“This cloud soon retreated before a large, dark one, which, occupying its place, wrapped the firmament in a pall of vapor.  This incumbrance retaining its position till about three o’clock, the heat became tormentingly sultry.  There was not a breath of air; the atmosphere was overloaded; and irresistible lassitude seized the people.  A stupefying dullness seemed to pervade every place but the woods, which now trembled, and rustled, and shook with an incessant and thrilling noise of explosions, rapidly following each other, and mingling their reports with a discordant variety of loud and boisterous sounds.  At this time, the whole country appeared to be encircled by a fiery zone, which, gradually contracting its circle by the devastation it had made, seemed as if it would not converge into a point while any thing remained to be destroyed.  A little after four o’clock, an immense pillar of smoke rose, in a vertical direction, at some distance northeast of New Castle, for a while, and the sky was absolutely blackened by this huge cloud; but a light, northerly breeze springing up, it gradually distended, and then dissipated into a variety of shapeless mists.  About an hour after, or probably at half past five, innumerable large spires of smoke, issuing from different parts of the woods, and illuminated the flames that seemed to pierce them, mounted the sky.  A heavy and suffocating canopy, extending to the utmost verge of observation, and appearing mere terrific by the vivid flashes and blazes that darted irregularly through it, now hung over New Castle and Douglass in threatening suspension, while showers of flaming brands, calcined leaves, ashes, and cinders, seemed to scream through the growling noise that prevailed in the woods.  About nine o’clock, P.M., or shortly after, a succession of loud and appalling roars thundered through the forests.  Peal after peal, crash after crash, announced the sentence of destruction.  Every succeeding shock created fresh alarm; every clap came loaded with its own destructive energy.  With greedy rapidity did the flames advance to the devoted scene of their ministry; nothing could impede their progress.  They removed every obstacle by the desolation they occasioned, and several hundred miles of prostrate forests and smitten woods marked their devastating way.

“The river, tortured into violence by the hurricane, foamed with rage, and flung its boiling spray upon the land.  The thunder pealed along the vault of heaven—­the lightning appeared to rend the firmament.  For a moment all was still, and a deep and awful silence reigned over every thing.  All nature appeared to be hushed, when suddenly a lengthened and sullen roar came booming through the forests, driving a thousand massive and devouring flames before it.  Then New Castle and Douglasstown, and the whole northern side of the river, extending from Bartibog to the Naashwaak, a distance of more than one hundred miles in length, became enveloped in an immense sheet