“Towards seven o’clock, all trees commanding a view of the enclosure where the fireworks were prepared had received their share of venturous climbers, whose good positions excited envy, and made them excellent marks, not merely for the jokes, but for the missiles of the vulgar crowd below. A perfect storm of turfs and sods, torn from the grass, was hurled at the people who swarmed the trees, many of whom were speedily dislodged; but others, who had secured the uppermost branches, remained possessors of their positions to the end. Foiled in their attempt to dislodge the arboreal class of spectators, the roughs commenced an indiscriminate assault on the crowd, hurling clods and pieces of turf among the more densely packed masses. The assailants became, in turn, the assailed, and many a long and annoying battle was waged, and no small share of angry feeling created by these discreditable proceedings. Any person with a decent coat or hat was sure to become a mark for the mischievous young urchins who indulged in those freaks, and it was only when some two or three persons had the good sense to administer a little wholesome chastisement to the young rascals, that temporary peace was secured.
“At length the hour of nine o’clock arrived, and a signal rocket sent up announced that the long expected display was about to commence, and it was immediately followed by a grand display of white, red, green and yellow fires, with a continuous discharge of maroons. Scarcely had the brilliant colours ceased, when 100 rockets went screeching and screaming through the air in their graceful course, and shell after shell exploded in rapid succession. Then came wheel pieces and gold streamers, and blue and yellow rockets and green and yellow shells; then pearl streamers, blue and yellow rockets, and serpents and yellow shells, and numbers of fixed pieces and tailed stars, and rocket wheels and Scotch stars, and parachutes and pearl rain, and twelve-pointed stars and crackers, and Saxon hoops and silver rain, and diamond pieces and looking glasses, and kaleidoscopes and Maltese crosses, and turning suns and tourbillons, and five-pointed lances and ten-stars, and a variety of other things known only to the initiated in the mystery of the pyrotechnic art.