oftlte 



In the night all the plate-holders were duly filled and arrangeil in 

 order. 



For about a week before the day of the eclipse the closely approxi 

 mate time of Greenwich mean noon was signalled to us from the ship- 

 This proved of the greatest value, as it relieved the camps of the 

 necessity of making independent time determinations. 



From the moment at which the erection of the instruments was 

 commenced four members of the " Guardia Civil " were told off by the 

 Spanish authorities to watch over the safety of our gear. A single wire 

 cord stretched round the area occupied by the instruments served as the 

 line of demarcation, within which unauthorised persons were not 

 allowed to come. On the day of the eclipse this line was thrmvn 

 somewhat farther back at the suggestion of our Spanish friends. 



The weather on the momentous 28th was all that astronomers could 

 desire. With the greatest care all our apparatus was revised. The end 

 of our barn had been smoothed over with stucco so as to present a white 

 expanse some 30 feet in width by 15 feet in height on which to observe 

 the shadow bands. The azimuth of this wall was very exactly S. 40 W., 

 and as mid-totality occurred in azimuth 92 10', the position of the wall 

 was very favourable for the observations in question. We also put up 

 a white screen some 14 feet square, projecting at right angles to the 

 northern end of the wall, and whitened the ground in the angle thus 

 enclosed, thereby giving three planes on which we hoped the bands 

 might be seen. Two officers of the " Theseus," who for some days 

 previously had practised marking and recording imaginary shadow 

 bands, were entrusted with the duty of recording the real bands as they 

 appeared on the white surfaces. They were provided with brushes 

 attached to long poles, and with pots of coloured wash blue for the 

 beginning of totality and red for the end. 



I undertook to observe the first contact with a small telescope of 

 2 inches aperture. 



This occurred 10*'4 before the computed time, but the discrepancy 

 caused no surprise, as the moon's limb was very rough at the point of 

 contact, and there was the chance that our chronometer-time might be 

 out a second or two. In view of the very important work before us, 

 no photographs of the partial phase were attempted. 



I have a note that at twelve minutes before totality the sky began 

 to darken very rapidly, the darkness increasing more and more visibly 

 during the last minutes l>efore the total phase. Five minutes before 

 totality, at the word " Stations," everyone took up his assigned post. 

 The large crowd of spectators who had collected during the last hour 

 or two pressed closer in to the boundary wire some of them still 

 expressing their doubts as to whether the eclipse would really be total 

 or not 



Eighty-three seconds before the computed time of second contact I 



