapers may be attributed the indescribably rapid spread of the flames. The start of the fire was in the basement of Hurst & Co.'s wholesale dry goods house. After burning for about ten minutes there was a loud report from the interior of the building as the gasoline tank used for the engine in the building exploded. Instantly the immense structure collapsed, sending destruction to adjacent buildings in all directions and causing the fire to be beyond control of the firemen. Spreading throughout the wholesale section, the fire burned out every wholesale house of note in the city, swept along through the Baltimore and Fayette street retail sections, destroyed all the prominent office buildings, leveled banks and brokerage offices, as well as the Chamber of Commerce and Stock Exchange, in the financial section, then sped on through the wholesale and export trade sections centering about Exchange place. It finally stopped at Jones falls, a creek that runs through Baltimore, but swept along the creek to the lumber district and the docks.