Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-09-08
STRANGE EERTE 60JNn
THE BOOMING OF THE GUNS
OF BURRISAUL.
Other Mystifying Phenomena The
Grooming Tree In the New Forest
Tedworth's Phantom Drummer-The
Bell in the I'rlmeval Woods.


no accurate explanation has been
given, so far as we are aware, that
is thoroughly satisfactory. The
/ Sunderbunds-as the delta of the
Ganges in native dialect is called-is
covered with a vast and luxuriant
jungle of marshy vegetation. One of
the stations is named Burrisaul
From here, in the rainy season, have
long been heard mysterious sounds
resembling the discharge of artillery,
and therefore, popularity named '.the
guns of Burrisaul Only heard in
the rainy season, and from the
southwark, they have been heard
hundred miles Off; yet on the coast
itself, they appear still further south.
The sounds esemble the booming of
cannon. Mussulman and Hindoo
superstitions have each associated
the sounds with their religious ira
ditions. Others have thought the
sounds the breaking of the sea on an
island in the bay of Bengal. But
whereP That some atmospheric or
meteorological cause is the explana-
ton, is all that can be said after
hearing all arguments.
A much humber, yet ancient, in
stance of great local interest used to
exist we believe, at Braddeley, in
the New Forest, in the shape of
groanlng tree Whether it still
lives and groans we are uncertain,
but it is said to have uttered mysteri-
Gus and lugubrious sounds at certain
times, probably dependent on wind
or weather, but full of omen and
import to past generations. Indeed,
in the various mysteries which, de-
spite tin-de-siecie acuteness, still
surround us, eery noises have always
played a most conspicuous part,
whether out of doors or within an
| cient houses. Instances of the latter,
indeed, abound. Some of the most
thrilling of ineXplicable ghost stories
turn, not on anything which has APP
palled the eyes, but has distilled
horror through the ears. it is. we
believe, in East Anglia that the
shricks heard from time to time
round certain pits have long been a
tradition in which female phantom
has part.
The drummer of Tedworth's"
! phantom sounds are so we'll known
from Aubrey and more modern de-
scribers as only to need allusion, but
we may here say that, according to
a communication in popular period
zeal some few years back, similar
sounds had recently, comparatively
| speaking, been heard in the locality
and by people of most practical dis
position These may be called phan-
tom sounds. Returning, again, to
those which hover on the border
! line between the natural and inexpli-
cable, there is the wild strain as of
, wierd music, which has been heard
aboard ships when getting within the
! circle of a Mozambique cyclone One
of the same kind, formerly mysteri-
Gus and thrilling enough, has been
resolved into a natural one. Early
travellers through the primeval for
ests of Brazil-still among the
few uneXplored places of the globe
were astonished and awed to
hear the distant resonant sound of
bell pealing from the depths of the
woods, which certainly had no build
| ing, and for ages had known no human
footstep. Many legend was woven
around the strange sound. Ulti-
mately it was discovered to be the
note of the bellbird. There are, how
ever, few mysterious sounds which
have as satisfactorily been explained
as this. For instance, there is the
! legend of the sounds heard at times
on the plains at Marathon, the clash
of weapons, the snorting of horses,
the shouting of the slayers and
screeching of the slain" which re-
calls to memory the famous battle
thet lives so much more wildly than
many modern ones in the history Of
the world. OF course there are
many instances of sounds which, at
first mysterious become so really
from the distance over which they
travelled, but these must be distin-
guished from those which are our
theme.
One of the most interesting ex-
apples rests on the authority of the
late Sir Edward Head, who remem-
bered, when boy, going to church
on Abe famous Waterloo Sunday"
June Is, 1915, at Hythe, in Kent
His father and he, on arriving at the
church at ii o'clock u M, found. to
their surprise, the congregation out
side listening intently to the faint
sound as of distant cannon coming
from the east Afterward it was
ascertuined that Napoleon having, ON
the (for him) unfortunate advice of
his artillery officers, who pleaded the
state of the ground, waited till IL
to commence his fire, the first French
gun was fired as the Nivelles church
clock struck IL. Nor was the Hytl.e
the only place where the French can
non were heard in England
| Perpetual Motion Reward,