I say no more; having thus far indulged
you with my confidence, I wrap myself in
dignified reserve, conscious that I have told
you quite enough to secure for myself your
respect henceforward.

CHIPS.

A BUSH FIRE IN AUSTRALIA.

The following account of the Bush Fire
which, in February last, desolated the whole
country around Geelong, is extracted from
the correspondence of a recent settler— a
young man who is part owner of a farm in
the district which suffered most. The letter
is dated March 12th, 1851.

On Thursday, February 6th, I had my first
introduction to one of the "small peculiarities"
of Australian life; viz., a Bush Fire. The
season had been unusually dry, and the grass,
in consequence, ready to catch fire at the least
spark. For some days we had seen the smoke
of several fires around us, but none near
enough to cause us any alarm. Thursday
morning was intensely hot: there was a hot
wind— a regular sirocco blowing. You cannot
have the least idea of the heat here: one day,
in Melbourne, I saw the thermometer standing
at one hundred and forty-five degrees in the
sun, and one hundred and five degrees in the shade!

About one o'clock on this said Thursday, a
farmer named Rawlings, who lives about a
mile and a half from us, sent a man to us
for assistance. He said that a fire, which had
begun at Lake Golar, a place twenty-five
miles off, was rapidly approaching his house.
Our next neighbour, Dent, myself, and two
men who were putting up a hut near us,
started off to render any help we could. When
we came to Rawlings's farm, we found the fire
had not yet reached it, so we went on to see
which way it was coming. After walking half
a mile, we saw it advancing in a red line
through the grass, as fast as a man could run.
From the direction of the wind, we thought it
would avoid both ours and Rawlings's farm,
so we stood for a considerable time watching it
as it moved along in a line parallel to our road
home. All of a sudden the wind shifted, and
the fire came rushing up to where we were
standing; the flames from the long grass
rising more than eight feet high, and forming
a line about a mile long.

As you may imagine, the only thing we
could do was to run for it; and run we did,
until we came to Rawlings's stacks of wheat.
They were in a field surrounded by bush
fences. These bush fences, I may explain, are
made of felled trees, drawn into a line; the
gaps being filled up with small branches. The
fire caught the field at one corner, and ran up
two sides of the fence like lightning; the
flames rising and roaring in a manner which
you town's-people can only imagine by
picturing a whole street on fire at once. The
smoke was so thick that, although only a few
yards from the stacks, we could scarcely see
them; and the lighted leaves came flying
about us in a fiery shower. There was not a
minute to lose; we were obliged once more to
fly from our insatiable enemy, and, at the top
of our speed, to run for our lives; for if the
flames had run up the fence on another side
of the field before we crossed it, we should have
been surrounded by the fire, and smothered, if
not burnt to death.

As it was, we reached the fence just in
time, and succeeded in keeping a little in
advance of the fire until we reached a road
which runs on one side of Mr. Dent's ground,
which is surrounded by bush fences the same
as Rawlings's. Here we determined to make
a stand and try to put out the fire, as the grass
was short along the road; and we were
reinforced by my partner and another man he
had brought with him.

The way we manage to put out a Bush Fire
when it runs through short grass, is to cut
green boughs, to take them in our hands,
and to beat out the flames as they advance
up to the road. It seemed to me to be an
almost impossible task to extinguish such a
formidable fiery line with such puny engines
as branches of trees; however, I set to work
with the others, and we did succeed in
stopping the fire for a quarter of a mile along
the road. We were congratulating ourselves
on our victory, when a spark from some half-
extinguished grass flew across and set fire to
Dent's fence. Here a renewal of our labours,
with tenfold vigour, was necessary, and,
fortunately, we were again successful; for the
wind having lulled a little, we were able to
prevent the fire from spreading by pulling
down the fence on each side of it.

We thought we were safe at last; when,
to our dismay, we saw another body of flame
advancing in a straight line for the fence on
the other side of Mr. Dent's ground. Off we
started to meet this new aggression; and, after
a hard fight, were again conquerors. By the
time this was accomplished, we thought
ourselves safe at last. It began to get dark, so
we went home and had some tea, and then we
commenced a perambulation of our ground,
to see how far the conflagration had extended.
We found that the two fires had joined below
our own ground, so that it and Mr. Dent's
formed an island in the midst of the fiery
sea. During the whole night we could almost
see to read by the light of the fires burning
round us. In every direction there were
trees blazing high up in the air, seeming like
sentinels of the fiery army with which
we had been contending all the afternoon.
Towards morning some rain fell, which
obviated any further danger of the flames
spreading.

Next day we learnt that all the country
between us and Geelong— about twelve miles
— had been burnt; farm-houses, stacks, and
everything: but fortunately only few persons