VOYAGE TO ALGEKIA. 



159 



seven minutes of totality another space towards the 

 zenith became very dark. The atmosphere was, as it 

 were, on the brink of a precipice, being charged with 

 humidity, which required but a slight chill to bring it 

 down in clouds. This was furnished by the withdrawal 

 of the solar beams : the clouds did come down, cover- 

 ing up the space of blue on which our hopes had so 

 long rested. I abandoned the telescope and walked to 

 and fro in despair. As the moment of totality ap- 

 proached, the descent towards darkness was as obvious 

 as a falling stone. I looked towards a distant ridge, 

 where the darkness would first appear. At the moment 

 a fan of beams, issuing from the hidden sun, was spread 

 out over the southern heavens. These beams are bars 

 of alternate light and shade, produced in illuminated 

 haze by the shadows of floating cloudlets of varying 

 density. The beams are practically parallel, but by an 

 effect of perspective they appear divergent, having the 

 sun, in fact, for their point of convergence. The dark- 

 ness took possession of the ridge referred to, lowered 

 upon M. Janssen's observatory, passed over the southern 

 heavens, blotting out the beams as if a sponge had 

 been drawn across them. It then took successive pos- 

 session of three spaces of blue sky in the south-eastern 

 atmosphere. I again looked towards the ridge. A 

 glimmer as of day-dawn was behind it, and immediately 

 afterwards the fan of beams, which had been for more 

 than two minutes absent, revived. The eclipse of 1870 

 had ended, and, as far as the corona and flames were 

 concerned, we had been defeated. 



Even in the heart of the eclipse the darkness was by 

 no means perfect. Small print could be read. In fact, 

 the clouds which rendered the day a dark one, by scat- 

 tering light into the shadow, rendered the darkness less 

 intense than it would have been had the atmosphere beep 

 8 



