[1.  See “History of the Great Conflagration,” Sheahan & Upton, Chicago, 1871, pp. 393, 394, etc.]

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corpses were found in the open road, between fences only slightly burned. No mark of fire was upon them; they lay there as if asleep.  This phenomenon seems to explain the fact that so many were killed in compact masses.  They seemed to have huddled together, in what were evidently regarded at the moment as the safest places, far away from buildings, trees, or other inflammable material, and there to have died together."[1]

Another spectator says: 

“Much has been said of the intense heat of the fires which destroyed Peshtigo, Menekaune, Williamsonville, etc., but all that has been said can give the stranger but a faint conception of the reality.  The heat has been compared to that engendered by a flame concentrated on an object by a blow-pipe; but even that would not account for some of the phenomena.  For instance, we have in our possession a copper cent taken from the pocket of a dead man in the Peshtigo Sugar Bush, which will illustrate our point. This cent has been partially fused, but still retains its round form, and the inscription upon it is legible.  Others, in the same pocket, were partially melted, and yet the clothing and the body of the man were not even singed.  We do not know in what way to account for this, unless, as is asserted by some, the tornado and fire were accompanied by electrical phenomena."[2]

“It is the universal testimony that the prevailing idea among the people was, that the last day had come.  Accustomed as they were to fire, nothing like this had ever been known.  They could give no other interpretation to this ominous roar, this bursting of the sky with fame, and this dropping down of fire out of the very heavens, consuming instantly everything it touched.

“No two give a like description of the great tornado as it smote and devoured the village.  It seemed as if ’the fiery fiends of hell had been loosened,’ says one.  ’It came in great sheeted flames from heaven,’ says another.  ’There was a pitiless rain of fire and SAND.’  ’The

[1.  See “History of the Great Conflagration,” Sheahan & Upton, Chicago, 1871, p. 372.

2.  Ibid., p. 373.]

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atmosphere was all afire.’  Some speak of ’great balls of fire unrolling and shooting forth, in streams.’  The fire leaped over roofs and trees, and ignited whole streets at once.  No one could stand before the blast.  It was a race with death, above, behind, and before them."[1]

A civil engineer, doing business in Peshtigo, says

“The heat increased so rapidly, as things got well afire, that, when about four hundred feet from the bridge and the nearest building, I was obliged to lie down behind a log that was aground in about two feet of water, and by going under water now and then, and holding my head close to the water behind the log, I managed to breathe.  There were a dozen others behind the same log.  If I had succeeded in crossing the river and gone among the buildings on the other side, probably I should have been lost, as many were.”