“Boston, August 21, 1869.
“Commander ashe, Quebec Observatory.
“Dear Sir,—I owe you an apology for not writing earlier, and communicating my observations on the eclipse; but since I parted from you at Detroit, I have been so constantly on the move, as to seem to have no opportunity. I will now state briefly a few phenomena that I noticed at the time of the eclipse, most of which I think were communicated to you verbally before.
“After the clouds that partially obscured the sari on the morning of the 7th had passed away, I observed that though the atmosphere was hazy, and the sky by no meansblue, there was an unusual stillness and freedom from agitation in the air, so that the outlines of the spots on the sun were clearly defined in the small Dolland telescope that I had under my charge, and this satisfactory condition of the air for telescopic observation continued until after the end of totality. The first contact was at 3h. 38m. 10s local time. It was probably about 3s. after this, before you were notified that the eclipse had begun, two or three seconds being lost in determining whether it was the limb of the moon, indenting the edge of the sun, or not. Your first photograph was therefore probably five or six seconds after the beginning. The passage of the edge of the moon over the larger spot on the sun, I noted as follows:—
H. M. S.
Contact with the Penumbra............. 4 3 34
" " " Umbra................ 4 3 56
Complete obscuration of Umbra......... 4 4 34
“The time both of the beginning and end of totality, for reasons verbally stated to you, I failed to note. Of the phenomena during totality, those which I most noted were, first, the disappearance of the last rays of the sun in an irregular broken line of light, succeeded at or near this point by a band or corona of a silvery white light almost as bright as the face of full moon. This though much wider at this point than elsewhere, was soon observed to extend in an entire ring around the dark body of the moon; from this luminous ring, rays of light seemed to shoot out at right angles on every side, diverging as it were from the centre of it. In some places they seemed to extend out nearly half the diameter of the moon from the bright ring; in others, not one fourth so far. But the most remarkable appearance of all, and that which attracted the attention of every one who witnessed the eclipse, whether seen with the naked eye or with the telescope, were the red protuberances that shot up immediately on the disappearance of the sun, from various places, on the edge of the moon; their position your photograph will fix better than I describe. The largest was on the lower edge of the moon, and was by my estimate, when highest, not less than two minutes in altitude from the edge of the moon, or about 55,000 miles. Its colour was a bright pinkish red, its outlines were well defined, and were not curves, but rather irregularly-broken straight lines, and throughout it seemed marked by similar lines. It reminded me of the appearance one sometimes sees on the face of a cliff where the rock is broken by horizontal and vertical lines. The same or nearly the same appearance would be presented if one were to view columnal basaltic rocks, from a point where the rocks in the rear would rise above those in front. I would therefore suggest whether these lines may not have a similar origin, and each be the outline of a vast column of luminous matter thrown up above the atmosphere of the sun. There was a constant fluctuation in the height of these coloured protuberances during the total eclipse; the large one was the only one that was seen throughout the whole time, and that remained visible for some time after the edge of the sun appeared.
The general phenomena, such as the darkness, the shining of the stars, &c, I had less opportunity of noticing than yourself and others, who were without a telescope, and will therefore say nothing about them. I have made no attempt to put my observations into any regular form, but have hastily written such as I thought might be of use to you, leaving it entirely to you to make any use of them.
“Very truly yours,