Lyman Abbott - "Laicus"

John Martin Crawford, trans. - "The Kalevala (complete)"

Julius Wellhausen - "Prolegomena to the History of Israel"

Hector St. John de Crevecoeur - "Letters from an American Farmer"

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Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel




At that hour, half past nine o'clock in the evening, _at apparently
the same moment_, at points hundreds of miles

{p. 414}

apart, in three different States, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois,
fires of the most peculiar and devastating kind broke out, so far as
we know, by spontaneous combustion.

In Wisconsin, on its eastern borders, in a heavily timbered country,
near Lake Michigan, a region embracing _four hundred square miles_,
extending north from Brown County, and containing Peshtigo, Manistee,
Holland, and numerous villages on the shores of Green Bay, was swept
bare by an absolute whirlwind of flame. There were _seven hundred and
fifty people killed outright_, besides great numbers of the wounded,
maimed, and burned, who died afterward. More than three million
dollars' worth of property was destroyed.[1]

It was no ordinary fire. I quote:

"At sundown there was a lull in the wind and comparative stillness.
For two hours there were no signs of danger; but at a few minutes
after nine o'clock, and by a singular coincidence, _precisely the
time at which the Chicago fire commenced_, the people of the village
heard a terrible roar. It was that of a tornado, crushing through the
forests. _Instantly the heavens were illuminated with a terrible
glare_. _The sky_, which had been so dark a moment before, _burst
into clouds of flame_. A spectator of the terrible scene says the
fire did not come upon them gradually from burning trees and other
objects to the windward, but the first notice they had of it was _a
whirlwind of flame in great clouds from above the tops of the trees_,
which fell upon and entirely enveloped everything. The poor people
inhaled it, or the intensely hot air, and fell down dead. This is
verified by the appearance of many of the corpses. They were found
dead in the roads and open spaces, _where there were no visible marks
of fire near by, with not a trace of burning upon their bodies or
clothing_. At the Sugar Bush, which is an extended clearing, in some
places four miles in width,

[1. See "History of the Great Conflagration," Sheahan & Upton,
Chicago, 1871, pp. 393, 394, etc.]

{p. 415}

corpses were found in the open road, between fences only slightly
burned. _No mark of fire was upon them; they lay there as if asleep_.
This phenomenon seems to explain the fact that so many were killed in
compact masses. They seemed to have huddled together, in what were
evidently regarded at the moment as the safest places, _far away from
buildings, trees, or other inflammable_ material, and there to have
died together."[1]

Another spectator says:

"Much has been said of the intense heat of the fires which destroyed
Peshtigo, Menekaune, Williamsonville, etc., but all that has been
said can give the stranger but a faint conception of the reality. The
heat has been compared to that engendered by a flame concentrated on
an object by a blow-pipe; but even that would not account for some of
the phenomena. For instance, we have in our possession a copper cent
taken from the pocket of a dead man in the Peshtigo Sugar Bush, which
will illustrate our point. _This cent has been partially fused_, but
still retains its round form, and the inscription upon it is legible.
Others, in the same pocket, were partially _melted_, and yet _the
clothing and the body of the man were not even singed_. We do not
know in what way to account for this, unless, as is asserted by some,
the tornado and fire were accompanied by electrical phenomena."[2]

"It is the universal testimony that the prevailing idea among the
people was, that the last day had come. Accustomed as they were to
fire, nothing like this had ever been known. They could give no other
interpretation to this ominous roar, this _bursting of the sky with
fame, and this dropping down of fire out of the very heavens_,
consuming instantly everything it touched.

"No two give a like description of the great tornado as it smote and
devoured the village. It seemed as if 'the fiery fiends of hell had
been loosened,' says one. 'It came in great sheeted _flames from
heaven_,' says another. 'There was _a pitiless rain of fire and_
SAND.' 'The

[1. See "History of the Great Conflagration," Sheahan & Upton,
Chicago, 1871, p. 372.

2. Ibid., p. 373.]

{p. 416}

atmosphere was all afire.' Some speak of '_great balls of fire
unrolling and shooting forth, in streams_.' The fire leaped over
roofs and trees, and ignited whole streets at once. No one could
stand before the blast. It was a race with death, above, behind, and
before them."[1]

A civil engineer, doing business in Peshtigo, says

"The heat increased so rapidly, as things got well afire, that, _when
about four hundred feet from the bridge and the nearest building_, I
was obliged to lie down behind a log that was aground in about two
feet of water, and by going under water now and then, and holding my
head close to the water behind the log, I managed to breathe. There
were a dozen others behind the same log. If I had succeeded in
crossing the river and gone among the buildings on the other side,
probably I should have been lost, as many were."

We have seen Ovid describing the people of "the earth" crouching in
the same way in the water to save themselves from the flames of the
Age of Fire.

In Michigan, one Allison Weaver, near Port Huron, determined to
remain, to protect, if possible, some mill-property of which he had
charge. He knew the fire was coming, and dug himself a shallow well
or pit, made a thick plank cover to place over it, and thus prepared
to bide the conflagration.

I quote:

"He filled it nearly full of water, and took care to saturate the
ground around it for a distance of several rods. Going to the mill,
he dragged out a four-inch plank, sawed it in two, and saw that the
parts tightly covered the mouth of the little well. 'I kalkerated it
would be tech and go,' said he, 'but it was the best I could do.' At
midnight he had everything arranged, and the roaring then was

[1. See "History of the Great Conflagration," Sheahan & Upton,
Chicago, 1871, p. 374.]

{p. 417}

awful to hear. The clearing was ten to twelve acres in extent, and
Weaver says that, for two hours before the fire reached him, there
was a constant flight across the ground of small animals. As he
rested a moment from giving the house another wetting down, a horse
dashed into the opening at full speed and made for the house. Weaver
could see him tremble and shake with excitement and terror, and felt
a pity for him. After a moment the animal gave utterance to a snort
of dismay, ran two or three times around the house, and then shot on
into the woods like a rocket."

We have, in the foregoing pages, in the legends of different nations,
descriptions of the terrified animals flying with the men into the
caves of the earth to escape the great conflagration.

'I Not long after this the fire came. Weaver stood by his well, ready
for the emergency, yet curious to see the breaking-in of the flames.
The roaring increased in volume, the air became oppressive, a cloud
of dust and cinders came showering down, and he could see the flame
through the trees. It did not run along the ground, or leap from tree
to tree, but it came on like a tornado, _a sheet of flame reaching
from the earth to the tops of the trees_. As it struck the clearing
he jumped into his well, and closed over the planks. He could no
longer see, but he could hear. He says that the flames made no halt
whatever, or ceased their roaring for an instant, but he hardly got
the opening closed before the house and mill were burning tinder, and
both were down in five minutes. The smoke came down upon him
powerfully, and his den was so hot he could hardly breathe.

"He knew that the planks above him were on fire, but, remembering
their thickness, he waited till the roaring of the flames had died
away, and then with his head and hands turned them over and put out
the fire by dashing up water with his hands. Although it was a cold
night, and the water had at first chilled him, the heat gradually
warmed him up until he felt quite comfortable. He remained in his den
until daylight, frequently turning

{p. 418}

over the planks and putting out the fire, and then the worst had
passed. The earth around was on fire in spots, house and mill were
gone, leaves, brush, and logs were swept clean away as if shaved off
and swept with a broom, and nothing but soot and ashes were to be
seen."[1]

In Wisconsin, at Williamson's Mills, there was a large but shallow
well on the premises belonging to a Mr. Boorman. The people, when cut
off by the flames and wild with terror, and thinking they would find
safety in the water, leaped into this well. "The relentless fury of
the flames drove them pell-mell into the pit, to struggle with each
other and die--some by drowning, and others by fire and suffocation.
None escaped. _Thirty-two bodies were found there_. They were in
every imaginable position; but the contortions of their limbs and the
agonizing expressions of their faces told the awful tale."[2]

The recital of these details, horrible though they may be, becomes
excusable when we remember that the ancestors of our race must have
endured similar horrors in that awful calamity which I have discussed
in this volume.

James B. Clark, of Detroit, who was at Uniontown, Wisconsin, writes:

"The fire suddenly made a rush, like the flash of a train of
gunpowder, and swept in the shape of a crescent around the
settlement. It is almost impossible to conceive _the frightful
rapidity of the advance of the flames_. The rushing fire seemed to
eat up and annihilate the trees."

They saw a black mass coming toward them from the wall of flame:

"It was a stampede of cattle and horses thundering toward us,
bellowing moaning, and neighing as they galloped

[1. See "History of the Great Conflagration," Sheahan & Upton,
Chicago, 1871, p. 390.

2. Ibid., p. 386.]

{p. 419}

on; rushing with fearful speed, their eyeballs dilated and glaring
with terror, and every motion betokening delirium of fright. Some had
been badly burned, and must have plunged through a long space of
flame in the desperate effort to escape. Following considerably
behind came a solitary horse, panting and snorting and nearly
exhausted. He was saddled and bridled, and, as we first thought, had
a bag lashed to his back. As he came up we were startled at the sight
of a young lad lying fallen over the animal's neck, the bridle wound
around his hands, and the mane being clinched by the fingers. Little
effort was needed to stop the jaded horse, and at once release the
helpless boy. He was taken into the house, and all that we could do
was done; but he had inhaled the smoke, and was seemingly dying. Some
time elapsed and he revived enough to speak. He told his
name--Patrick Byrnes--and said: 'Father and mother and the children
got into the wagon. I don't know what became of them. Everything is
burned up. I am dying. Oh! is hell any worse than this?'"[1]

How vividly does all this recall the book of Job and the legends of
Central America, which refer to the multitudes of the burned, maimed,
and wounded lying in the caverns, moaning and crying like poor
Patrick Byrnes, suffering no less in mind than in body!

When we leave Wisconsin and pass about two hundred and fifty miles
eastward, over Lake Michigan and across the whole width of the State
of Michigan, we find much the same condition of things, but not so
terrible in the loss of human life. Fully _fifteen thousand people
were rendered homeless by the fires_; and their food, clothing,
crops, horses, and cattle were destroyed. Of these five to six
thousand were burned out the _same night that the fires broke out in
Chicago and Wisconsin_. The

[1. See "History of the Great Conflagration," Sheahan & Upton,
Chicago, 1871, p. 383.]

{p. 420}

total destruction of property exceeded one million dollars; not only
villages and cities, but whole townships, were swept bare.

But it is to Chicago we must turn for the most extraordinary results
of this atmospheric disturbance. It is needless to tell the story in
detail. The world knows it by heart:

Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone,
On the charred fragments of her shattered throne,
Lies she who stood but yesterday alone."

I have only space to refer to one or two points.

The fire was spontaneous. The story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow having
started the conflagration by kicking over a lantern was proved to be
false. It was the access of gas from the tail of Biela's comet that
burned up Chicago!

The fire-marshal testified:

"I felt it in my bones that we were going to have a burn."

He says, speaking of O'Leary's barn:

"We got the fire under control, and it would not have gone a foot
farther; but the next thing I knew they came and told me that St.
Paul's church, about two squares north, was on fire."[1]

They checked the church-fire, but--

"The next thing I knew the fire was in Bateham's planing-mill."

A writer in the New York "Evening Post" says he saw in Chicago
"buildings far beyond the line of fire, _and in no contact with it,
burst into flames from the interior_."

[1. See "History of the Great Conflagration," Sheahan & Upton,
Chicago, 1871, p. 163.]

{p. 421}

It must not be forgotten that the fall of 1871 was marked by
extraordinary conflagrations in regions widely separated. On the 8th.
of October, _the same day_ the Wisconsin, Michigan, and Chicago fires
broke out, the States of Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, and Illinois were
severely devastated by prairie-fires; while terrible fires raged on
the Alleghanies, the Sierras of the Pacific coast, and the Rocky
Mountains, and in the region of the Red River of the North.

"The Annual Record of Science and Industry" for 1876, page 84, says:

"For weeks before and after the great fire in Chicago in 1872, great
areas of forest and prairie-land, both in the United States and the
British Provinces, were on fire."

The flames that consumed a great part of Chicago were of an unusual
character and produced extraordinary effects. They absolutely
_melted_ the hardest building-stone, which had previously been
considered fire-proof. Iron, glass, granite, were fused and run
together into grotesque conglomerates, as if they had been put
through a blast-furnace. No kind of material could stand its breath
for a moment.

I quote again from Sheahan & Upton's Work:

"The huge stone and brick structures melted before the fierceness of
the flames as a snow-flake melts and disappears in water, and almost
as quickly. Six-story buildings would take fire and _disappear for
ever from sight in five minutes by the watch_. . . . The fire also
doubled on its track at the great Union Depot and burned half a mile
southward _in the very teeth of the gale_--a gale which blew a
perfect tornado, and in which no vessel could have lived on the lake.
. . . _Strange, fantastic fires of blue, red, and green played along
the cornices of buildings_."[1]

[1. "History of the Chicago Fire," pp. 85, 86.]

{p. 422}

Hon. William B. Ogden wrote at the time:

"The fire was accompanied by the fiercest tornado of wind ever known
to blow here."[1]

"The most striking peculiarity of the fire was its intense heat.
Nothing exposed to it escaped. Amid the hundreds of acres left bare
there is not to be found a piece of wood of any description, and,
_unlike most fires, it left nothing half burned_. . . . The fire
swept the streets of all the ordinary dust and rubbish, consuming it
instantly."[2]

The Athens marble burned like coal!

"The intensity of the heat may be judged, and the thorough combustion
of everything wooden may be understood, when we state that in the
yard of one of the large agricultural-implement factories was stacked
some hundreds of tons of pig-iron. This iron was two hundred feet
from any building. To the south of it was the river, one hundred and
fifty feet wide. No large building but the factory was in the
immediate vicinity of the fire. Yet, so great was the heat, that
_this pile of iron melted and run, and is now in one large and nearly
solid mass_."[3]

The amount of property destroyed was estimated by Mayor Medill at one
hundred and fifty million dollars; and the number of people rendered
houseless, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand. Several hundred
lives were lost.

All this brings before our eyes vividly the condition of things when
the comet struck the earth; when conflagrations spread over wide
areas; when human beings were consumed by the million; when their
works were obliterated, and the remnants of the multitude fled before
the rushing flames, filled with unutterable consternation;

[1. "History of the Chicago Fire," p. 87.

2. Ibid., p. 119.

3. Ibid., p. 121.]

{p. 423}

and as they jumped pell-mell into wells, so we have seen them in Job
clambering down ropes into the narrow-mouthed, bottomless pit.

Who shall say how often the characteristics of our atmosphere have
been affected by accessions from extraterrestrial sources, resulting
in conflagrations or pestilences, in failures of crops, and in
famines? Who shall say how far great revolutions and wars and other
perturbations of humanity have been due to similar modifications?
There is a world of philosophy in that curious story, "Dr. Ox's
Hobby," wherein we are told how he changed the mental traits of a
village of Hollanders by increasing the amount of oxygen in the air
they breathed.

{p. 424}

CHAPTER VI.

THE UNIVERSAL BELIEF OF MANKIND.

THERE are some thoughts and opinions which we seem to take by
inheritance; we imbibe them with our mothers' milk; they are in our
blood; they are received insensibly in childhood.

We have seen the folk-lore of the nations, passing through the
endless and continuous generation of children, unchanged from the
remotest ages.

In the same way there is an untaught but universal feeling which
makes all mankind regard comets with fear and trembling, and which
unites all races of men in a universal belief that some day the world
will be destroyed by fire.

There are many things which indicate that a far-distant, prehistoric
race existed in the background of Egyptian and Babylonian
development, and that from this people, highly civilized and
educated, we have derived the arrangement of the heavens into
constellations, and our divisions of time into days, weeks, years,
and centuries. This people stood much nearer the Drift Age than we
do. They understood it better. Their legends and religious beliefs
were full of it. The gods carved on Hindoo temples or painted on the
walls of Assyrian, Peruvian, or American structures, the flying
dragons, the winged gods, the winged animals, Gucumatz, Rama, Siva,
Vishnu, Tezcatlipoca, were painted in the very colors of the clays
which came from the disintegration of the granite, "red,

{p. 425}

white, and blue," the very colors which distinguished the comet; and
they are all reminiscences of that great monster. The idols of the
pagan world are, in fact, congealed history, and will some day be
intelligently studied as such.

Doubtless this ancient astronomical, zodiac-building, and
constellation-constructing race taught the people the true doctrine
of comets; taught that the winding serpent, the flying dragon, the
destructive winged dog, or wolf, or lion, whose sphinx-like images
now frown upon us from ancient walls and door-ways, were really
comets; taught how one of them had actually struck the earth; and
taught that in the lapse of ages another of these multitudinous
wanderers of space would again encounter our globe, and end all
things in one universal conflagration.

And down through the race this belief has come, and down through the
race it will go, to the consummation of time.

We find this "day of wrath" prefigured in the words of Malachi,
(chap. iv, v. 1):

"1. For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the
proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day
that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it
shall leave them neither root nor branch.

"2. But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness
arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up
as calves of the stall.

"3. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under
the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the
Lord of hosts."

We find the same great catastrophe foretold in the book of
Revelation, (chap. xii, v. 3):

"And there appeared another _wonder in heaven_; and behold a great
red _dragon_, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon
his heads.

{p. 426}

"4. _And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did
cast them to the earth_."

And again, (chap. vi):

"12. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there
was a great earthquake; _and the sun became black as sackcloth of
hair_, and the moon became as blood;

"13. _And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth_, even as a
fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty
wind.

"14. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together;
and _every mountain and island were moved out of their places_.

"15. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men,
and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and
every freeman, _hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the
mountains_;

"16. And said to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us
from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath
of the Lamb

17. _For the great day of his wrath is come_, and who shall be able
to stand?"

Here we seem to have the story of Job over again, in this
prefiguration of the future.

The Ethiopian copy of the apocryphal book of Enoch contains a poem,
which is prefixed to the body of that work, and which the learned
author of "Nimrod" supposes to be authentic. It certainly dates from
a vast antiquity. It is as follows:

"Enoch, a righteous man, who was with God, answered and spoke while
his eyes were open, and while _he saw a holy vision in the heavens_.
. . .

"Upon this account I spoke, and conversed with him who will _go forth
from his habitation_, the holy and mighty One, the God of the world.

"Who will hereafter tread upon the mountain Sinai, and _appear with
his hosts_, and he manifested in the strength of his power from
heaven.

{p. 427}

"All shall be afraid, and the watchers be terrified. Great fear and
trembling shall seize even to the ends of the earth.

"The lofty mountains shall be troubled, and the exalted hills
depressed, _melting like honeycomb in the flame_.

"The earth shall be _immerged_, and _all things_ which are in it
_perish_. . . .

"He shall preserve the elect, and toward them exercise clemency. . .
. The whole earth is full of water."

This is either history or prophecy.

In the Second Epistle General of Peter, (chap. iii,) we have some
allusions to the past, and some prophecies based upon the past, which
are very curious:

Verse 5. "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word
of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the
water and in the water."

That is to say, the earth was, as in Ovid and Ragnarok, and the
legends generally, an island, "standing out of the water and in the
water."

Verse 6. "Whereby _the world that then was_, being overflowed with
water, perished."

This seems to refer to the island Atlantis, "overflowed with water,"
and destroyed, as told by Plato; thereby forming a very distinct
connection between the Island of Poseidon and the Deluge of Noah.

We read on:

Verse 7. "But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same
word are kept in store, _reserved unto fire_ against the day of
judgment and perdition of ungodly men."

Verse 10. "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night;
in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the
elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works
that are therein shall be burned up."

{p. 428}

The Gothic mythology tells us that Surt, with his flaming sword,
"shall come at the end of the world; he shall vanquish all the gods;
he shall give up the universe a prey to the flames."

This belief in the ultimate destruction of the world and all its
inhabitants by fire was found among the American races as well as
those of the Old World:

"The same terror inspired the Peruvians at every eclipse; for some
day--taught the Amantas--the shadow will veil the sun for ever, and
land, moon, and stars will be wrapped in a devouring conflagration,
to know no regeneration."[1]

The Algonquin races believed that some day Michabo "will stamp his
foot on the ground, flames will burst forth to consume the habitable
land; only a pair, or only, at most, those who have maintained
inviolate the institutions he ordained, will he protect and preserve
to inhabit the new world he will then fabricate."[2]