Fall of a black substance;
Shocks like those of an earthquake.
In this instance, the only available forest fire was one to the south of the Ohio River. For all I know, soot from a very great fire south of the Ohio might fall in Montreal, Canada, and conceivably, by some freak of reflection, light from it might be seen in Montreal, but the earthquake is not assimilable with a forest fire. On the other hand, it will soon be our expression that profound darkness, fall of matter from the sky, lights in the sky, and earthquakes are phenomena of the near approach of other worlds to this world. It is such comprehensiveness, as contrasted with inclusion of a few factors and disregard for the rest, that we call higher approximation to realness—or universalness.
A darkness, of April 17, 1904, at Wimbledon, England (Symons' Met. Mag., 39-69). It came from a smokeless region: no rain, no thunder; lasted 10 minutes; too dark to go "even out in the open."
As to darknesses in Great Britain, one thinks of fogs—but in Nature, 25-289, there are some observations by Major J. Herschel, upon an obscuration in London, Jan. 22, 1882, at 10:30 A.M., so great that he could hear persons upon the opposite side of the street, but could not see them—"It was obvious that there was no fog to speak of."
Annual Register, 1857-132:
An account by Charles A. Murray, British Envoy to Persia, of a darkness of May 20, 1857, that came upon Bagdad—"a darkness more intense than ordinary midnight, when neither stars nor moon are visible...." "After a short time the black darkness was succeeded by a red, lurid gloom, such as I never saw in any part of the world."
"Panic seized the whole city."
"A dense volume of red sand fell."
This matter of sand falling seems to suggest conventional explanation enough, or that a simoon, heavily charged with terrestrial sand, had obscured the sun, but Mr. Murray, who says that he had had experience with simoons, gives his opinion that "it cannot have been a simoon."