196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The Caribs, and the Hurons as well, made a great din, upon 

 drums and kettles, and by rattling loose pebbles in gourds, to 

 frighten away the terrible demon Maboya, the author of frightful 

 apparitions, pestilence, thunder, and storms, who was trying to 

 eat up the moon. The French author Dutestre describes the Car- 

 ibs, young and old, women and men, as dancing all night long, 

 with their feet close together, one hand on their heads and the 

 other on their hips, not singing but shouting lugubriously. Once 

 beginning to dance, every one had to keep it up till daylight, 

 without stopping for anything whatever. At the same time a 

 girl would be shaking a gourd rattle and trying to keep her voice 

 in tune with the din. While Eskimos were applying somewhat 

 similar remedies, their women bored the ears of the dogs in the 

 faith that, if the animals cried out, the end of the world was not 

 yet at hand ; for these animals are supposed to have existed be- 

 fore men, and to have a better presentiment of the future. The 

 practice of those tribes which shoot arrows at the jaguar or 

 shark, or whatever animal they may suppose to be eating the 

 moon, is matched by the example of Alfonso VI, of Portugal, in 

 1664, who, learning that a comet was in sight, went out to look 

 at it, scolded it, and fired pistol-shots at it. 



While the story of the dragon which causes eclipses by devour- 

 ing the sun or the moon is still current among the populace in 

 Siam and China, the educated classes in those countries have mas- 

 tered enough of the science of the phenomena to be able to cal- 

 culate them. But in China the court and imperial authorities 

 throughout keep up in form the primitive traditions. Under these 

 traditions an eclipse of the sun was a warning to the emperor to 

 look into his faults and amend them. The coming phenomenon 

 having been pre-announced by the official astronomer,* notice of 

 it was given throughout the country and the court made prepara- 

 tion for it by fasting and retreat. The appointed day was one of 

 anxious waiting. The instant the star was touched, or when it 

 began, according to the Chinese expression, to be eaten, the em- 

 peror himself gave the alarm by beating the prodigy-roll on the 

 thunder-drum. The mandarins, who had come with their bows 

 and arrows to succor the suffering star, shot into the air unin- 

 terruptedly. The Chinese illuminati know that these are only 

 forms, but superstition still rules among the people, who throw 

 themselves upon their knees at the beginning of the eclipse, and 

 make a great noise with drums and gongs, to deliver the star from 

 the devouring dragon. The Greek and Latin authors relate that 

 a great noise was made during eclipses. The early Christians 



* The astronomers He and Hi were condemned to death for having failed to predict, 

 according to the requirements of the law, the eclipse of the sun that occurred in the reign 

 of Tchong Kang, 2155 b. c. 



