“I walked home with him through the streets, admiring his indomitable energy. I saw him the next morning sitting on his mule, with the guide he had hired. His strong frame, his manly face, his gray beard and mustache, and his sightless eyeballs gave him quite a noble appearance.”
Lieutenant Holman died in his London chambers, July, 1857. He had never married, so that the unpublished journals and other literary material which survived him was not placed before the world as it probably would have been had a devoted son survived him. Through a relative who settled in Canada, however, the name and the fame of this remarkable man have come down to us.
It is due to the courtesy of a member of Lieutenant Holman’s family, a young artist, now in this country, that I am indebted for the intimate details here given concerning this intrepid traveler.
THE LIGHT OF THE HARVEST MOON.
Its Brightness Enables Farmers to Gather in Their Crops During the Night—The Natural Phenomena Which Make September “The Month of Moonlight.”
September is “the month of moonlight.” Poets and impressionists at this season of the year, have, from time immemorial, flooded the world with harvest-moon imagery. Pictures of moonlight lovers strolling along moonlit lanes, rowing on moonlit rivers, in moonlit boats, moonlight gleaners and the harvest home have been painted over and over again in word and color, but the why and wherefor of the extraordinary brilliance of the Queen of Night during the period that she is known as the “harvest moon” has been completely lost sight of by the great majority.
Those who observe the ordinary astronomical phenomena of daily occurrence are familiar with the time variations in the moon’s rising and setting. This is due to the direction of the moon’s apparent path with reference to the horizon, of whatever place it is viewed from. Its distance from the earth and its daily motion eastward in right ascension.
For the first few days in every lunar month the moon rises or sets twenty-three or twenty-four minutes later for three or four successive evenings, after which the retardation varies from that time to an hour and seventeen minutes, and sometimes more.
In the latitude of New York the maximum retardation is seventy-seven minutes and the minimum is twenty-three.
When the retardation is a minimum at the time of the full moon, the light is very powerful, and farmers have often taken advantage of the practically all-night brilliancy for several days, to harvest their grain. September 21 being the autumnal equinox and the full moon occurring nearest that date being usually in the height of harvest time, it is called the harvest-moon.