In the last edition prior to the Chicago fire, the Illinois Staats Zeitung carries an article on "Forest Fires," from which we quote:

The persevering drought has made creeks and rivers disappear in the fir region of Northeast Wisconsin, and has so dried up the soil that it has become almost impossible to stop a forest fire. The forest fires that ravage the dense woods along the 120 mile-long Green Bay Railroad, are without example. Lives undoubtedly will be lost..... Along the track of the Chicago and Northwestern, the fire advances on both sides between Despere and Appleton. The town of Green Bay itself is threatened. Firebrands are flying into the streets. In Kewanee County, eighty dwellings have been burned.

In Minnesota, the fire began on the prairie south of Breckinridge, near the Pacific Railroad, and spread, driven by strong winds, with incredible speed over hundreds of miles. One-hundred and fifty miles from its starting point, it reached the "Big Woods" and consumed the tall trees up to Smith's Lake. The damage is immense. The storage house of D. Graff and Company, twenty miles this side of Breckenridge, was consumed by the flames, which had to make a jump 2of forty feet over the track of the Pacific Railroad to reach it.

In Indiana and Ohio the woods on either side of the Toledo Wabash and Western railroads are in flames, between Antwerp, Ohio, and New Haven, Indiana. The fire has still not been checked.