at once went down to the fire, which was got under, and saw the wreck
of the city and the houseless people camping out among the things they
had saved. Fire was still burning or smouldering everywhere, high walls
were falling, hose were playing on mountains of smouldering timber,
whole streets were blocked with masses of fallen brick and stone,
charred telegraph poles and fused wires were lying about, with half
burned ledgers and half burned everything. The colored population
exceeds one hundred and fifty-two thousand souls, and only those who
know the Babel which an eastern crowd is capable of making under
ordinary circumstances can imagine what the deafening din of human
tongues was under these very extraordinary ones. In the prison, which
was threatened by the flames, were over eight hundred ruffians of all
nations, and it was held by one hundred soldiers with ten rounds of
ammunition each, prepared to convey the criminals to a place of safety
and to shoot any who attempted to escape. The dread of these
miscreants, which was everywhere expressed, is not unreasonable, for
the position of Victoria, and the freedom and protection afforded by
our laws, together with the present Governor's known sympathies with
colored people, have attracted here thousands of the scum of Canton and
other Chinese cities, to say nothing of a mass of European and Asiatic
ruffianism, much of which is at all times percolating through the
magnificent Victoria prison.

On returning, I was just beginning to unpack when the flames burst out
again. It was luridly grand in the twilight, the tongues of flame
lapping up house after house, the jets of flame loaded with blazing
fragments, the explosions, each one succeeded by a burst of flame,
carrying high into the air all sorts of projectiles, beams and rafters
paraffine soaked, strewing them over the doomed city, the leaping
flames coming nearer and nearer, the great volumes of smoke,