234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



seat and toward the door, to see what had happened there, but had 

 scarcely risen when another concussion and a mighty detonation 

 came. I supposed that a very heavy piece of artillery had been dis- 

 charged in the street, just in the rear of the house. Before I could 

 reach the door, but a few feet away, there came another detonation 

 and another terrific jar, which shook, as the others had done, the house 

 to its foundations. The three reports were in such rapid succession 

 as to be almost simultaneous, but thought was quicker than they, and 

 leaped from supposition to supposition in an instant. The last concus- 

 sion dissolved my doubts as to the origin of those that had preceded 

 it, and I at once looked in the direction in which I knew the powder- 

 mills to lie. 



A spectacle of exquisite beauty and sublimity met my eyes, which 

 will abide in my memory forever. I can hardly expect to convey to 

 the reader the impression which it made upon me. Towering in 

 the heavens, sharply defined against the deep-blue sky, was a column 

 of dazzling white, perhaps a mile in height, and a thousand feet in 

 diameter. Its sides were evenly cut and in perfect symmetry through 

 the whole length of the marvelous column, till they spread out on 

 either side at the top in a broad, palm-like canopy. The mid-day sun 

 was shining upon it, and lighting it up with an unearthly splendor, 

 while it seemed to stand almost over us. We gazed awe-struck and 

 entranced upon it, and could easily think of that pillar of cloud that, 

 in the olden time, stood in its awful majesty in front of the camp of 

 Israel. 



It was so vast that it seemed close at hand, although it was three 

 miles away. We watched it silently till it slowly changed its form, 

 and gradually drifted in great cumulous clouds away. It was a vision 

 of singular and glorious beauty, such as I never expect to see again. 



In this instance three buildings had been destroyed. The shock 

 of the explosions was exceedingly marked and peculiar, different from 

 any thing that I had previously known. It had a sort of pervasive 

 character that suggested the cause as being immediately at hand. 

 My first impression was not of something at a distance, but rather of 

 the jar of a heavy body falling within four or five feet of where we 

 were sitting, and, when it was repeated, of a cannon discharged close 

 by the house. It seemed to be underneath and all around — to fill the 

 very earth and air. 



This pervasive character of the shock is very remarkable. It is the 

 same in all that I have heard. It seems to be felt scarcely more vio- 

 lently in the immediate vicinity of the place where it occurred than 

 miles away. In this case we were between three and four miles off, and 

 yet the explosion could scarcely have been more startling and severely 

 felt, or have seemed nearer, to those who were within a few rods of the 

 place. Indeed, on certain occasions, the violence of the shock is felt 

 much more at a distance than close at hand. In one instance that I 



