The fire was followed by clear weather, and for days the light ash lay deep and undisturbed over the burn. One morning conditions changed and after a few preliminary whirlwinds a gusty gale set in. In a few minutes I felt and appeared as though just from an ash-barrel. The ashen dust-storm was blinding and choking, and I fled for the unburned heights. So blinding was the flying ash that I was unable to see; and, to make matters worse, the trees with fire-weakened foundations and limbs almost severed by flames commenced falling. The limbs were flung about in a perfectly reckless manner, while the falling trees took a fiendish delight in crashing down alongside me at the very moment that the storm was most blinding. Being without nerves and incidentally almost choked, I ignored the falling bodies and kept going. Several times I rushed blindly against limb-points and was rudely thrust aside; and finally I came near walking off into space from the edge of a crag. After this I sought temporary refuge to the leeward of a boulder, with the hope that the weakened trees would speedily fall and end the danger from that source. The ash flew thicker than ever did gale-blown desert dust; it was impossible to see and so nearly impossible to breathe that I was quickly driven forth. I have been in many dangers, but this is the only instance in which I was ever irritated by Nature's blind forces. At last I made my escape from them. From clear though wind-swept heights I long watched the burned area surrender its slowly accumulated, rich store of plant-food to the insatiable and all-sweeping wind. By morning, when the wind abated, the garnered fertility and phosphates of generations were gone, and the sun cast the shadows of millions of leafless trees upon rock bones and barren earth. And the waters were still to take their toll. Of course Nature would at once commence to repair and would again upbuild upon the foundations left by the fire; such, however, were the climatic and geological conditions that improving changes would come but slowly. In a century only a good beginning could be made. For years the greater portion of the burn would be uninhabitable by bird or beast; those driven forth by this fire would seek home and food in the neighboring territory, where this influx of population would compel interesting readjustments and create bitter strife between the old wild-folk population and the new.