River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1910-05-19

WtvVW ~
of water, SO feet high, roaring hungry, upon
the long coasts of Asia, and swept inland across
the plains of China. For a space the STAR hot
ter now and larger and brighter than the sun
in it's strength, showed with pitiless brilliance
the wide and populous country; towns and vii
lagos with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide
cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people
staring in helpless terror at the incandescent
sky; and then low and growing, came the MUIR
muir of the flood. And thus it was with millions
of men that night-a breath fierce and scant.
and the flood like wall swift and white behind
And then death.
China was lit glowing white, but over Japan
and Java and all the islands of eastern Asia the
great star was a ball of dull red fire because Of
the steam and smoke and ashes the volcanoes
were spouting forth to salute its coming Above
were the lava, hot gases and ash, and below
the seething floods and the whole earth swayed
and rumbled with the earthquake shocks.
Larger grew the star, and larger hotter and
brighter with a terrible swiftness now The
tropical ocean had lost it's phosphorescence and
the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from
the black waves that plunged necessarily,
speckled with storm tossed ships.
And then came wonder. 1t seemed to
those who in Europe watched for the rising
of the star that the world must have ceased
it's rotation. In thousand open spaces of down
the floods and the falling houses and sliding
slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain.
Hour followed hour through terrible suspense
and the star rose not. Once again men set their
eyes upon the old consultations they had count
ed lost to them forever. In England it was hot
and clear overhead, though the ground quivered
perpetually; but in the tropics Sirius and Ca
pella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of
steam.
Over Asia it was the star had begun to fall
behind the movement of the sky and then sud-
denly, as it hung over India, it's light had been
yelled. All the plain of India from the mouth
of the Indus to the mouths of the Gauges was
a shallow waste of shining water that night, out
of which rose temples and palaces, mounds and
hills black with people. Every minaret was
a clustering mass of people, who fell one by
one into the turbid waters as heat and terror
overcame them. The whole land seemed
awaiting and suddenly there swept shadow
across that furnace of despair and breath of
cold wind and gathering of clouds out of the
cooling air. Men looking up, near blinded, at
the star, saw that a black disk was creeping
across the light 1t was the moon coming be-
tween the star and the earth And even as
men cried to God at this respite, out of the
east with strange, inexplicable swiftness
sprang the sun. And then STAR sun and moon
rushed together across the heavens
So it was that presently to the European
other, drove headlong for a space and then
slower, and at last came to rest, star and sun
merged into one glare of flame at the zenith
of the sky. The moon no longer eclipsed the
star, but was lost to sight in the brilliance of
the sky And though those who were still alive
regarded it for the most part with that dull stu
pidty that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair
engender, there were still men who could per-
ceive the meaning Of these signs. Star and
earth had been at their nearest had swung
about one another and the star had passed.
Already it was recedng, swifter and swifter in
the last stage of it's headlong journey downward
into the sun.
And then the clouds gathered, plotting out
the vision Of the sky; the thunder and lightning
wove garment around the world; all over the
earth was such downpour of rain as had
never before; and where the volcanoes
fared red against the cloud canopy there de-
scended torrents of mud. Everywhere the wa
tiers were pouring off the land, leaving mud
silted ruins and the earth Uttered like storm
worn beach with all that had foated and the
dead bodies of the men and brutes, it's children.
But the star had passed and men, hunger
driven and gathering courage only slowly, might
creep back to their ruined cities, buried gran
aries and sodden fields. Such few ships as had
escaped the storms of that time stunned
and shattered and sounding their way eau
tiously through the new marks and shoals of
ded perceived that everywhere the days
were hotter than of yore and the sun larger and
the moon, shrunk to third of it's former size,
took fourscore days between its new and new.
The Marian astronomers-for there are as
tronomers on Mars, although they different
beings from men-were naturally profoundly in
terested by these things. They saw them from
their own standpoint, of course. considering
the mass and temperature of the missile that
was flung through our solar system into the
sum-" wrote, "tt is astonishing what little
damage the earth, which It missed so narrowly,
has sustained All the familiar continental
markings and the masses of the remain
intact and indeed the only difference seems to
be shrinkage of the white discoloration (sup-
posed to be frozen water) round either pole"
Which only shows how small the vastest of hui
man catastrophes- may seem at distance of a
few million miles.
Copyright 1870 by W. G. Chapman)
Copyright by Doubleday & Mcclure company
><~~<%%<~><><><%>%