Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1884-06-05
The Red Sunsets,


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 mo-
tives. Fifty years ago the meteoric
shower of 1888 showed that the less
cultivated class, even in America, still
looked upon the accidents of the skies
as signs of heavenly wrath and por-
tents of coming ills. Now even the
least educated no longer ask, What
does this presage? but What is its
cause? Naturalism has advanced fast
and far in the last century.
The autumn of 1883 will ALWAYS
have large place in scientific history
on account 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
grandeur and effects much exceeded
any disturbance recorded in history.
Although the volcanic outburst
changed the geography of large dis
trict, destroyed somewhere near one
hundred thousand lives, and sent the
ocean waves and throbs of the air pro-
duccd by the convulsion over tho whole
circumference of the earth its nature
was not unusual; it differed from a
thousand similar accidents of this
troubled world only in degree,
as the discharge of a twenty-inch can
non differs from that of q small field
piece. But the strange heavens of the
later autumn, the fiery glow of sun
rise and sunset, the brownish haze
that girdles the sun all day, are phen-
omena so out of the range of common
experience that at first all the experts
in meteorology were at sea in their ex-
plantations. At the outset, many of
these students of the atmosphere
turned naturally to the conjecture that
some of the vagrant matter of SPACE.
such rs we see in the comets or dust
like meteors, had been drawn down
upon our atmosphere, and so envcl-
oped the earth with meteoric mist.
Others looked upon these movements
as mere lntensltication of the after
glow, or second sunset, which is not an
phenomenon in all extra
regions at certain seasons of |
the year, particularly in the autumn,
and which is probably due to the con-
densation of vapor in the upper reg
ions of the atmosphere. Gradually.
as the facts have been gathered in
from all parts of the world, the eX-
plantations have been overthrown. and
The sunsets have been proven to be in
some way connected with the Javanese
At several points in Eu-
rope the new-fallen snow contains par
'lcles OF yolanic dust essentially like
hose that fell upon the decks of ships
hear the point of eruption, and which
presumably are the heavier bits that
'ave descended from dust-cloud in the
upper air. {
Still further, it has been shown that
hese curious appearances of the sky
more quickly in the district
lear the volcano than in regions re- {
note from it. 1t is not easy TO deter !
nine the precise time when the sunset /
nd sunrise became so brilliant; for at S
Lrst the phenomenon might seem acci- I
entail in its nature, and so not become +
ecorded. Yet it is clear that at Rod l.
lguez, Mauritius, and Seychelles, t
olnts from three thousand 10 three n
nohsand five hundred miles west of a
-rakatoa, the red sunsets were seen I
n the 28th of August within thirty
tx hours after the eruption occurred.
4 Brazil, which is over ten thousand
liles away, they appeared on the 3Oth
September. In Florida. thirteen II
lousand miles distant, on September h
IN. 1t was noticed in England on the il
III of September, but in Sweden not C
ntil the 30th of November; each of p
lese countries being about seven Il
lousand five hundred miles from the g
1int of eruption, The volcanic mist le
'read more rapidly in the tropical h
Dit between the parallels of latitude W
which Java lies than in the regions te
the north and south of this line. G
weeping swiftly about the earth in lo
is tropical belt, it seems to have been d,
FRIED thence by some slower motion II
higher latitudes.-M S. ShGler in hi
osI atlantic. d.