The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1884-05-01
The Red Sunsets.


The way in which men take the un-
expected IS an excellent gauge Of their
state of mind. Sudden changes i'm the |
face Of nature bring the man out of his
burrow and exhibit his hidden motives.
Fifty Years ago the meteoric shower of
1888 showed that the less cultivated
class. even in America, still looked up
on the accidents of the skies as signs Of
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? Naturalism
has advanced fast and far in the last
century.
The autumn of 1888 will always have
large place in ienlic history on &C.
count of the strange aspect of its
heavens, as well as on account of the
preceding eruFtions of volcanoes in the
Straits of Sunda, which in their gran
deur and effects much e ceeded
any disturbance recorded in his
tory. Although the volcanic outburst
changed the geography of a large dis
tIict. de troYed somewhere near che
hundred thousand lives and sent the
ocean waves and the throbs of the air
produced by the CONFUSION 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 die from that of a small field
piece. But the strange heavens of the
later Autumn. the fiery glow of sunrise
and sunset, the ErOWni h ha that
girdles the sun all day, are phenomena
80 out of the range of common expert
ence that at first all the experts in me-
fOnrOlnarx, Rzya- a al THAR. nwT0lanQ-
tions. At the outset, many of these
students of the atmosphere turned natur-
ally to the con lecture that some of the
Yagrant matter of space, such as we see
in the comets or dust-lke neteors. had
been drawn down upon our atmos-
phere and so enveloped the ear h with
a meteoric mist, OtheTS looked
upon these movements as i mere
intensihcation of the afte'glow, or sec
ond sunset, which is not an unfamiliar
phenomenon in al eXtra-trOpical re-
gions at 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
mosphere. Gradually, as the facts have
been gathered in from all parts OF the
world, these explanations have been
owe. thrown, and the sunsets have been
prov I'll ~ D6 III EOllG way COAAnCClC0
with the Javanese CONFUSION. At sew
eral points in Europe the new-fallen
snow contains particles of volcanic du
essentially like tho that fell upon the
decks of ships near the point Of erup-
ton, and which pre- umably are the
heavier 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 quickly in the district
near the volcano than in regi ms re-
mote from it. 1t is not easy TO deter
mine the pre- Else times when the sunset
and sunrise became so brilliant; for at
first the henomenon might seem acct
dental IN its nature, and so not become
recorded. Yet it is clear that at Rod
rigue,, Mauritius, and Seychelles,
points from three thousand to three
thousand five hundred miles west of
krakatoa, the red sunsets were seen on
the 28th of August, within thirty six
hours after the eruption occurred. In
Bra il, which is over ten thousand miles
away they appeared on the seth of
September In Florida, thirteen thou
sand miles distant, on September 9Th.
1t was noticed in England on the tn of
September, but in Sweden not until the
3Oth of November: each of these coun-
tries being about seven thousand five
hundred miles from the point of erup-
ton. The volcanic mist spread more
rapidly in the tropical belt between the
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
some slower motion to higher la itudes.
N S. ShdEer, IN atlantic Monthly.