CHAPTER XXIV
A CITY BURNED
WHILE I was in Sonora, the entire town, with the greater part of the property it contained, was utterly annihilated by fire.
It was about one o’clock in the morning when the fire broke out. I happened to be awake at the time, and at the first alarm I jumped up, and, looking out of my window, I saw a house a short distance up the street on the other side completely enveloped in flames. The street was lighted up as bright as day, and was already alive with people hurriedly removing whatever articles they could from their houses before the fire seized upon them.
I ran downstairs to lend a hand to clear the house, and in the bar-room I found the landlady, en deshabille, walking frantically up and down, and putting her hand to her head as though she meant to tear all her hair out by the roots. She had sense enough left, however, not to do so. A waiter was there also, with just as little of his wits about him; he was chattering fiercely, sacréing very freely, and knocking the chairs and tables about in a wild manner, but not making a direct attempt to save anything. It was ridiculous to see them throwing away so much bodily exertion for nothing, when there was so much to be done, so I set the example by opening the door, and carrying out whatever was nearest. The other inmates of the house soon made their appearance, and we succeeded in gutting the bar-room of everything movable, down to the bar furniture, among which was a bottle labelled “Quisqui.”
We could save little else, however, for already the fire had reached us. The house was above a hundred yards from where the fire broke out, but from the first alarm till it was in flames scarcely ten minutes elapsed. The fire spread with equal rapidity in the other direction. An attempt was made to save the upper part of the town by tearing down a number of houses some distance in advance of the flames; but it was impossible to remove the combustible materials of which they were composed, and the fire suffered no check in its progress, devouring the demolished houses as voraciously in that state as though they had been left entire.
On the hills, between which lay the town, were crowds of the unfortunate inhabitants, many of whom were but half dressed, and had barely escaped with their lives. One man told me he had been obliged to run for it, and had not even time to take his gold watch from under his pillow.
Those whose houses were so far distant from the origin of the fire as to enable them to do so, had carried out all their movable property, and were sitting among heaps of goods and furniture, confusedly thrown together, watching grimly the destruction of their houses. The whole hillside was lighted up as brightly as a well-lighted room, and the surrounding landscape was distinctly seen by the blaze of the burning town, the hills standing brightly out from the deep black of the horizon, while overhead the glare of the fire was reflected by the smoky atmosphere.
It was a most magnificent sight, and, more than any fire I had ever witnessed, it impressed one with the awful power and fury of the destroying element. It was not like a fire in a city where man contends with it for the victory, and where one can mark the varied fortunes of the battle as the flames become gradually more feeble under the efforts of the firemen, or again gain the advantage as they reach some easier prey; but here there were no such fluctuations in the prospects of the doomed city—it lay helplessly waiting its fate, for water there was none, and no resistance could be offered to the raging flames, which burned their way steadily up the street, throwing over the houses which still remained intact the flush of supernatural beauty which precedes dissolution, and leaving the ground already passed over covered with the gradually blackening and falling remains of those whose spirit had already departed.
There was an occasional flash and loud explosion, caused by the quantities of powder in some of the stores, and a continual discharge of firearms was heard above the roaring of the flames, from the numbers of loaded revolvers which had been left to their fate along with more valuable property. The most extraordinary sight was when the fire got firm hold of a Jew’s slop-shop; there was then a perfect whirlwind of flame, in which coats, shirts, and blankets were carried up fifty or sixty feet in the air, and became dissolved into a thousand sparkling atoms.
Among the crowds of people on the hillside there was little of the distress and excitement one might have expected to see on such an occasion. The houses and stores had been gutted as far as practicable of the property they contained, and all that it was possible to do to save any part of the town had already been attempted, but the hopelessness of such attempts was perfectly evident.