Fig. 76.—Eclipse of the Moon at Laos (February 27, 1877).
These fears and terrors are still extant among ignorant peoples. In the night of February 27, 1877, an eclipse of the Moon produced an indescribable panic among the inhabitants of Laos (Indo-China). In order to frighten off the Black Dragon, the natives fired shots at the half-devoured orb, accompanying their volley with the most appalling yells. Dr. Harmand has memorialized the scene in the lively sketch given on p. 269.
During the solar eclipse of March 15, 1877, an analogous scene occurred among the Turks, who for the moment forgot their preparations for war with Russia, in order to shoot at the Sun, and deliver him from the toils of the Dragon.
The lunar eclipse of December 16, 1880, was not unnoticed at Tackhent (Russian Turkestan), where it was received with a terrific din of saucepans, samovars and various implements struck together again and again by willing hands that sought to deliver the Moon from the demon Tchaitan who was devouring her.
In China, eclipses are the object of imposing ceremonies, whose object is to reestablish the regularity of the celestial motions. Since the Emperor is regarded as the Son of Heaven, his government must in some sort be a reflection of the immutable order of the sidereal harmonies. As eclipses were regarded by astrologers as disturbances of the divine order, their appearance indicates some irregularity in the government of the Celestial Empire. Accordingly, they are received with all kinds of expiatory ceremonies prescribed thousands of years ago, and still in force to-day.
In the twentieth century, as in the nineteenth, the eighteenth, or in ancient epochs, the same awe and terror operates upon the ignorant populations who abound upon the surface of our planet.
To return to astronomical realities.
We said above that these phenomena were produced when the Full Moon and the New Moon reached the line of intersection, known as the line of nodes, when the plane of the lunar orbit cuts the plane of the ecliptic. As this line turns and comes back in the same direction relatively to the Sun at the end of eighteen years, eleven days, we have only to register the eclipses observed during this period in order to know all that will occur in the future, and to find such as happened in the past. This period was known to the Greeks under the name of the Metonic Cycle, and the Chaldeans employed it three thousand years ago under the name of Saros.
On examining this cycle, composed of 223 lunations, we see that there can not be more than seven eclipses in one year, nor less than two. When there are only two, they are eclipses of the Sun.