The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1884-04-26
The Red Sunsets.

The way in which men take the uu.
expected is an excellent gauge of their
state of mind. Sudden changes in the
face Of nature bring the man out of his
burrow and exhibit his hidden motives.
Fifty years ago the meteoric shower oil
1888 showed that the less cultivated
class, even in America, still locked up.
on the acc. dents of the skies as signs oil
heavenly wrath and portents of com.
ing ills. Now even the least educated
no longer ask: What does this presage:
but: What is its cause? Naturalisn
has advanced fast and far in the last
century.
The autumn of 1888 viii always have
a large place in scientific history on &C.
count of the strange aspect of its
heavens, as well as on account of the
preceding eruptions of volcanoes in the
Straits of Sunda, which in their gran
deur and effects much exceeded
any disturbance recorded in his
tory. Although the volcanic outburst
changed the geography of large dis
tlict, destroyed somewhere near one
hundred thousand lives and sent the
ocean waves and the throbs of the air
produced by the convulsion over the
whole circumference of the earth, its
nature was not unusual; It differed
from a thousand similar accidents OF
this troub ed world only in degree
only as the dis barge of a twenty-inch
cannon dlle from that of small field
piece. But the strange heavens of the
later Autumn, the fiery glow of sunrise
and sunset, the browni,h haze that
girdles the sun all day, are phenomena
so out of the range of common expert
ence that at first all the experts in me.
teorology were at sea in their eXplana'
tons. AT the outset, many of these
students of the atmosphere turned natur-
ally to the conjecture that some of the
vagrant matter of space. such as we see
in the comets or dust-like meteors, had
been drawn down upon our atmos,
phere and so enveloped the ear h with
meteoric mist. Others looked
upon these movements as a. mere
intensification of the afterglow, or Sec
ond sunset, which is not an unfamiliar
phenomenon in all extra-tropical re-
gions st ce tain seasons of the year, par
ii ularly in the autumn, and which is
| probably due to the condensation OF
vapor in the upper regions of the at.
been gathered in from all parts OF the
world, these explanations have been
o>e thrown, and the sunsets have been
proven to be in some way connected
| with the Javanese CONFUSION. At sew,
eral points in Europe the new ia len
snow contains particles of volcanic du .
| essentially like tho e that ell upon tho
decks of ships near the point of erup.
| ton, and which pre- umably are thu
hea, Ter bits that have descended from
the dust-cloud in the upper air.
Still further, it has been shown that
| these curious appearances of the SKY
occur. ed more quick y in the district
near the volcano than in reoi ms re,
mote from it. 1t is not easy to deter.
mine the precise times whel the sunset
and sunrise became so brilliant; for at
| first the lhenomenon might seem n CT.
! dental n its nature. and so not become
recorded. Yet it is clear that at Eod,
riguc,, Maurtius, and Seychelles,
points from three thousand TO three
thousand five hundred miles we t OF
| krakatoa, the red sunsets were seen on
the 18th of August, within thirty 81
hours after the eruption occurred. In
| Bra il, which is over ten thousand mile
away they appeared on the 81 tn OF
| September. In Florida, thi teen thou.
sand miles distant, Oh September tn.
1t was noticed in England on the tn OF
! September, but in sweden not until tho
30th of No, ember; each of these coun-
tries being about seven thousand five
hundred miles from the point of erup-
ton. The volcanic mist spread more
| ra oiHlN in tba tTonipaI holt hot Vnnn tba
parallels of latitude in which Java lies
than in the regions to the north and
south of this line. Sweeping swiftly
about the earth in this tropical belt, 1t
seems to have been carried thence by