I have seldom known very serious damage by these fires done in Canada
West, although occasionally a barn or house falls a sacrifice to the
devouring element. Not so, however, in some parts of Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick, where extensive conflagrations often devastate the
country for miles round. Of such a character was the great fire at
Miramichi, which nearly destroyed Fredericton, and was attended not
only with an immense loss of property but with the sad loss of many
valuable lives. I will presently give in his own forcible and feeling
language the history of a lumberer who escaped from destruction after
being for some time in imminent peril of his life. He was one of the
few persons who had the good fortune of escaping the great
conflagration in Miramichi, which broke out in the October after my
arrival, and excited so much general sympathy. Fifteen of his comrades
perished in the flames.

The narrative which I introduce here, anticipating by a few months the
proper order of narration, was related to me by the man himself with
that native eloquence which often surprises, and always interests us in
the uneducated. The class to which he belongs is one peculiar to
America. Rough in manners, and often only half-civilized, the lumberer,
as an individual, resembles little the woodsman of other lands. He is
generally a Canadian Frenchman, or a breed between the Irish and the
native of the Lower Province. However, some Yankees may be found among
these denizens of the woods and wilds of Canada. The fearful
conflagration to which our poor lumberer nearly fell a victim, has been
thus ably described in M'Gregor's "British America." "In October, 1825,
about a hundred and forty miles in extent, and a vast breadth of the
country on the north, and from sixty to seventy miles on the south side
of Miramachi river, became a scene of perhaps the most dreadful
conflagration that has occurred in the history of the world.