way. Several piles of deals in the upper yard are charred at the ends, three Canadian Pacific freight cars, not twenty feet to the east, are perforated with the flames, the trams of the Wright cement works are burnt to the trucks, and the metals of the tramway ripple and writhe like the Ottawa in spate. The heat has been fierce enough to twist these iron rails like willow wands. All these things serve to show how valiantly the fire brigade of the sulphite works fought to ward off such a tremendous foe. There is no use following streets in an expedition like this. Streets may be faintly indicated by a litter of old stoves or charred bedding, but practically, Hull, from the ferry landing westward, is as bare as God made it, save and except for the ruins which mark where houses and proud public buildings once stood.

There will be a deal

A SEA OF FIRE.

are amidst the relics of a thousand homes, the small pitiable chattels of the humble poor. Awhile ago there were trees and verdure surrounding these thrifty cottages. Now everything has disappeared, and Mother Earth shows only her hard, stony skeleton, unfleshed and indurate. A few steps the other way through red ashes and smouldering rubble, and we come upon the remains of the Wright cement works. The red brick-kilns, round shaped like Martello towers, stand straight and strong, but the stone buildings which clustered about them have vanished as if they never were. It is noticeable, indeed, all through Hull that the factory chimneys of brick withstood the ordeal, while the factory buildings of stone succumbed. This must mean either that brick is better than stone to endure fire or that being more stoutly built and more firmly laid they do not disintegrate so easily.

it had not been in the very midst of a seething furnace. Perhaps it was one of the whims of the fire to

pass the jail by and to destroy the place that keeps the jail full.

Here is the mutilated bulk of the little Anglican church, the façade of the belfry still sharply outlined against the sky. Over there is the eviscerated shell of the Wright mansion. The garden wall is unharmed. Down there is a ragged huddle of buildings, the Eddy factories, the match works, paper and pulp mills, pail and tub department, all gone up in smoke, nothing to show for millions of dollars except a few tottering walls and a jumble of helpless machinery! Coming a little nearer, I find dynamos and turbines, pistons, cylinders, all tumbled together, all their strength which depended on steam and electricity gone from them, and two little water wheels which take their impulse from a tail race of the Chaudiere, clacking away as busily as a couple of old gossips over the backyard gate! In such ways does honest, unassuming Nature take vengeance on the elaborate engines of human art!

It is the "big North slide" which I follow to the Eddy factories through the reek and smoke of the smouldering ashes. The big North slide has a strange, unfamiliar look, stripped of its flumes, weirs, dams and other artificial checks and channels. We have a chance to see the naked gorge and the laminated Laurentian cliffs on each side. There is little water in the channel; it has been dammed somewhere above, but its absence only serves to make the scene more rugged and terrible. From the cliff crest to the scanty stream that dribbles into the turbulent Ottawa it is eighty feet. There was a wooden bridge here over which ran a

railway track. The bridge has dropped into the water and the severed rails are twisted into the weirdest convolutions. Just here is a Frenchman raking in the ashes of his home. He is anxious to talk and I have nothing better to do than to listen. "I have lost," he said, "nine hundred dollar. It was my all. I save not even the stove pipe, though I put him in water. Also I lose twentyfour bottle of the good white wine." He pointed sadly to a heap of shattered glass. "Well," he went on,"I spend all night at the bottom of the cliff. The fire come over me. It was hot-ver' hot. I see the bridge fall. By God, I was afraid."

Further on is another ratepayer of Hull looking over his prospects. "I have left," he remarked musingly, "the two town lot, the t'ousand dollar insurance and the mortgage. I wish to God they burn the mortgage. But the vault was too strong. Why should that be, tell me, when the prothonotary's, the sheriff's, the city clerk's vaults all crumbled up like so much paper? But here is the vault with my mortgage as snug as a cupboard."

At last we come to Bridge street and the Eddy ruins. The scene is lamentable frayed wires, broken wheels, huge iron hulks-once costly machinery, wrecked steam tubes, detached dynamos, twisted trestles, and right in the midst of it the Eddy fire engine, stove in by a fallen telegraph pole. The "devil's pot," as they call a certain conjuncture of discharging flumes, is boiling fiercely. The Chaudiere doesn't shut up shop, but there are no wheels to turn and no factories to utilize its tremendous powers.

Over the Chaudiere bridge we goit is unscathed-and now we are on Chaudiere Island amidst the ruins of the McKay flour mills, the electric light works, and the Booth saw mills and lumber yard. The fire has made a clean sweep of the Booth lumber, the Booth houses, built for his employes, and even the palatial home of the great captain of industry himself, but the saw mills are safe and streams of water from Mr. Booth's own pumping house

are playing on a great heap of burning coal by the roadside.

Between us and the mainland is a shapeless raffle of steel girders and stringers, once a bridge. Over these we fare, our hearts in our mouths, and we are back in Ottawa once more. Here the ruthless march of the fire around the city is open to our eye. There are many people gathering nails from the ruins. Why? we ask. Oh, they are very good nails-they have been through the fire-what you call tempered. We shall use them to build new houses. Such is the indomitable Canadian spirit.

own.

The fire has a grim humour of its We notice everything consumed right up to the wall of a saloon on Duke street. It has never a blister. To-day it is coining money, for fire needs much liquid to drench it. Across the road is another groggery. At least it was there once. Now nothing is left but the license. This seems unfair. But what would you? Here is a solid stone shop burnt to the pavement, and a miserable little wooden smithy, cheek by jowl with it, bears not a scar. Here is a flimsy little shack unmarred-it has gone through four fires-and not a hundred feet away two splendid stone residences are so many heaps of rubble.

Many uproarious stories are afloat of burned whiskers and singed hair. Also there is one of a lady who weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Her husband could find nothing better than a cart in which to move her from danger. He started off jauntily up a steep hill, but the tail board came loose and the lady rolled out and down. "Stop her! stop her!" shouted the anxious husband. “Oh, no, let her slide!" came a voice from the crowd, "there are plenty more. You can get a lighter one next time."

The church of St. Jean Baptiste sits proudly on a hill. Behind this the fire did not prevail, though it strove hard to escalade. Let us thank Heaven for the hills and the everlasting girdle of rock, for it was these saved Ottawa.

THE HE painted red men of the prairies and forests we still have with us. In the Sun Dance, the Potlatch and other pagan practices,-the war-whoop is heard, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife flash in the light. The revolting savagery of the Wehndigo' has

1 Report of Deputy Superintendent, Department of Indian Affairs, December 31, 1899, page xxix.:

The Indians as a class are law-abiding in a marked degree, and serious crime is rare among them. In the course of the year some few of their number were charged with having taken human life. One case was the deliberate and apparently unprovoked murder of an inoffensive settler at Kamloops. The other cases were of a widely different character, and occurred among Indians far removed from civilizing influences, and the taking of life was prompted by motives of self-preservation and sanctioned by established tribal usage.

not yet been completely stamped out, and the horrible feastings of the Hamatas2 have not entirely ceased.

But civilization is winning its way.. The best strains of Indian blood are sending in their young to be educated in ever-growing numbers. The most de

The Indians put to death were what the Wood Crees call Wehndigos,' that is, possessed of an insane desire to kill and eat the flesh of their victims, and such cases are by no means uncommon among them. The lust to kill would not apparently differ materially from the homicidal mania which occasionally seizes upon members of any community, and the explanation of the peculiar and revolting cannibal accompaniment will no doubt be found in the direction given by insanity to the impulses of people in whose lives the main Occupation and all-absorbing interest is killing in order to eat, and with whom the ideas of killing and eating are consequently inseparably connected."