FIG. 32.—SKETCH OF OUTER CORONA, 1869. (U. S. COAST SURVEY REPORT.)
I have spoken of the “unnatural” appearance of the light just before totality. This is not due to excited fancy, for there is something so essentially different from the natural darkness of twilight, that the brute creation shares the feeling with us. Arago, for instance, mentions that in the eclipse of 1842, at Perpignan, where he was stationed, a dog which had been kept from food twenty-four hours was, to test this, thrown some bread just before “totality” began. The dog seized the loaf, began to devour it ravenously, and then, as the appearance already described came on, he dropped it. The darkness lasted some minutes, but not till the sun came forth again did the poor creature return to the food. It is no wonder, then, that men also, whether educated or ignorant, do not escape the impression. A party of the courtiers of Louis XV. is said to have gathered round Cassini to witness an eclipse from the terrace of the Paris observatory, and to have been laughing at the populace, whose cries were heard as the light began to fade; when, as the unnatural gloom came quickly on, a sudden silence fell on them too, the panic terror striking through their laughter. Something common to man and the brute speaks at such times, if never before or again; something which is not altogether physical apprehension, but more like the moral dismay when the shock of an earthquake is felt for the first time, and we first know that startling doubt, superior to reason, whether the solid frame of earth is real, and not “baseless as the fabric of a vision.”
But this is appealing for illustration to an experience which most readers have doubtless been spared,[2] and I would rather cite the lighter one of our central party that day, a few miles north of me, at Shelbyville. In this part of Kentucky the colored population was large, and (in those days) ignorant of everything outside the life of the plantation, from which they had only lately been emancipated. On that eventful 8th of August they came in great numbers to view the enclosure and the tents of the observing party, and to inquire the price of the show. On learning that they might see it without charge from the outside, a most unfavorable opinion was created among them as to the probable merits of so cheap a spectacle, and they crowded the trees about the camp, shouting to each other sarcastic comments on the inferior interest of the entertainment. “Those trees there,” said one of the observers to me the next day, “were black with them, and they kept up their noise till near the last, when they suddenly stopped, and all at once, and as ‘totality’ came, we heard a wail and a noise of tumbling, as though the trees had been shaken of their fruit, and then the boldest did not feel safe till he was under his own bed in his own cabin.”
[2] This was written before the “Charleston earthquake” occurred.
FIG. 33.—TACCHINI’S DRAWING OF CORONA OF 1870.
(SECCHI’S “LE SOLEIL.”)
It is impossible to give an exact view of what our friends at Shelbyville saw, for no drawings made there appear to have been preserved, and photography at that time could only indicate feebly the portion of the corona near the sun where it is brightest. [Fig. 31] is a fac-simile of one of the photographs taken on the occasion, which is interesting perhaps as one of the early attempts in this direction, for comparison with later ones; but as a picture it is very disappointing, for the whole structure of the outer corona we have alluded to is missed altogether, the plate having taken no impression of it.
A drawing ([Fig. 32]) made by another observer, Mr. M’Leod, at Springfield, represents more of the outer structure; but the reader must remember that all drawings must, in the nature of the case (since there are but two or three minutes to sketch in), be incomplete, whatever the artist’s skill.
