The first stroke of the alarm sounded about nine o'clock in the evening of October 8, 1871. "By eleven o'clock 100,000 people were hurrying through the streets of the doomed city," spreading terror as they went. "All over the city it was as light as day, and, in the remotest suburb fine print was read by the glare of the conflagration three or four miles away. By midnight nearly every vehicle in the city had been pressed into service, and the frightened animals attached to them, in many cases beyond control, went flying through the streets in all directions, making a racket and a rumble which, coupled with the hoarse shouts of men, the moaning of the gale, the roar of the conflagration and the crash of falling buildings made a conglomeration of sight and sound so appalling that none who saw it, or were of it, are ever likely to forget. Few in the city took any notice of the break of day or the rising of the sun. These occurrences seemed to make little difference in the quantity of light. It was only now and then that Old Sol was visible through the almost impenetrable smoke clouds. Nothing could be seen but smoke, smoke, smoke, here and there interspersed by dark rolling masses of flames. It was chaos come again. The earth was seemingly resolved into its original elements." At the end of three days, 300,000 people were destitute, 100,000 were absolutely homeless, 200,000 were without water. The food supply was doubtful for all. Robbers and incendiaries were at work. The gas was gone--blown sky high. Churches, newspapers, police, telegraph offices and public institutions were gone, while nineteen-twentieths of all the mercantile stock in the city was consumed. The tract destroyed was about a mile in breadth, and the losses were roughly estimated at $200,000,000. Still, so alive was public sentiment and hope, that at the time of my horseback journey, five years later, scarcely a trace remained to tell the tale of this disaster, and that of 1874, except the records of history. The story of just how Chicago proved herself a veritable Phoenix is a very interesting one.