STILL LATER
Peshtigo is burnt clean as a prairie. The survivors
are flocking into Marinette. The Dunlap House and several
private families are already well filled up with the
victims, many of them terribly burned. The people here
and the resident physicians both here and at Menominee,
are nobly rendering all the aid in their power.
Tuesday, Oct. 10, 1871.
A glorious rain last night abated the fire for the
present. Victims of Peshtigo and the surrounding country
are constantly arriving. Relief is being sent to the
Sugar Bush, where it is said some survivors are left
without shelter. The suffering is terrible indeed.
[From the Eagle Extra of Oct. 11th]
Yesterday morning in company with several gentlemen
from Marinette, Wis. and Menominee, Mich., we visited the
site of what was once the beautiful and thriving little
village of Peshtigo. It contained about 1500 people, and
was one of the busiest, liveliest and one of the most
enterprising communities along the Bay shore. Standing
amid the charred and blackened embers, with the
frightfully mutilated corpses of men, women, children,
horses, oxen, cows, dogs, swine and fowls; every house,
shed, barn, out-house or structure of any kind swept from
the earth as with the very besom of destruction, our
emotions cannot be described in language. No pen dipped
in liquid fire can paint the scene — language
"in thoughts that breathe and words that burn,"
gives but he faintest impression of its horrors.
From the survivors, we glean the following in
reference to the scene at the village and in the farming
region commonly known as the "Sugar Bush."
Sunday evening, after church, for about half an hour a
death like stillness hung over the doomed town. The smoke
from the fires in the region around, was so thick as to
be stifling and hung like a funeral pall over everything
and all was enveloped in Egyptian darkness. Soon, light
puffs of air were felt, the horizon at the south east,
south and south west began to be faintly illuminated, a
perceptible trembling of the earth was felt, and a
distant roar broke the awful silence. People began to
fear that some awful calamity was impending, but as yet,
no one even dreamed of the danger.
The illumination soon became intensified into a fierce
lurid glare, the roar deepened into a howl, as if all the
demons from the infernal pit had been let loose, when the
advance gusts of wind from the main body of the tornado
struck.
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Chimneys were blown down,
houses were unroofed, the roof of the Wooden Ware Factory
was lifted, a large ware house filled with tubs, pails,
[kanakans?], keelers and fish kits was nearly demolished,
and amid the confusion terror and terrible apprehension
of the moment, the firey element in tremendous unrolling
billows and masses of sheeted flame, enveloped the
[doomed?] village. The frenzy of despair seized on all
hearts, strong men bowed like reeds before the firey
blast, women and children, like frightened spectres
flitting through the awful gloom, were swept like Autumn
leaves. Crowds pushed for the bridge, but the bridge,
like all else, was receiving its baptism of fire.
Hundreds crowded into the river, cattle plunged in with
them, and being huddled together in the general confusion
of the moment, many who had taken to the water to avoid
the flames were drowned. A great many were on the blazing
bridge when it fell. The debris from the burning town was
hurled over and on the heads of those who were in the
water, killing many and maiming others so that they gave
up to despair and sank to a watery grave. In less than
an hour from the time the tornado struck the town, the
village of Peshtigo was annihilated!
Full one hundred perished either in the flames or in
the water, and all the property was wiped out of
existence!
In the "Sugar Bush" the loss of life was
even greater in proportion to the number of inhabitants
than in the village. Whole families are destroyed, and
over a thickly settled region in the heavy hard wood
timber, consisting of two or three townships, there is
scarcely a family but is now left destitute, and mourns
for the loss of some of its loved ones.
Hon. I. Stephenson of Marinette went yesterday a short
distance on the road leading to the upper bush, and
counted thirty-seven dead bodies!
Another party informs us that he found over fifty dead
on one road, and over forty on another.
In the lower bush the trunks of the fallen trees,
lying in every conceivable direction, are strewn so
thickly over the ground that it must be many days before
the entire region can be thoroughly penetrated so as to
bury the dead and succor the living.
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