The Hinkly fire, as it is called, was the worst in the history of America, for it actually consumed a large town in Minnesota, and nearly five hundred persons who could not escape in time met their death in the flames. A spark from a locomotive fell into a pile of dried leaves in the forest at a spot about ten miles from Hinkly. For four months not a drop of rain had fallen in this part of the State; yet when a track labourer saw the leaves on fire he passed on, thinking they would soon burn out. The fire did die down, but for two days the ashes remained smouldering. Then a little breeze sprang up and spread some of the embers, still red, to other leaves. The resulting flames shot up from the ground to the underbrush and then to the trees, and in a twinkling a forest fire had started. What wind there was blew directly towards Hinkly, and in that direction the fire travelled, widening as it went and gradually forming an inverted semicircle, with the village opposite the centre, so that the ends of the circle were a mile beyond the town before the fire in the centre had reached it. Three miles away the people heard the roar of the flames as they shot a hundred feet above the tree-tops, while every moment a huge trunk, burned through, fell with a crash. The smoke came through the woods, filling the air with thick clouds. Everybody seized what valuables he could lay hands upon, and started to escape. Some, blinded by the smoke, ran directly into the burning area, and never returned. Most of the people left by the wagon-roads, only to find they were going into a furnace. More than a hundred were burned to death or suffocated while trying to get away by the roads.