ASCENSION, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, between 7° 53′ and 8° S., and 14° 18′ and 14° 26′ W., 800 m. N.W. of St Helena, about 7½ m. in length and 6 in breadth, with an area of 38 sq. m. and a circumference of about 22 m. The island lies within the immediate influence of the south-east trade-wind. The lee side of the island is subject to the visitation of “rollers,” which break on the shore with very great violence. Ascension is a volcanic mass erected on a submarine platform. Numerous cones exist. Green Mountain, the principal elevation, is a huge elliptical crater, rising 2820 ft. above the sea, while the plains or table-lands surrounding it vary in height from 1200 to 2000 ft. On the north side they sweep gradually down towards the shore, but on the south they terminate in bold and lofty precipices. Steep and rugged ravines intersect the plains, opening into small bays or coves on the shore, fenced with masses of compact and cellular lava; and all over the island are found products of volcanic action. Ascension was originally destitute of vegetation save on the summit of Green Mountain, which owes its verdure to the mists which frequently enshroud it, but the lower hills have been planted with grasses and shrubs. The air is clear and light, and the climate remarkably healthy, notwithstanding the high temperature—the average day temperature on the shore being 85° F., on Green Mountain 75° F. The average rainfall is about 20 in., March and April being the rainy months. Ascension is noted for the number of turtles and turtle eggs found on its shores, the season lasting from December to May or June. The turtles are caught and kept in large ponds. The coasts abound with a variety of fish of excellent quality, of which the most important are the rock-cod, the cavalli, the conger-eel and the “soldier.” Numbers of sheep are bred on the island, and there are a few cattle and deer, besides goats and wild cats. Feathered game is abundant. Like St Helena, the island does not possess any indigenous vertebrate land fauna. The “wideawake” birds frequent the island in large numbers, and their eggs are collected and eaten. Beetles and land-shells are well represented. Flies, ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, centipedes and crickets abound. The flora includes purslane, rock roses and several species of ferns and mosses.
The island was discovered by the Portuguese navigator, João da Nova, on Ascension Day 1501, and was occasionally visited thereafter by ships. In 1701 William Dampier was wrecked on its coast, and during his detention discovered the only spring of fresh water the island contains. Ascension remained uninhabited till after the arrival of Napoleon at St Helena (1815), when it was taken possession of by the British government, who sent a small garrison thither. A settlement, named George Town (locally known as Garrison), was made on the north-west coast, water being obtained from “Dampier’s” springs in the Green Mountain, 6 m. distant. The island is under the rule of the admiralty, and was likened by Darwin to “a huge ship kept in first-rate order.” It is governed by a naval captain borne on the books of the flagship of the admiral superintendent at Gibraltar. A depot of stores for the navy is maintained, but the island is used chiefly as a sanatorium. Ascension is connected by cable with Europe and Africa, and is visited once a month by mail steamers from the Cape. Formerly letters were left by passing ships in a crevice in one of the rocks. The population, about 300, consists of seamen, marines, and Krumen from Liberia.
See Africa Pilot, part ii., 5th ed. (London, 1901); C. Darwin, Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. “Beagle” (London, 1844); Report of the Scientific Results of the Voyage of the “Challenger,” vol. i. part 2 (London, 1885); and Six Months in Ascension, by Mrs Gill (London, 1878), an excellent sketch of the island and its inhabitants. It was at Ascension that Mr, afterwards Sir, David Gill determined, in 1877, the solar parallax.
ASCENSION, FEAST OF THE, one of the oecumenical festivals of the Christian Church, ranking in solemnity with those of Christmas, of Easter and of Pentecost. It is held forty days after Easter, or ten days before Whitsunday, in celebration of Christ’s ascension into heaven forty days after the resurrection. It always falls on a Thursday, and the day is known as Ascension Day, or Holy Thursday. The festival is of great antiquity; and though there is no discoverable trace of it before the middle of the 4th century, subsequent references to it assume its long establishment. Thus St Augustine (Ep. 54 ad Januar.) mentions it as having been kept from time immemorial and as probably instituted by the apostles. Chrysostom, in his homily on the ascension, mentions a celebration of the festival in the church of Romanesia outside Antioch, and Socrates (Hist. eccles. vii. 26) records that in the year 390 the people of Constantinople “of old custom” (ἐξ ἔθους) celebrated the feast in a suburb of the city. As these two references suggest, the festival was associated with a professional pilgrimage, in commemoration of the passing of Christ and his apostles to the Mount of Olives; such a procession is described by Adamnan, abbot of Iona, as taking place at Jerusalem in the 7th century, when the feast was celebrated in the church on Mount Olivet (de loc. sanct. i. 22). The Peregrinatio of Etheria (Silvia), which dates from c. A.D. 385, says that the festival was held in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem (Duchesne, Chr. Worship, p. 515). In the West, however, in the middle ages, the procession with candles and banners outside the church was taken as symbolical of Christ’s triumphant entry into heaven.
In the East the festival is known as the ἀνάληψις, “taking up,” or ἐπισωζομένη, a term first used in the Cappadocian church, and of which the meaning has been disputed, but which probably signifies the feast “of completed salvation.” The word ascensio, adopted in the West, implies the ascension of Christ by his own power, in contradistinction to the assumptio, or taking up into heaven of the Virgin Mary by the power of God.
In the Roman Catholic Church the most characteristic ritual feature of the festival is now the solemn extinction of the paschal candle after the Gospel at high mass. This candle, lighted at every mass for the forty days after Easter, symbolizes the presence of Christ with his disciples, and its extinction his parting from them. The custom dates from 1263, and was formerly confined to the Franciscans; it was prescribed for the universal church by the Congregation of Rites on the 19th of May 1697. Other customs, now obsolete, were formerly associated with the liturgy of this feast; e.g. the blessing of the new beans after the Commemoration of the Dead in the canon of the mass (Duchesne, p. 183). In some churches, during the middle ages, an image of Christ was raised from the altar through a hole in the roof, through which a burning straw figure representing Satan was immediately thrown down.
In the Anglican Church Ascension Day and its octave continue to be observed as a great festival, for which a special preface to the consecration prayer in the communion service is provided, as in the case of Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and Trinity Sunday. The celebration of the Feast of the Ascension was also retained in the Lutheran churches as warranted by Holy Scripture.
See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (1900), s. ”Himmelfahrtsfest”; L. Duchesne, Christian Worship (2nd Eng. ed., London, 1904); The Catholic Encyclopaedia (London and New York, 1907).