but small; a stout Englishman is seated on the building next to the tannery, and, though the wind blows the stifling smoke and the sparks into his face, he boldly keeps to his work, to save his little property. He spreads wet blankets upon the shingles, changing them in a minute or two when dry and scorched; and, wherever the fire rests for a space, he is ready with a vessel of water.

But while this struggle is going on, a shout from the opposite side of the street proclaims that the fire has reached across, and the thickening smoke from above, shews that the houses on the cliff have also caught. At the same time, the blazing ruins of the tannery fall in with a heavy crash; smoke and flame burst out through the windows of the next house, and soon after, through the roof itself. The poor fellow who had kept it down so long, still struggles hard against it, and it is not till the ladder which he had ascended takes fire that, maimed and blackened, he comes down, and stands staring in despair at the progress of his ruin.

But this is no time to dwell on individual misery, for the flames increase rapidly, the wind still driving them fiercely on: sometimes they spread along the shingle roofs, at others work

their way through the under stories of half a dozen houses unperceived, till, suddenly meeting with more combustible matter, they burst out above and at the windows. As the flames gain ground, they suck the wind down the narrow streets in whirling eddies. Every here and there the burning frame-work of a house tumbles in, and a shower of fiery morsels rises in the air, then sweeps along with the intolerable dust and smoke, spreading the destruction still further.

A large district is now in a blaze; there is no water; fire-engines are useless; and besides, the case is past their aid. A number of soldiers with ropes and axes come rushing down the hill they set stoutly to their work, and hack and tear down the houses nearest to the flames, thus making a gap in hope of stopping the communication. But the fire is lifted up by the wind, and leaps on into other streets, and fastens fiercely on its prey. Far away to leeward, the red plague bursts up through the wooden roofs and the planked roads; overhead, under foot, on every side, it seems to close round the soldiers. They fall back from place to place, black with smoke and dust, but still struggling, almost against hope.

The inhabitants become frantic with terror;

some rush into the flames on one side, in flying from them on the other; many madly carry about articles of furniture already on fire, spreading the mischief in places before untouched; others sit down in the helplessness of despair, and weep like children. The sick and infirm are carried off from the far distant parts of the town; carts and calèches filled with fugitives, and the few precious things they have been able to snatch away, dash along the streets in all directions, forcing their way through the crowds.

Sometimes, in the dense smoke

and dust they drive against one another, break, upset; and the wretched people they convey have to leave all behind them, and hasten away. Even strong men, who lingered too long, trying to save their little household goods, are suffocated by the smoke, and overtaken by the flames.

The government fuel-yard is a large space surrounded with wooden palings, where the suburb of St. Roch narrows between the river St. Charles and the walls of the upper town; it is enclosed in three parts of a square of buildings, à long street running under the walls at the farther side from the river, and parallel to it. At this place the troops make a great effort to stop the conflagration; they hew down the wooden palings, destroy several

houses at the end of the row under the walls, and the fire-engines pump away gallantly. This is about three o'clock in the afternoon.

Suddenly a hurricane arises; the blazing shingles are lifted into the air; planks and rafters, edged with fire, whirl over the ground, and the flames race along the street with terrible rapidity. All run for their lives; the fire-engines are with difficulty dragged away; some indeed are abandoned in the flight. Almost the only outlet now from the suburb is the gate through the walls into the upper town. As the crowd crushes through, the flames close over every thing behind them.

In the mean time, from the showers of sparks and the intense heat, the Artillery Barrack has taken fire in several parts of the shingle roofs and wooden palings. Although separated by a long glacis and high bastions from the burning district, the grass on the ramparts burns up like straw. There is plenty of assistance; the roofs are drenched with water, but still the fire gains ground. A heavy shower of rain comes seasonably to aid; the barracks are saved, and with them the upper town.

The fire, however, rages more furiously than ever, outside the walls; spreading thence to the water, along the whole northern face, below the

batteries and the magazine. This rumour runs through the crowd in a moment, and fills them with dismay. There are two hundred tons of powder in that magazine-should the fire reach it, not one stone upon another, not a living soul, will remain as a record of Quebec. The fire is close under the walls below the magazine-the smoke and flames rise above them, and whirl round and round with the eddying wind. The bright tin roof flashes back the lurid light on the soldiers who are toiling about it, piling up wet clay at the doors and windows, tearing down the wooden houses near, pulling up the platforms of the batteries and the planks of the coping, and throwing them over the walls into the fire below. The crisis passes, the magazine is safe.

Now, for nearly a mile in length, and from the battlements to the river, is one mass of flame; the heat and suffocating smell are almost intolerable; the dense black smoke covers everything to leeward, pressing down the clouds upon the hills many miles away, and drenching them with unexpected rain. Vessels cut their cables, and drift, half on fire, down the river; the streams and wells in the suburbs are baked up dry; churches, hospitals, ship-yards each is but a red wave in the fiery sea.