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Show HISTORIC FOREST FIRES. The terrible work of the flames which have burned over and destroyed destroy-ed hundreds of thousands of acres of timber and property to the value of millions in the Lake States, recalls to memory other great forest fires which have attained historic importance. One of the earliest of these was the great Miramichi fire of 1825. It bc-gr.n bc-gr.n its greatest destruction about one o'clock in the afternoon of October 7 of that year, at a place about 60 miles above the town of Newcastle, on the Miramichi River, in New Brunswick. Before ten o'clock at night it was 20 miles below Newcastle. In nine hours it had destroyed a belt of forest 80 miles long and 25 miles wide. Over more than two and one-half million acres almost every living thing was killed, fcven the fish were afterwards found dead in heaps on the river banks. Five hundred and ninety buildings were burned, and a number of towns, including Newcastle, Chatham Chat-ham and Douglastown, were destroyed. destroy-ed. One hundred and sixty persons perished, and nearly a thousand head of stock. The loss from the Miramichi Mirami-chi fire is estimated at $300,000, not including the value of the timber. In the majority of such forest fires as this the destruction of the timber is a more serious loss, by far, than that of the cattle and buildings, for it carries with it the impoverishment of a whole region for tens or even hundreds of years afterwards. The loss of the stumpage value of the timber tim-ber at the time of the fire is but a small ipart of the damage to the neighborhood. The wages that would have been earned in lumbering, added add-ed to the value of the produce that would have been purchased to supply the lumber camps, and the taxes that would have been devoted to roads and other public improyements, furnish fur-nish a much truer measure of how much, sooner or later, it costs a region re-gion when its forests arc destroyed by fire. The Pashtigc fire of October, 1871, was still more severe than the Miramichi. Mira-michi. It covered an area of more than 2000 square miles in Wisconsin, and involved a loss In timber ana other property, of many millions of dollars. Between 1200 to 1500 persons perished, including nearly half the population of Pashtigc, at that time a town of 2000 inhabitants. Other fires of about the same time were most destructive in Michigan. A strip about 40 miles wide and 180 miles H long, extending across the central part of the State, from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, was devastated. The estimated loss in timber was about H 4,000,000,000 feet board measure, and 1 in money over $10,000,000. Several hundred -persons perished. jH In the early part of September, 1881, great fires covered more than 1800 square miles in various parts of Michigan. The estimated loss, in property, in addition to many hundred thousand acres of valuable timber, was more than $2,300,000. Over 5000 M persons were made destitute, and the H number of lives lost is variously csti- mated at from 150 to 500. H The most destructive fire of more recent years was that which started near Hinckley, Minnesota, Scptcm- bcr 1, 1894. While the area burned over was less than in some other H great fires, the loss of life and prop- crty was very heavy. Hinckley and six other towns were destroyed, about 500 lives were lost, more than M 2000 persons were left destitute, and M the estimated loss in property of H various kinds was $25,000,000. Except H for the heroic conduct of locomotive M engineers and other railroad men the M loss of life would have been much H greater. M |