OCR Text |
Show 302 PERSONAL ADVENTURES ground half asleep. We felt suspicious of their honesty, and, being resolved not to put it to the test, kept a sharp look-out all night, and sustained no loss. We started off again early next morning, and, in the course of that day's march, came upon a large prairie fire, which burned with extraordinary rapidity and fierceness, menacing soon to stop our progress. Fortunately, our road was quite bare of grass ; and, owing to this circumstance, the flatnes could not spread across it. This was the first time I had ever witnessed such a spectacle, and certainly it was wonderfully grand and appalling. The flames devoured every blade of grass in their way, roaring, and crackling, and leaping from side to side according to the varying direction of every fitful gust that blew, the s1ooke ascending in dense volumes, and forming quite a cloud above the scene of the terrific devastation. Fires of this kind, amongst the long grass and wild oats, are not unfrequent in Cali- REES FOR A CAMP-FIRE· ON THE ROAD TO THE MINES-BURNING T |