“Early in the afternoon of October 15, a strong wind from the southwest sprang up and almost in a moment these smouldering fires burst into flames. The effect was as though the entire country had taken fire at once. The wind, whose velocity is estimated to have been fifty miles an hour, carried a vast wave of flame which destroyed everything combustible in its path. Several men whose homes were destroyed assured me, with entire seriousness, that the air was on fire. The area damaged extends approximately seventy-five miles along the northeastern shore of the lower peninsula and reaches back inland from fifteen to twenty-five miles. The center and worst of the fire covered an area perhaps twenty-five miles long and ten miles wide. Within this smaller area were the villages of Metz, Posen and Bolton, surrounded by an agricultural country occupied by Polish and German families in moderate circumstances. The Detroit and Mackinac Railroad passes through this district and each of the villages named is upon the line of the road. “The village of Metz was completely destroyed, not a structure of any character remaining. The village of Bolton was also completely destroyed with the exception of a small church. Posen was saved by a desperate fight. The open farming country offered little hindrance to the progress of the fire, which in many instances leaped across treeless spaces of a quarter of a mile or more, destroying all buildings and fences between. The number of homes destroyed in an area ten miles square was 177. The number of persons made homeless and temporarily destitute by the fire in an area twenty-five miles long and ten miles wide was about 2,000. [Illustration: RUINS OF CHISHOLM.] [Illustration: ONE OF THE SHACKS CONSTRUCTED BY RELIEF COMMITTEE.]