Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1878 — Race With a Prairie Fire. [ARTICLE]

Race With a Prairie Fire.

The Yankton Press tells us of a lively race General and L. A. Carney had with the recent prairie fire. Traveling upon an unburned strip they came close to the line of the fire, which extended miles northwest and southwest, and was edging slowly northeastward. When they

were within twenty rods of this line the wind suddenly increased and shifted some twenty degrees toward the east, and from the west, sweeping the flames directly upon them. What was five minutes before a harmless fire, to be crossed with ordinary care, was now a mass of continuous flame, often ten to

fifteen feet high, and sometimes twenty feet across. It roared like half a dozen passenger trains at full speed. They sprung from the wagon and fired the grass, but it made very slow progress, and had not burned ten feet square when a whirlwind came down the line with a high gale. Their only chance war

flight, and they sprung into the wagon and whipped up their Texan horses sos a race northward to some higher, stony ground. The ponies understood that game, and went readily. It was all done in less time than the telling. The very cause of danger was at last the means of safety. The whirlwind, which was

twenty rods wide, passed by. It had changed all the adjacent currents of wind. This had deadened the wind ahead and prevented the fire from spreading; and now that it had passed it gave a chance to cross in its rear upon the ground where the grass was thin, and within ten minutes of the first ap-

prehension of danger they were among the smoking cinders on burned ground. The whirlwind went over the bluff and down the river bottom, filling it with fire in places above the level of the bluff, and sending up a column of black smoke which must have been oyer half a mile in length.