fanned by a strong south wind, swept like a prairie fire through the city. It ran up Whitehall to Broadway, and up the east side of that thoroughfare to Beaver, where with a change of wind it leaped the street and sped on up the west side, sweeping everything clean to the North river. Trinity church, with its rectory and charity school, and the Lutheran church, were soon blackened heaps of ruins. St. Paul's was saved only by the desperate efforts of citizens, who climbed out upon its flat roof and quenched live embers as they fell. The flames were only checked by the open grounds and stone buildings of King's college.
"'This fire was so furious and so violently hot that no person could go near it,' wrote an eyewitness. 'If one was in one street and looked about, the fire broke out already in another street above, and thus it raged all night, and till about noon.' ... Four hundred and ninety-three houses and several churches were destroyed. The British jumped to the conclusion that the Americans were burning the town to prevent its serving them as winter quarters, and they bayoneted several worthy citizens who were putting out the fire, and threw others into the flames under the impression that they were the incendiaries."
From the hour the British took possession of
