120 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



ness to take charge of my notebook. I mentioned, and he 

 wrote rapidly down, such things as seemed worthy of 

 remembrance. Thus my hands and mind were entirely 

 free; but it was all to no purpose. A patch of sunlight fell 

 and rested upon the landscape some miles away. It was 

 the only illuminated spot within view. But to the north- 

 west there was still a space of blue which might reach us in 

 time. Within seven minutes of totality another space 

 toward 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, covering 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 approached, the descent toward 

 darkness was as obvious as a falling stone. I looked toward 

 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 sou them heavens. Those 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 per- 

 spective they appear divergent, having the sun, in fact, for 

 their point of convergence. The darkness took possession 

 of the ridge referred to, lowered upon M. Janssen's observ- 

 atory, passed over the southern heavens, blotting out the 

 beams as if a sponge had been drawn across them. It then 

 took successive possession of three spaces of blue sky in the 

 southeastern atmosphere. I again looked toward the ridge. 

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

 afterward 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 scattering 

 light into the shadow, rendered the darkness less intense 

 than it would have been had the atmosphere been without 

 cloud. In the more open spaces I sought for stars, but 

 could find none. There was a lull in the wind before and 

 after totality, but during the totality the wind was strong. 



