THE GREAT BOMBARDMENT. 



5*3 



tween twelve and one o'clock in the morning, and shot across the 

 heavens, a fiery red mass — not like the ordinary meteor, but writhing 

 and twisting in a manner peculiarly its own, resembling a huge ser- 

 pent. When it had passed nearly across the sky it apparently 

 stopped and doubled in the form of a horseshoe, according to the 

 informant of the writer, as large as a half-mile race track. The 

 horseshoe remained visible several minutes, gradually disappearing. 

 The brilliancy of this meteor can be imagined when it is known that 

 the entire San Gabriel Valley was illumined as though an electric 

 light of great power had suddenly been flashed upon it. 



Some time in past ages a meteorite weighing at least ten tons 

 shot into our atmosphere and struck the earth near the famous Canon 

 Diablo in Arizona, the mysterious gulch crossed by the Atchison, 

 Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. The discovery was made several 





fmasmw 



The Crater of Coon Butte near Canon Diablo, near which the fragments of a meteorite 

 have been found, and which was supposed at one time to have been made by the meteorite. 



years ago by a sheep herder, named Armijo. Finding a piece of iron 

 with a peculiar lustrous surface which he believed to be silver, he car- 

 ried it to one of the towns, where it finally fell into the hands of a 

 geologist, who pronounced it a meteorite. The discovery was followed 

 up, and on the crest and in the vicinity of a singular cone about four 

 thousand feet in diameter pieces of a meteorite were found on the 

 surface, which gave a combined weight of ten tons, in all probability 

 but a fraction of the real monster. The iron masses were wide- 

 ly scattered over the slope and the adjacent mesa, and it was 

 assumed that a gigantic meteorite or star had fallen and produced 

 the cone, another striking the earth and forming what is now known 

 as the Canon Diablo. A large piece of meteoric iron was found 

 twenty miles from the cone; another eight miles east of it; two 

 thousand pieces weighing not over a few pounds or ounces were 

 taken from the slopes; two exceeding a thousand pounds were found 

 within a half mile, while forty or fifty weighing about one hundred 

 pounds were discovered within a radius of half a mile. Here not 

 only a meteor, but a large-sized meteoric shower, had succeeded in 

 penetrating the armor of the earth, leaving many evidences of the 

 extraordinary occurrence which may have been witnessed by the 

 early man of what is now known as Arizona. From the peculiar 



