We could save little else, however, for already the fire had reached us. The house was above a hundred yards from where the fire broke out, but from the first alarm till it was in flames scarcely ten minutes elapsed. The fire spread with equal rapidity in the other direction. An attempt was made to save the upper part of the town by tearing down a number of houses some distance in advance of the flames; but it was impossible to remove the combustible materials of which they were composed, and the fire suffered no check in its progress, devouring the demolished houses as voraciously in that state as though they had been left entire. On the hills, between which lay the town, were crowds of the unfortunate inhabitants, many of whom were but half dressed, and had barely escaped with their lives. One man told me he had been obliged to run for it, and had not even time to take his gold watch from under his pillow. Those whose houses were so far distant from the origin of the fire as to enable them to do so, had carried out all their movable property, and were sitting among heaps of goods and furniture, confusedly thrown together, watching grimly the destruction of their houses. The whole hillside was lighted up as brightly as a well-lighted room, and the surrounding landscape was distinctly seen by the blaze of the burning town, the hills standing brightly out from the deep black of the horizon, while overhead the glare of the fire was reflected by the smoky atmosphere. It was a most magnificent sight, and, more than any fire I had ever witnessed, it impressed one with the awful power and fury of the destroying element. It was not like a fire in a city where man contends with it for the victory, and where one can mark the varied fortunes of the battle as the flames become gradually more feeble under the efforts of the firemen, or again gain the advantage as they reach some easier prey; but here there were no such fluctuations in the prospects of the doomed city--it lay helplessly waiting its fate, for water there was none, and no resistance could be offered to the raging flames, which burned their way steadily up the street, throwing over the houses which still remained intact the flush of supernatural beauty which precedes dissolution, and leaving the ground already passed over covered with the gradually blackening and falling remains of those whose spirit had already departed. There was an occasional flash and loud explosion, caused by the quantities of powder in some of the stores, and a continual discharge of firearms was heard above the roaring of the flames, from the numbers of loaded revolvers which had been left to their fate along with more valuable property. The most extraordinary sight was when the fire got firm hold of a Jew’s slop-shop; there was then a perfect whirlwind of flame, in which coats, shirts, and blankets were carried up fifty or sixty feet in the air, and became dissolved into a thousand sparkling atoms.