XII.
KING STREET FROM CHURCH STREET TO GEORGE STREET.
e were arrested in our progress on King Street by St. James' Church. Its associations, and those of the District Grammar School and its play-ground to the north, have detained us long. We now return to the point reached when our recollections compelled us to digress.
Before proceeding, however, we must record the fact that the break in the line of building on the north side of the street here, was the means of checking the tide of fire which was rolling irresistibly westward, in the great conflagration of 1849. The energies of the local fire-brigade of the day had never been so taxed as they were on that memorable occasion, Aid from steam-power was then undreamt-of. Simultaneous outbursts of flame from numerous widely-separated spots had utterly disheartened every one, and had caused a general abandonment of effort to quell the conflagration. Then it was that the open space about St. James' Church saved much of the town from destruction.
To the west, the whole sky was, as it were, a vast canopy of meteors streaming from the east. The church itself was consumed, but the flames advanced no further. A burning shingle was seen to become entangled in the luffer-boards of the belfry, and slowly to ignite the woodwork there: from a very minute start at that point, a stream of fire soon began to rise—soon began to twine itself about the upper stages of the tower, and to climb nimbly up the steep slope of the spire, from the summit of which it then shot aloft into the air, speedily enveloping and overtopping the golden cross that was there.
At the same time the flames made their way downwards within the tower, till the internal timbers of the roofing over the main body of the building were reached. There, in the natural order of things, the fire readily spread; and the whole interior of the church, in the course of an hour, was transformed, before the eyes of a bewildered multitude looking powerlessly on, first into a vast "burning fiery furnace," and then, as the roof collapsed and fell, into a confused chaos of raging flame.
The heavy gilt cross at the apex of the spire came down with a crash, and planted itself in the pavement of the principal entrance below, where the steps, as well as the inner-walls of the base of the tower, were bespattered far and wide with the molten metal of the great bell.