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The seeds, if any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these heavy clearings those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops of fire-weed are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in.
The valley and the mountains lay before him bare and black, with many spirals of dove-coloured smoke rising thinly here and there. And the man thought within himself: 'After great mischief, peace. In a single year the fire-weed will have made this waste a fairy-land. The time will come when there will be left no token of this desolation. Nature endures no lasting loss, and is the soul less vital?
Even an Irishman would not see a row of little men with green caps lepping along beneath the fire-weed and the golden daisies; nor have the subtler fairies of England found these wilds. It has never paid a steamship or railway company to arrange for their emigration.
Next followed what we may call fire-weed literature, the first rank, raw product of new lands. Under these two heads a vast number of books must of course be reckoned. But beyond these American literature has already passed, and now can point to books that spring out of the pure genius of the New Man.
Afterwards she went out and stood between the two sentinel firs that had marked the entrance to that snow-tunnel long since disappeared. Now it was a late October day, bright as a bared sword. The flowers of the Indian paint-brush burned like red candle flames everywhere under the firs, the fire-weed blazed, the aspen leaves were laid like little golden tiles against the metallic blue of the sky.
More than a year before Jonas Harding had begun on this lot, with the intention of clearing it entirely and in the end having a handsome piece of grass-land along the edge of the creek. In the fall a fire had run over the piece and now the stumps were mostly dead, although the fire-weed was waist high.
Their bones were bleaching in the fire-weed. On from claim to claim the new-comers to these rich pastures went, till they came to the junction of the El Dorado, where huddles the haphazard settlement of the Grand Forks, only twelve miles from Dawson. And now they were at the heart of "the richest Placer Mining District the world has seen."
When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of fire-weed, Senecio hieracifolius, a tall, herbaceous plant, very seldom seen growing under other circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from the clearing.
Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural "gristmills" of the birds.
"It's very warm!" I said as I picked a stalk of fire-weed. What was there about the girl which so thrilled me with happiness? She turned away and felt the ribbon by which her hair was gathered at the back of her head. I wanted to kiss her as I had done years before, but I was afraid. She turned suddenly and said to me: "A penny for your thoughts." "You won't laugh at me?" "No."
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