138 SCENERY OP THE HEAVENS. 



flew about like grasshoppers, and were dispersed from left to right ; this lasted till day 

 break ; the people were alarmed." The researches of the Orientalist, M. Von Hammer, 

 have brought these singular accounts to light. Theophanes, one of the Byzantine his 

 torians, records, that in November of the year 472 the sky appeared to be on fire over 

 the city of Constantinople with the coruscations of flying meteors. The chronicles of the 

 West agree with those of the East in reporting such phenomena. A remarkable display 

 was observed on the 4th of April 1095 both in France and England. The stars seemed, 

 says one, " falling like a shower of rain from heaven upon the earth ; " and in another 

 case, a bystander, having noted the spot where an aerolite fell, "cast water upon it, 

 vvhicli was raised in steam, with a great noise of boiling." The chronicle of Rheims 

 describes the appearance, as if all the stars in heaven were driven, like dust, before the 

 wind. "By the reporte of the common people, in this kynge's time (William Rufus)," 

 says Rastel, " divers great wonders were sene and therefore the kyng was told by 

 divers of his familiars, that God was not content with his lyvyng, but he was so Avilful and 

 proude of minde, that he regarded little their saying." There can be no hesitation now in 

 giving credence to such narrations as these, since similar facts have passed under the 

 notice of the present generation. 



The first grand phenomenon of a meteoric shower which attracted attention in modern 

 times was witnessed by the Moravian Missionaries at their settlements in Greenland. 

 For several hours the hemisphere presented a magnificent and astonishing spectacle, that 

 of fiery particles, thick as hail, crowding the concave of the sky, as though some magazine 



of combustion in celestial space was 

 discharging its contents towards the 

 earth. This was observed over a wide 

 extent of territory. Humboldt, then tra 

 velling in South America, accompanied 

 by M. Bonpland, thus speaks of it : 

 " Towards the morning of the 13th 

 November, 1799, we witnessed a most 

 extraordinary scene of shooting meteors. 

 Thousands of bodies and falling stars 

 succeeded each other during four hours. 

 Their direction was very regular from 

 north to south. From the beginning of 

 the phenomenon there was not a space in 

 the firmament equal in extent to three diameters of the moon which was not filled 

 every instant with bodies or falling stars. All the meteors left luminous traces or 

 phosphorescent bands behind them, which lasted seven or eight seconds." An agent of 

 the United States, Mr. Ellicott, at that time at sea between Cape Florida and the West 

 India Islands, was another spectator, and thus describes the scene : "I was called 

 up about three o'clock in the morning, to see the shooting stars, as they are called. 

 The phenomenon was grand and awful. The whole heavens appeared as if illuminated 

 with sky-rockets, which disappeared only by the light of the sun after daybreak. The 

 meteors, which at any one instant of time appeared as numerous as the stars, flew in all pos 

 sible directions, exceptfrom theearth, towards which theyall inclined more or less ; and some 

 of them descended perpendicularly over the vessel we were in, so that I was in constant 

 expectation of their falling on us." The same individual states that his thermometer, 

 which had been at 80 Fahr. for four days preceding, fell to 56, and, at the same time, 

 the wind changed from the south to the north-west, from whence it blew with great vio 

 lence for three days without intermission. The Capuchin missionary at San Fernando, a 



