Omega: The Last days of the World

by Camille Flammarion

Among uncivilized people these phenomena excite today the same terror which they once did among us. This fact is frequently attested by travellers, especially in Africa. During the eclipse of July 18, 1860, in Algeria, men and women resorted to prayer or fled affrighted to their homes. During the eclipse of July 29, 1878, which was total in the United States, a negro, suddenly crazed with terror, and persuaded that the end of the world was coming, cut the throats of his wife and children.

It must be admitted that such phenomena are well calculated to overwhelm the imagination. The sun, the god of day, the star upon whose light we are dependent, grows dim; and, just before it becomes extinguished, takes on a sickly and mournful hue. The light of the sky pales, the animal creation is stricken with terror, the beast of burden falters at his task, the dog flees to its master, the hen retreats with her brood to the coop, the birds cease their songs, and have been seen even to drop dead with fright. Arago relates that during the total eclipse of the sun at Perpignan, on July 8, 1842, twenty thousand spectators were assembled, forming an impressive spectacle. “When the solar disc was nearly obscured, an irresistible anxiety took possession of everybody; each felt the need of sharing his impressions with his neighbor. A deep murmur arose, like that of the far away sea after a storm. This murmur deepened as the crescent of light grew less, and when it had disappeared and sudden darkness had supervened, the silence which ensued marked this phase of the eclipse as accurately as the pendulum of our astronomical clock. The magnificence of the spectacle triumphed over the petulance of youth, over the frivolity which some people mistake for a sign of superiority, over the indifference which the soldier frequently assumes. A profound silence reigned also in the sky: the birds had ceased their songs. After a solemn interval of about two minutes, joyous transports and frantic applause greeted with the same spontaneity the first reappearance of the solar rays, and the melancholy and indefinable sense of depression gave way to a deep and unfeigned exultation which no one sought to moderate or repress.”

Every one who witnessed this phenomenon, one of the most sublime which nature offers, was profoundly moved, and took away with him an impression never to be forgotten. The peasants especially were terrified by the darkness, as they believed that they were losing their sight. A poor child, tending his flock, completely ignorant of what was coming, saw the sun slowly growing dim in a cloudless sky. When its light had entirely disappeared the poor child, completely carried away by terror, began to cry and call for help. His tears flowed again when the first ray of light reappeared. Reassured, he clasped his hands, crying, “O, beautiful sun!”

Is not the cry of this child the cry of humanity?

So long as eclipses were not known to be the natural consequences of the motion of the moon about the earth, and before it was understood that their occurrence could be predicted with the utmost precision, it was natural that they should have produced a deep impression and been associated with the idea of the end of the world. The same is true of other celestial phenomena and notably of the sudden appearance of unknown suns, an event much rarer than an eclipse.

“O, BEAUTIFUL SUN!”

The most celebrated of these appearances was that of 1572. On the 11th of November of that year, about a month after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, a brilliant star of the first magnitude suddenly appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia. The stupefaction was general, not only on the part of the public, to which it was visible every night in the sky, but also on the part of scientists, who could not explain its appearance. Astrologers found a solution of the enigma in the assertion that it was the star of the Magi, whose reappearance announced the return of the Son of God, the last judgment and the resurrection. This statement made a deep impression upon all classes of society. The star gradually diminished in splendor, and at the end of about eighteen months went out, without having caused any other disaster than that which human folly itself adds to the misery of a none too prosperous planet. Science records several apparitions of this nature, but the above was the most remarkable. A like agitation has accompanied all the grand phenomena of nature, especially those which have been unforeseen. In the chronicles of the middle ages, and even in more recent memoirs, we read of the terror which the aurora borealis, showers of shooting stars and the fall of meteorites have produced among the alarmed spectators. Recently, during the meteor shower of November 27, 1872, when the sky was filled with more than forty thousand meteorites belonging to the dispersed comet of Biela, women of the lower classes, at Nice especially, as also at Rome, in their excitement sought information of those whom they thought able to explain the cause of these celestial fire-works, which they had at once associated with the end of the world and with the fall of the stars, which it was foretold would usher in that last great event.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have sometimes attained such proportions as to lead to the fear that the end of the world was at hand. Imagine the state of mind of the inhabitants of Herculaneum and of Pompeii when the eruption of Vesuvius buried them in showers of ashes! Was not this for them the end of the world? And more recently, were not those who witnessed the eruption of Krakatoa of the same opinion? Impenetrable darkness lasting eighteen hours, an atmosphere like a furnace, filling the eyes, nose and ears with ashes, the deep and incessant cannonade of the volcano, the falling of pumice stones from the black sky, the terrible scene illuminated only at intervals by the lurid lightning or the fire-balls on the spars and rigging of vessels, the thunder echoing from cloud and sea with an infernal musketry, the shower of ashes turning into a deluge of mud—this was the experience of the passengers of a Java vessel during the night of eighteen hours, from the 26th to the 28th of August, 1883, when a portion of the island of Krakatoa was hurled into the air, and the sea, after having first retreated, swept upon the shore to a height of thirty-five meters and to a distance of from one to ten kilometers over a coast-line of five hundred kilometers, and in the reflux carried away with it the four cities, Tjiringin, Mérak, Telok-Bétong and Anjer, and the entire population of the region, more than forty thousand souls. For a long time the progress of vessels was hindered by floating bodies inextricably interlaced; and human fingers, with their nails, and fragments of heads, with their hair were found in the stomachs of fishes. Those who escaped, or who saw the catastrophe from some vessel, and lived to welcome again the light of day, which had seemed forever extinguished, relate in terror with what resignation they expected the end of the world, persuaded that its very foundations were giving way and that the knell of a universal doom had sounded. One eye-witness assures us that he would not again pass through such an experience for all the wealth that could be imagined. The sun was extinguished and death seemed to reign sovereign over nature. This eruption, moreover, was of such terrific violence that it was heard through the earth at the antipodes; it reached an altitude of twenty thousand meters, producing an atmospheric disturbance which made the circuit of the entire globe in thirty-five hours (the barometer fell four millimeters in Paris even), and left for more than a year in the upper layers of the atmosphere a fine dust, which, illumined by the sun, gave rise to those magnificent twilight displays admired so much throughout the world.

These are formidable disturbances, partial ends of the world. Certain earthquakes deserve citation with these terrible volcanic eruptions, so disastrous have been their consequences. In the earthquake of Lisbon, November 1, 1755, thirty thousand persons perished; the shock was felt over an area four times as large as that of Europe. When Lima was destroyed, October 28, 1724, the sea rose twenty-seven meters above its ordinary level, rushed upon the city and erased it so completely that not a single house was left. Vessels were found in the fields several kilometers from the shore. On December 10, 1869, the inhabitants of the city of Onlah, in Asia Minor, alarmed by subterranean noises and a first violent trembling of the earth, took refuge on a neighboring hilltop, whence, to their stupefaction, they saw several crevasses open in the city which within a few moments entirely disappeared in the bowels of the earth. We have direct evidence that under circumstances far less dramatic, as for example on the occasion of the earthquake at Nice, February 23, 1887, the idea of the end of the world was the very first which presented itself to the mind.