The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1885-01-15
ThR 5lailg 8n)lttia.
THURSDAY, JAN. 10, 1885.
The RED SKIES.

dian correspondent, upon the topic
of the Red ,Sk'ieS, is probably cor
rect in imputing them TO refraction
by minute ice crystals. But the
eminent meteorologist Professor lie
Coute, of California University,
showed clearly in Nature, several
months ago, that such ice crystals
in the atmosphere form only upon
minute solid nuclei. The recent
sudden and enormous increase of
these rejecting crystals in the upper
air cannot be due, as your friend
suggests, to n growing GOODNESS of
the earth, whose effects must he
very gradual. 1t is solely due to a
sudden and immense introduction of
minute dust into the upper air, pro-
noting the formation of the ice
crystals. As winter approached in
that hemisphere, congelation in
creased, and hence great increase
of the glows, which here have been
very uniformly brilliant since the be-
ginning of observation-disclosures very
fitful.
Your correspondent not strangely
overlooks or is ignorant of the re-
sistless and copious evidence, to
which we in Honolulu have had our
attention compelled, that the source
of this atmospheric dust was the
eruption of Krakatao on the Goth
of August, 1883. The strange and
brilliant displays of the red skies
made their first appearances very
irregularly and titfully in Europe
and the United States during Octo-
Der and November, 1888. 1t was
otherwise at Honolulu. On the
evening of September 9Th, the grand
spectacle burst suddenly upon us
with q portentous, almost terrible
glory such as attended it nowhere
else. We are able TO say with pre-
cision that the cause of the phenome-
non, whatever it was, arrived in our
island skies exactly on that day, the
9TH of September, 1888, not before
and not after. We say also with
certainty, that this same phenome-
non, though often fading and re-
kindling, has never left our skies
since that date. Although often
hardly perceptible when the sun was
below the horizon, 1t has dlacays
been distinct in the daytime in its
form of grayish hay corona with
chocolate edges, or, as the sun de-
clined, of more Opaque yellowish
haze
But we are enabled with I'M
questionable certainty to trace back
directly to. Krakatao that appalling
stream of vapors which filed our
skies with such amazing glories of
changing and outpouring masses of
varying colors ON that wonderful
evening. August Goth, a pail of
impenetrable volcanic cloud en-
veloped 100, 900 square miles around
krakatao. A special stream from
the summit of that smoke-pile shot
westward around the globe, turning
the sun q ghastly green palencss
wherever it went, SO that it could
be stared at freely with the naked
eye. This smoke-stream reached the
Seychelles, August 29th; Cape
Coast Castle, Sept. 1st; Moranham,
Sept. lst; Venezuela and Panama,
Sept. End; Fanning's Island, in Lon.
1863 W., Sept. 4th; Strong's Is
land, 1879 e., on Sept. 9th; in all
which places the phenomena of gray
sky and green Opaque sun were the
same, creating wonder and alarm.
Thus the strange eclipsing vapors
swept around 800 degrees of the
Equator in eleven days. This is
established and incontrovertible tact.
But in none of these places were
the red skies then observed. How
do you prove any connection be-
tween that phenomenon of the green
darkened sun, and this of the brilli-
ant red sunset and sunrise skies?
Why, simply this, that throughout
these Hawaiian Islands, 800 miles
due north of Fanning's Island, which