3?4 
TALLIXG METEOBS. 
■whether the meteors of the 12th of November had been 
perceived. In a wild country, where the greater number 
of the inhabitants sleep in the open air, so extraordinary 
a phenomenon could not fail to be remarked, unless it 
had been concealed from observation by clouds. The Ca- 
puchin missionary at San [Fernando de Apure,* a village 
situated amid the savannahs of the province of Yarinas ; 
the [Franciscan monks stationed near the cataracts of the 
Orinoco and at Maroa, f on the banks of the Rio Negro ; 
had seen numberless falling-stars and bolides illumine the 
heavens. Maroa is south-west of Cumana, at one hun- 
dred and seventy-four leagues distance. All these observers 
compared the phenomenon to brilliant fireworks; and it 
lasted from three till six in the morning. Some of the 
monks had marked the day in their rituals ; others had 
noted it by the proximate festivals of the Church. Un- 
fortunately, none of them could recollect the direction of 
the meteors, or their apparent height. Prom the position 
of the mountains and thick forests which surround the 
Missions of the Cataracts and the little village of Maroa, 
I presume that the bolides were still visible at 20° above 
the horizon. On my arrival at the southern extremity of 
Spanish Guiana, at the little fort of San Carlos, I found 
some Portuguese, who had gone up the Rio Negro from 
the Mission of St. Joseph of the Maravitans. They assured 
me that in that part of Brazil the phenomenon had been 
perceived at least as far as San Gabriel das Caehoeiras, 
consequently as far as the equator its elf. J 
I was forably struck by the immense height which these 
bolides must have attained, to have rendered them visible 
simultaneously at Cumana, and on the frontiers of Brazil, in 
a line of two hundred and thirty leagues in length. But 
what was my astonishment, when, on my return to Europe, 
I learned that the same phenomenon had been perceived 
* N. lat. 7 ° 53' 12'; W. long. 70° 20'. 
f N. lat. 2” 42' O'; W. long. 70“ 21'. 
J A little to the north-west of San Antonio de Castanheiro. I did not 
meet with any persons who had observed this meteor, at Santa Fe de 
Bogoti, at Popayan, or in the southern hemisphere, at Quito and Peru. 
Perhaps the state of the atmosphere, so changeable in these western 
regions, prevented observation. 
