360 STEWART COUNTY (GEORGIA) METEORITE. 



to the south-east. After the explosions a peculiar whirring 

 sound was heard, apparently produced by some large irregular 

 body moving very rapidly. This also went in a south-easterly 

 direction. This sound was heard several seconds; many have 

 compared it, and aptly too, to an imperfect steam -whistle. I 

 have no precise idea of the time consumed in all this demon- 

 stration. Some persons say several minutes, but I think ten 

 or fifteen seconds would about cover the time. 



"As the larger body was going out of our hearing, some 

 moments after the explosions, a smaller one passed to the 

 south-west with just such a noise as is always produced by a 

 flying fragment of a shell after its explosion, or of any angular 

 body cast violently through the air. This piece descended to 

 the earth, distinctly traced in its passage by many persons, and 

 struck in the yard of Capt. E. Earlow — which point of contact 

 is, on an air-line, about two and a half miles from a perpendic- 

 ular beneath where the explosions occurred. This is the only 

 one known to have fallen in this section. 



" The explosions, together with the rushing sound afterward, 

 were heard over a region about thirty miles north-east and 

 south-west, and fifty or sixty miles north-west and south-east. 

 No shock was felt — at least no tremor of the earth. 



" Two men say that they were looking in the exact direction 

 of the explosions at the time they occurred and saw a quantity 

 of vapor, much like the volume of steam escaping from the pipe 

 of an engine at each successive stroke, which vapor or mist was 

 violently agitated and increased in bulk with each successive 

 report, but disappeared soon after the cessation of the reports. 

 This corroborates the testimony of some of my own laborers, 

 who say that immediately after the explosions something like 

 a thin cloud cast its shadow over the field they were in." 



Hon. John T. Clarke, of Cuthbert, Ga., who has interested 

 himself in collecting the history of the meteorite, and through 

 whose influence it has come into the possession of Mercer Uni- 

 versity, writes me the following particulars of its fall: 



"It fell about lli a. m., on the 6th of October last (1869), in 

 Stewart County, Georgia, on the premises of Elbridge Barlow, 

 Esq., about twelve miles south of west from Lumpkin. Capt. 

 Barlow picked it up a few moments after it fell. His account 

 of it is this : While standing in the open yard, the sky being 



