Part 27

That, upon the 24th of February, 1893, at 10 P.M., between Shanghai and Japan, the officer of the watch had reported "some unusual lights."

They were between the ship and a mountain. The mountain was about 6,000 feet high. The lights seemed to be globular. They moved sometimes massed, but sometimes strung out in an irregular line. They bore "northward," until lost to sight. Duration two hours.

The next night the lights were seen again.

They were, for a time, eclipsed by a small island. They bore north at about the same speed and in about the same direction as speed and direction of the _Caroline_. But they were lights that cast a reflection: there was a glare upon the horizon under them. A telescope brought out but few details: that they were reddish, and seemed to emit a faint smoke. This time the duration was seven and a half hours.

Then Capt. Norcock says that, in the same general locality, and at about the same time, Capt. Castle, of H.M.S. _Leander_, had seen lights. He had altered his course and had made toward them. The lights had fled from him. At least, they had moved higher in the sky.

_Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1904-115:

Report from the observations of three members of his crew by Lieut. Frank H. Schofield, U.S.N, of the U.S.S. _Supply_:

Feb. 24, 1904. Three luminous objects, of different sizes, the largest having an apparent area of about six suns. When first sighted, they were not very high. They were below clouds of an estimated height of about one mile.

They fled, or they evaded, or they turned.

They went up into the clouds below which they had, at first, been sighted.

Their unison of movement.

But they were of different sizes, and of different susceptibilities to all forces of this earth and of the air.

_Monthly Weather Review_, August, 1898-358:

Two letters from C.N. Crotsenburg, Crow Agency, Montana:

That, in the summer of 1896, when this writer was a railroad postal clerk--or one who was experienced in train-phenomena--while his train was going "northward," from Trenton, Mo., he and another clerk saw, in the darkness of a heavy rain, a light that appeared to be round, and of a dull-rose color, and seemed to be about a foot in diameter. It seemed to float within a hundred feet of the earth, but soon rose high, or "midway between horizon and zenith." The wind was quite strong from the east, but the light held a course almost due north.

Its speed varied. Sometimes it seemed to outrun the train "considerably." At other times it seemed to fall behind. The mail-clerks watched until the town of Linville, Iowa, was reached. Behind the depot of this town, the light disappeared, and was not seen again. All this time there had been rain, but very little lightning, but Mr. Crotsenburg offers the explanation that it was "ball lightning."

The Editor of the _Review_ disagrees. He thinks that the light may have been a reflection from the rain, or fog, or from leaves of trees, glistening with rain, or the train's light--not lights.

In the December number of the _Review_ is a letter from Edward M. Boggs--that the light was a reflection, perhaps, from the glare--one light, this time--from the locomotive's fire-box, upon wet telegraph wires--an appearance that might not be striated by the wires, but consolidated into one rotundity--that it had seemed to oscillate with the undulations of the wires, and had seemed to change horizontal distance with the varying angles of reflection, and had seemed to advance or fall behind, when the train had rounded curves.

All of which is typical of the best of quasi-reasoning. It includes and assimilates diverse data: but it excludes that which will destroy it:

That, acceptably, the telegraph wires were alongside the track beyond, as well as leading to Linville.

Mr. Crotsenburg thinks of "ball lightning," which, though a sore bewilderment to most speculation, is usually supposed to be a correlate with the old system of thought: but his awareness of "something else" is expressed in other parts of his letters, when he says that he has something to tell that is "so strange that I should never have mentioned it, even to my friends, had it not been corroborated... so unreal that I hesitated to speak of it, fearing that it was some freak of the imagination."

27

Vast and black. The thing that was poised, like a crow over the moon.

Round and smooth. Cannon balls. Things that have fallen from the sky to this earth.

Our slippery brains.

Things like cannon balls have fallen, in storms, upon this earth. Like cannon balls are things that, in storms, have fallen to this earth.

Showers of blood.

Showers of blood.

Showers of blood.

Whatever it may have been, something like red-brick dust, or a red substance in a dried state, fell at Piedmont, Italy, Oct. 27, 1814 (_Electric Magazine_, 68-437). A red powder fell, in Switzerland, winter of 1867 (_Pop. Sci. Rev._, 10-112)--

That something, far from this earth, had bled--super-dragon that had rammed a comet--

Or that there are oceans of blood somewhere in the sky--substance that dries, and falls in a powder--wafts for ages in powdered form--that there is a vast area that will some day be known to aviators as the Desert of Blood. We attempt little of super-topography, at present, but Ocean of Blood, or Desert of Blood--or both--Italy is nearest to it--or to them.

I suspect that there were corpuscles in the substance that fell in Switzerland, but all that could be published in 1867 was that in this substance there was a high proportion of "variously shaped organic matter."

At Giessen, Germany, in 1821, according to the _Report of the British Association_, 5-2, fell a rain of a peach-red color. In this rain were flakes of a hyacinthine tint. It is said that this substance was organic: we are told that it was pyrrhine.

But distinctly enough, we are told of one red rain that it was of corpuscular composition--red snow, rather. It fell, March 12, 1876, near the Crystal Palace, London (_Year Book of Facts_, 1876-89; _Nature_, 13-414). As to the "red snow" of polar and mountainous regions, we have no opposition, because that "snow" has never been seen to fall from the sky: it is a growth of micro-organisms, or of a "protococcus," that spreads over snow that is on the ground. This time nothing is said of "sand from the Sahara." It is said of the red matter that fell in London, March 12, 1876, that it was composed of corpuscles--

Of course:

That they looked like "vegetable cells."

A note:

That nine days before had fallen the red substance--flesh--whatever it may have been--of Bath County, Kentucky.

I think that a super-egotist, vast, but not so vast as it had supposed, had refused to move to one side for a comet.

We summarize our general super-geographical expressions:

Gelatinous regions, sulphurous regions, frigid and tropical regions: a region that has been Source of Life relatively to this earth: regions wherein there is density so great that things from them, entering this earth's thin atmosphere, explode.

We have had a datum of explosive hailstones. We now have support to the acceptance that they had been formed in a medium far denser than air of this earth at sea-level. In the _Popular Science News_, 22-38, is an account of ice that had been formed, under great pressure, in the laboratory of the University of Virginia. When released and brought into contact with ordinary air, this ice exploded.

And again the flesh-like substance that fell in Kentucky: its flake-like formation. Here is a phenomenon that is familiar to us: it suggests flattening, under pressure. But the extraordinary inference is--pressure not equal on all sides. In the _Annual Record of Science_, 1873-350, it is said that, in 1873, after a heavy thunderstorm in Louisiana, a tremendous number of fish scales were found, for a distance of forty miles, along the banks of the Mississippi River: bushels of them picked up in single places: large scales that were said to be of the gar fish, a fish that weighs from five to fifty pounds. It seems impossible to accept this identification: one thinks of a substance that had been pressed into flakes or scales. And round hailstones with wide thin margins of ice irregularly around them--still, such hailstones seem to me more like things that had been stationary: had been held in a field of thin ice. In the _Illustrated London News_, 34-546, are drawings of hailstones so margined, as if they had been held in a sheet of ice.

Some day we shall have an expression which will be, to our advanced primitiveness, a great joy:

That devils have visited this earth: foreign devils: human-like beings, with pointed beards: good singers; one shoe ill-fitting--but with sulphurous exhalations, at any rate. I have been impressed with the frequent occurrence of sulphurousness with things that come from the sky. A fall of jagged pieces of ice, Orkney, July 24, 1818 (_Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin._, 9-187). They had a strong sulphurous odor. And the coke--or the substance that looked like coke--that fell at Mortrée, France, April 24, 1887: with it fell a sulphurous substance. The enormous round things that rose from the ocean, near the _Victoria_. Whether we still accept that they were super-constructions that had come from a denser atmosphere and, in danger of disruption, had plunged into the ocean for relief, then rising and continuing on their way to Jupiter or Uranus--it was reported that they spread a "stench of sulphur." At any rate, this datum of proximity is against the conventional explanation that these things did not rise from the ocean, but rose far away above the horizon, with illusion of nearness.

And the things that were seen in the sky July, 1898: I have another note. In _Nature_, 58-224, a correspondent writes that, upon July 1, 1898, at Sedberg, he had seen in the sky--a red object--or, in his own wording, something that looked like the red part of a rainbow, about 10 degrees long. But the sky was dark at the time. The sun had set. A heavy rain was falling.

Throughout this book, the datum that we are most impressed with:

Successive falls.

Or that, if upon one small area, things fall from the sky, and then, later, fall again upon the same small area, they are not products of a whirlwind, which though sometimes axially stationary, discharges tangentially--

So the frogs that fell at Wigan. I have looked that matter up again. Later more frogs fell.

As to our data of gelatinous substance said to have fallen to this earth with meteorites, it is our expression that meteorites, tearing through the shaky, protoplasmic seas of Genesistrine--against which we warn aviators, or they may find themselves suffocating in a reservoir of life, or stuck like currants in a blanc mange--that meteorites detach gelatinous, or protoplasmic, lumps that fall with them.

Now the element of positiveness in our composition yearns for the appearance of completeness. Super-geographical lakes with fishes in them. Meteorites that plunge through these lakes, on their way to this earth. The positiveness in our make-up must have expression in at least one record of a meteorite that has brought down a lot of fishes with it--

_Nature_, 3-512:

That, near the bank of a river, in Peru, Feb. 4, 1871, a meteorite fell. "On the spot, it is reported, several dead fishes were found, of different species." The attempt to correlate is--that the fishes "are supposed to have been lifted out of the river and dashed against the stones."

Whether this be imaginable or not depends upon each one's own hypnoses.

_Nature_, 4-169:

That the fishes had fallen among the fragments of the meteorite.

_Popular Science Review_, 4-126:

That one day, Mr. Le Gould, an Australian scientist, was traveling in Queensland. He saw a tree that had been broken off close to the ground. Where the tree had been broken was a great bruise. Near by was an object that "resembled a ten-inch shot."

A good many pages back there was an instance of over-shadowing, I think. The little carved stone that fell at Tarbes is my own choice as the most impressive of our new correlates. It was coated with ice, remember. Suppose we should sift and sift and discard half the data in this book--suppose only that one datum should survive. To call attention to the stone of Tarbes would, in my opinion, be doing well enough, for whatever the spirit of this book is trying to do. Nevertheless, it seems to me that a datum that preceded it was slightingly treated.

The disk of quartz, said to have fallen from the sky, after a meteoric explosion:

Said to have fallen at the plantation Bleijendal, Dutch Guiana: sent to the Museum of Leyden by M. van Sypesteyn, adjutant to the Governor of Dutch Guiana (_Notes and Queries_, 2-8-92).

And the fragments that fall from super-geographic ice fields: flat pieces of ice with icicles on them. I think that we did not emphasize enough that, if these structures were not icicles, but crystalline protuberances, such crystalline formations indicate long suspension quite as notably as would icicles. In the _Popular Science News_, 24-34, it is said that in 1869, near Tiflis, fell large hailstones with long protuberances. "The most remarkable point in connection with the hailstones is the fact that, judging from our present knowledge, a very long time must have been occupied in their formation." According to the _Geological Magazine_, 7-27, this fall occurred May 27, 1869. The writer in the _Geological Magazine_ says that of all theories that he had ever heard of, not one could give him light as to this occurrence--"these growing crystalline forms must have been suspended a long time"--

Again and again this phenomenon:

Fourteen days later, at about the same place, more of these hailstones fell.

Rivers of blood that vein albuminous seas, or an egg-like composition in the incubation of which this earth is a local center of development--that there are super-arteries of blood in Genesistrine: that sunsets are consciousness of them: that they flush the skies with northern lights sometimes: super-embryonic reservoirs from which life-forms emanate--

Or that our whole solar system is a living thing: that showers of blood upon this earth are its internal hemorrhages--

Or vast living things in the sky, as there are vast living things in the oceans--

Or some one especial thing: an especial time: an especial place. A thing the size of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's alive in outer space--something the size of Central Park kills it--

It drips.

We think of the ice fields above this earth: which do not, themselves, fall to this earth, but from which water does fall--

_Popular Science News_, 35-104:

That, according to Prof. Luigi Palazzo, head of the Italian Meteorological Bureau, upon May 15, 1890, at Messignadi, Calabria, something the color of fresh blood fell from the sky.

This substance was examined in the public-health laboratories of Rome.

It was found to be blood.

"The most probable explanation of this terrifying phenomenon is that migratory birds (quails or swallows) were caught and torn in a violent wind."

So the substance was identified as birds' blood--

What matters it what the microscopists of Rome said--or had to say--and what matters it that we point out that there is no assertion that there was a violent wind at the time--and that such a substance would be almost infinitely dispersed in a violent wind--that no bird was said to have fallen from the sky--or said to have been seen in the sky--that not a feather of a bird is said to have been seen--

This one datum:

The fall of blood from the sky--

But later, in the same place, blood again fell from the sky.

28

_Notes and Queries_, 7-8-508:

A correspondent who had been to Devonshire writes for information as to a story that he had heard there: of an occurrence of about thirty-five years before the date of writing:

Of snow upon the ground--of all South Devonshire waking up one morning to find such tracks in the snow as had never before been heard of--"clawed footmarks" of "an unclassifiable form"--alternating at huge but regular intervals with what seemed to be the impression of the point of a stick--but the scattering of the prints--amazing expanse of territory covered--obstacles, such as hedges, walls, houses, seemingly surmounted--

Intense excitement--that the track had been followed by huntsmen and hounds, until they had come to a forest--from which the hounds had retreated, baying and terrified, so that no one had dared to enter the forest.

_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-18:

Whole occurrence well-remembered by a correspondent: a badger had left marks in the snow: this was determined, and the excitement had "dropped to a dead calm in a single day."

_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-70:

That for years a correspondent had had a tracing of the prints, which his mother had taken from those in the snow in her garden, in Exmouth: that they were hoof-like marks--but had been made by a biped.

_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-253:

Well remembered by another correspondent, who writes of the excitement and consternation of "some classes." He says that a kangaroo had escaped from a menagerie--"the footprints being so peculiar and far apart gave rise to a scare that the devil was loose."

We have had a story, and now we shall tell it over from contemporaneous sources. We have had the later accounts first very largely for an impression of the correlating effect that time brings about, by addition, disregard and distortion. For instance, the "dead calm in a single day." If I had found that the excitement did die out rather soon, I'd incline to accept that nothing extraordinary had occurred.

I found that the excitement had continued for weeks.

I recognize this as a well-adapted thing to say, to divert attention from a discorrelate.

All phenomena are "explained" in the terms of the Dominant of their era. This is why we give up trying really to explain, and content ourselves with expressing. Devils that might print marks in snow are correlates to the third Dominant back from this era. So it was an adjustment by nineteenth-century correlates, or human tropisms, to say that the marks in the snow were clawed. Hoof-like marks are not only horsey but devilish. It had to be said in the nineteenth century that those prints showed claw-marks. We shall see that this was stated by Prof. Owen, one of the greatest biologists of his day--except that Darwin didn't think so. But I shall give reference to two representations of them that can be seen in the New York Public Library. In neither representation is there the faintest suggestion of a claw-mark. There never has been a Prof. Owen who has explained: he has correlated.

Another adaptation, in the later accounts, is that of leading this discorrelate to the Old Dominant into the familiar scenery of a fairy story, and discredit it by assimilation to the conventionally fictitious--so the idea of the baying, terrified hounds, and forest like enchanted forests, which no one dared to enter. Hunting parties were organized, but the baying, terrified hounds do not appear in contemporaneous accounts.

The story of the kangaroo looks like adaptation to needs for an animal that could spring far, because marks were found in the snow on roofs of houses. But so astonishing is the extent of snow that was marked that after a while another kangaroo was added.

But the marks were in single lines.

My own acceptance is that not less than a thousand one-legged kangaroos, each shod with a very small horseshoe, could have marked that snow of Devonshire.

London _Times_, Feb 16, 1855:

"Considerable sensation has been caused in the towns of Topsham, Lymphstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and Dawlish, in Devonshire, in consequence of the discovery of a vast number of foot tracks of a most strange and mysterious description."

The story is of an incredible multiplicity of marks discovered in the morning of Feb. 8, 1855, in the snow, by the inhabitants of many towns and regions between towns. This great area must of course be disregarded by Prof. Owen and the other correlators. The tracks were in all kinds of unaccountable places: in gardens enclosed by high walls, and up on the tops of houses, as well as in the open fields. There was in Lymphstone scarcely one unmarked garden. We've had heroic disregards but I think that here disregard was titanic. And, because they occurred in single lines, the marks are said to have been "more like those of a biped than of a quadruped"--as if a biped would place one foot precisely ahead of another--unless it hopped--but then we have to think of a thousand, or of thousands.

It is said that the marks were "generally 8 inches in advance of each other."

"The impression of the foot closely resembles that of a donkey's shoe, and measured from an inch and a half, in some instances, to two and a half inches across."

Or the impressions were cones in incomplete, or crescentic basins.

The diameters equaled diameters of very young colts' hoofs: too small to be compared with marks of donkey's hoofs.

"On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Musgrave alluded to the subject in his sermon and suggested the possibility of the footprints being those of a kangaroo, but this could scarcely have been the case, as they were found on both sides of the Este. At present it remains a mystery, and many superstitious people in the above-named towns are actually afraid to go outside their doors after night."

The Este is a body of water two miles wide.

London _Times_, March 6, 1855:

"The interest in this matter has scarcely yet subsided, many inquiries still being made into the origin of the footprints, which caused so much consternation upon the morning of the 8th ult. In addition to the circumstances mentioned in the _Times_ a little while ago, it may be stated that at Dawlish a number of persons sallied out, armed with guns and other weapons, for the purpose, if possible, of discovering and destroying the animal which was supposed to have been so busy in multiplying its footprints. As might have been expected, the party returned as they went. Various speculations have been made as to the cause of the footprints. Some have asserted that they are those of a kangaroo, while others affirm that they are the impressions of claws of large birds driven ashore by stress of weather. On more than one occasion reports have been circulated that an animal from a menagerie had been caught, but the matter at present is as much involved in mystery as ever it was."

In the _Illustrated London News_, the occurrence is given a great deal of space. In the issue of Feb. 24, 1855, a sketch is given of the prints.

I call them cones in incomplete basins.

Except that they're a little longish, they look like prints of hoofs of horses--or, rather, of colts.

But they're in a single line.