The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1900-05-22
THE ECLIPSE.

North CarOIlnlanS IN view OF Gn6
fact that Old Sol has specially
favored our State in his little per
Torrance. AS a fully total eclipse
this will be seen only along a path
fifty miles wide, which crosses
Mexico, darts across the Gulf and
runs straight from New Orleans to
Norfolk, crosses the Atlantic and
ends in northern Africa. The path
in America includes Mobile and
Montgomery, Ala, Macon and Mil
ledgeville, Ca, several South Caro-
lima towns, and in our own State,
Wadesboro, Fayetteville, Raleigh,
Smithfield, Nashville, LOuisburg,
Edenton, and intervening country.
To the unaided eye the eclipse will
appear total throughout the State.
At Raleigh the eclipse begins at 7:37
a.. m. becomes total at s 4: 40 and ends
at 10: 10 a. M. Some of the worlds
most noted astronomers will observe
the eclipse at WadesbOrO. Not within
more than a century, perhaps several
Centuries, have conditions been so
favorable for observing a total
eclipse of the sun in this State.
An eclipse is caused, it is unneces-
sary to state, by the dark body OF
the moon passing between the earth
and the sun and thus Ob%structing the
suns light and throwing a shadow
upon our planet. A solar eclipse
can occur therefore only when the
moon is new, just as an eclipse of the
moon happens only when the moon
is full.
The d can never remain totally
eclipsed to any part of the world
longer than seven minutes and So
seconds. In the eclipse of this year,
the duration of totality is very
short, being little more than a min
ute near New Orleans, and less than
a minute and a half in North Caro-
lima.
Americans have been quite FORUM
ate in the matter of total eClipSes of
the sun, this months being, we be-
lieve, the third or fourth of the
century. On the other hand, only
one total solar eclipse has been visi-
BILE in London, England, for more
than seven hundred years and the
next n does not become due for
six hundred years.
Nothing so excited and terrified
our ancestors of a few centuries ago
as these eclipses. Nor is it sur
prising that they were so affected.
Of all the phenomena of nature,
nothing is said to be more awe-in-
spring. The famous Professor Grant
says:
"On no other occasion does the
display of stupendous power in the
economy of the physical universe
exercise so subduing an influence
over the mind, or produce SC humili-
ating a conviction of the impotence
of all human efforts to control the
immutable laws of Nature and arrest
the course of events, as when the
glorious orb Of day, while riding in
the heavens with UnClOuded sDlen-
dor, begins to melt away from an
unseen cause, and soon totally dis
appears, leaving the whole visible
world wrapped in the sable gloom of
nocturnal darkness. The scene is
rendered still more impressive by the
circumstances accompanying so re
markable an occurrence. The
heavens assume an unnatural aspect,
which eXciteS d feeling of horror in
the spectator a livid hue is diffused
over all terrestrial objects plants
close up their leaves as on the ap-
prOach of night; the fowls betake
themselves to their resting-places
the warbling of the grove is hushed
in profound silence in other words,
universal Nature seems to relax her
energies, as if the pulse which stimu-
lated her mighty movements had all
at once stood still"
A gentleman who observed the
eclipse of August z, 1859, says of it:
mo one who has not seen a total
eclipse of the sun can fully appre-
ciate the grandeur of the occasion.
As the light, ray by ray, is cut off, a
strange and CHASTITY darkness comes
down upon US not like the darkness
of night, but a violet cOlored dark
ness which makes the faces of u
neighbors turn Gshy pale and gives
to the landscape the hues which it