by Charles Fort
In England, Mr. Symons expressed astonishment, because there had been two deluges.
Deluge and falls of lumps of ice, throughout England. France deluged. Water dropped from the sky, at Lausanne, Switzerland, flooding some of the streets five feet deep. It was not rain. There were falling columns of water from what was thought to be a waterspout. The most striking of the statements is that bulks dropped. One of them was watched. Or some kind of a vast, vaporous cow sailed over a town, and people looked up at her bag of water. Something that was described as “a large body of water” was seen at Coburg, Ontario. It crossed the town, holding its bag-like formation. Two miles away, it dropped. It splashed rivers that broke down all dams between Coburg and Lake Ontario. In the Toronto Globe, June 3, this falling bulk is called “a waterspout.” Fall of a similar bulk, in Switzerland—crops and houses and bridges mixing down a valley, at Sargans. Fall of a bulk, at Reichenbach, Saxony. “It was a waterspout” (London Times, June 6).
This time the fishmonger is a waterspout.
Spain pounded by falling waters: Madrid flooded: many buildings damaged by a violent hailstorm. Deluges in China continuing. Deluges in Australia continuing. Floods in Argentina: people of Ayacuchio driven from their homes: sudden rise of the river, at Buenos Aires. In the South American Journal of this period are accounts of tremendous downpours and devastations in Brazil and Uruguay.
One of these bodies of water that were not rain fell at Chetnole, Dorsetshire, England. The people, hearing crashes, looked up at a hill, and saw it frilled with billows. Watery ruffs, from eight to ten feet high, heaved on the hill. The village was tossed in a surf. “The cause of this remarkable occurrence was for some time unknown but it has now been ascertained that a waterspout burst on Batcombe Hill.” So wrote Mr. Symons, in whose brains there was no more consciousness of all that was going on in the world about him than there was in any other pair of scissors.
It was not ascertained that a waterspout had burst on Batcombe Hill. No waterspout was seen. What was ascertained was that columns of water of unknown origin had fallen high on the Hill, gouging holes, some of them eight or nine feet deep. Though Mr. Symons gave the waterspout explanation, it did occur to him to note that there was no statement that the water was salty—
These bulks of water, and their pendent columns—that they were waterspouts—
Or that Slaughter had lain with Life, and that murderous mothers had slung off their udders, from which this earth drank through teats that were cataracts.
Wherever the deluges were coming from, I note that, as with phenomena of March, 1913, unseasonable snow fell. Here it was about the first of June, and snow was falling in Michigan. The suggestion is that this was not a crystallization in the summer sky of Michigan, but an effect of the intense coldness of outer regions, upon water that had come to this earth from storages on a planet, or from a reservoir in Starland. Note back to mention of falls of lumps of ice in England.
Wherever the deluges were coming from, meteors, too, were coming. If we can think that falls of water and falls of meteors were related, we have reinforcement to our expression that water was coming to this needful earth from somewhere else. Five remarkable meteors are told of, in the Monthly Weather Review. In the New York Sun, May 30, is an account of a meteor that exploded in the sky of Putnam County, Florida, and was heard fifteen miles around. In Madras, India, where the drought was “very grave,” an extraordinary meteor was seen, night of June 4th (Madras Mail, June 26). In South Africa, where the drought was so extreme that a herd of buffaloes had been driven to a pool within five miles of the town of Uitenhage, a meteor exploded, with detonations that were heard in a line forty miles long (Cape Argus, May 28). May 22nd—great, detonating meteor, at Otranto, Italy. The meteor that was seen in England and Ireland, May 29th, is told of in Nature, 40-174. For records of three other great meteors, see Nature and Cosmos. There was a spectacular occurrence at Dunedin, New Zealand, early in the morning of May 27th (Otago Witness, June 6). Rumbling sounds— a shock—illumination of the sky—exploding meteor.
In some parts of the United States, there had been extreme need for water. In the New Orleans Daily Picayune are accounts of the “gloomy outlook for crops” in six of the Southern States. About twenty reports upon this drought were published in the Monthly Weather Review.
Rushes of violent mercies—they flooded the south and smashed the north—crash of a dam, at Littleton, New Hampshire—busted dam near Laurel, Pa.—
May, 1889—and Science and Religion—
It is my expression that the two outstanding blessings, benefits, or “gifts of God” to humanity, are Science and Religion. I deduce this—or that the annals of both are such trails of slaughter, deception, exploitation, and hypocrisy that they must be of enormous good to balance with their appalling evils—
Or the craze of medical science for the vermiform appendix. That played out. Now everybody who can pay for it is losing his tonsils. Newspaper headings—“Family of eight relieved of their tonsils”—“Save your pets—dogs and cats endangered by their tonsils.”
Concentrate in one place this bloody fad, or scientific “racket,” and there would be a fury like that at Andover, N.Y., in May, 1889—
A bulk of water, foaming as white as a surgeon—it jabbed a bolt of lightning into Andover. It operated upon farms, and cut off their inhabitants. Trained clouds stood around, and handed out more bolts of lightning. A dam broke, and a township writhed upon its field of operations. Another dam broke—but the operations were successes, and, if there was much destruction, that was because of a complication of other causes.
May 31st—Johnstown, Pa.—
If I can’t think of massacre apart from devotions, I think that a lake ran mad with religious mania. It rushed down a valley, and, if I’m right about this, it bore on its crest, the most appalling of all symbols—the mast of a ship that was crossed by a telegraph pole. In a pogrom against houses, it clubbed out their occupants, with bridges. It impaled homes upon the steeples of churches. Its watery Cossacks, mounted on billows, flogged factories. And then, along the slopes of the Conemaugh Valley, it told its beads with strings of corpses.
Earthwide droughts—prayers to many gods—something vouchsafed catastrophes—
That from somewhere else in existence, vast volumes of water were sent to this arid earth, or were organically teleported—
Or that, by coincidence, and unseen, waterspout after waterspout rose from the Atlantic, and rose from the Pacific: from the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and from the Mediterranean; from the Gulf of Mexico, the English Channel, Lake Ontario—or that such an extension of such fishmongering is a brutalization of conveniences—
Or that from somewhere in a starry shell that is not enormously far away from this earth, more than a Mississippi streamed to this needful earth, and forked the disasters of its beneficence from Australia to Canada.
Fifteen thousand persons were drowned at Johnstown. Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1889—“The people of Johnstown have lost all faith in Providence. Many have thrown away their bibles, and since the disaster have openly burned them.”
By the providential, I mean the organically provided for.
By God, I mean an automatic Jehovah.
PART III
24
Missions of arms—the bubbling of faces, at crevices—fire and smoke and a lava of naked beings. Out from a crater, discharges of bare bodies boiled into fantastic formations—
Or—five o’clock, morning of Dec. 28, 1908—violent shocks in Sicily. The city of Messina fell in a heap, which caught fire. It is the custom of Sicilians to sleep without nightclothes, and from this crater of blazing wreckage came an eruption of naked beings. Thick clouds of them scudded into thin vapors.
The earth quaked, at Messina, and torrential rains fell. According to Nature, Dec. 31, 1908, a fall of meteorites had been reported in Spain a few days before the quake. According to the wisemen of our more-or-less-savage tribes, the deluge
at Messina, at the time of this quake, fell only by coincidence. No wiseman would mention the fall of meteorites, as having any relation.
There were, at the time, worldwide disturbances, or rather, disturbances, along a zone of this earth—Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily, Spain, Canary Islands, Mexico. But all wisemen who wrote upon this subject clipped off everything else, and wrote that there had been a subsidence of land in Sicily. It is the same old local explanation. Scientists and priests are unlike in some respects, but they are about equally parochial.
Dec. 3, 1887—from a plinth of ruins, an obelisk of woe sounded to the sky.
It was at Roggiano, Italy. Nine hundred houses were thrown down by an earthquake. The wail that went up from the ruins continued long before individual cries could be distinguished. Then the column of woe shattered into screams and prayers.
The survivors said that they had seen fires in the heavens. In Cosmos, n.s., 69-422, we are told that Prof. Agamennone had investigated these reported celestial blazes. But they were new lights upon old explanations. A blazing sky could have nothing to do with a local, geological disturbance. The orthodox explanation was that a stratum of rocks had slipped. What could the slip of rocks have to do with sky fires? We are told that the Professor had reduced all alleged witnesses of the blaze in the heavens to one, who had told about it, “with little seriousness.” What had suggested levity to him, as to scenes of ruination and slaughter, was not enquired into: but the story is recorded as a jest, and it may be all the more subtle, because the fun of it is not obvious.
About 6 a.m., Feb. 23, 1887, at Genoa, Italy, burst a dam of conventional securities. There was a flood of human beings. An earthquake cast thousands of people into the streets. The sky was afire. There was a pour to get out of town. It was a rush in a glare. If, at the time of a forest fire, a dam should burst, thousands of logs, leaping red in the glare, would be like this torrent of human forms under a fiery sky. In other places along the Riviera, the quake was severe. At other places was made this statement that orthodox science will not admit—that the sky was afire. See Pop. Sci. News, 21-58. It will not be admitted, or it is said to be merely a coincidence. See L’Astronomie, 1887, p. 137—that at Apt (Vaucluse) a fiery appearance had been seen, and that then had come a great light, like a Bengal fire—“without doubt coincidences.”
The 16th of August, 1906—and suddenly people, living along the road to Valparaiso, Chile, lost sight of the city. There had come “a terrible darkness.” With it came an earthquake. The splitting of ground, and the roar of falling houses—intensest darkness—and then a voice in this chaos. It was a scream. People along the road heard it approaching.
Chile lit up. Under a flaming sky, the people of Valparaiso were running from the smashing city—people as red as flames, under the glare in the heavens: screaming and falling, and leaping over the bodies of the fallen—an eruption of spurting forms that leaped and were extinguished. This reddened gush from Valparaiso—rising, falling shapes—brief faces and momentary arms—it was like looking at vast flames and imagining that spurts of them were really living beings.
In Nature, 90-550, it is said that 136 reports upon illuminations in the sky, at Valparaiso, had been examined by Count de Ballore, the seismologist. At one stroke, he bobbed off ninety-eight of them, saying that they were indefinite. He said that the remaining thirty-eight reports were more or less explicit, but came from a region where at the time, a deluge was falling. He clipped these, too. For a wonder there was an objection: a writer in the Scientific American, 107-67, pointed out that De Ballore so dismissed the subject, without enquiring into the possibility that the quake and the deluge were related.
Had he admitted the possibility of relationship, dogma would have slipped upon dogma, and upon the face of this earth there would have been a subsidence of some ignorance.
“The lights that were seen in the sky,” said De Ballore, “were very likely only searchlights from warships.”
“The whole sky seemed afire” (Scientific American, 106-464). In Symons’ Met. Mag., 41-226, William Gaw, of Santiago, describing the blazing heavens, writes that it seemed as if the sober laws of physics had revolted.
“Or,” said De Ballore, “the people may have seen lights from tramcars.”
It does not matter how preposterous some of my own notions are going to seem. They cannot be more out of accordance with events upon this earth than is such an attribution of the blazing sky of a nation to searchlights or to lamps in tram cars. If I should write that the stars are probably between forty and fifty miles away, I’d be not much more of a trimmer of circumstances than is such a barber, whose clips are said to be scientific. Maybe they are scientific. Though, mostly, barbers are artists, some of them do consider themselves scientific.
Upon July 11th, 1856, the sun rose red in the Caucasus. See Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (London), Sept. 21, 1856. At five o’clock in the afternoon, at places where the sun was still shining red, there was an earthquake that destroyed 300 houses. There was another quake, upon the 23rd of July. Two days later, black water fell from the sky in Ireland (News of the World, Aug. 10, 1856).
And what has any part of that to do with any other part of that? If a red-haired girl, or a red shirt on a clothesline, had been noted here, there would be, according to orthodox science, no more relation with earthquakes than there could be between a red sun and an earthquake. Black water falling in Ireland—somebody spilling ink in Kansas.
The moon turned green.
For two observations upon a green moon that was seen at a place where an earthquake was going to occur, see the Englishman (Calcutta), July 14 and 21, 1897. One of the observations was six days before, and the other one day before, the quake in Assam, June 12, 1897. It was a time of drought and famine, in India.
The seismologist knows of no relation between a green moon, or a red sun, and an earthquake, but the vulcanologist knows of many instances in which the moon and the sun have been so colored by the volcanic dusts and smokes that are known as “dry fogs.” The look is that “dry fogs,” from a volcanic eruption, came to the sky of India, one of them six days before, and the other one day before, a catastrophe.
The mystery is this:
If there had been a volcanic eruption somewhere else, why not volcanic appearances in Italy, or Patagonia, or California—why at this place where an earthquake was going to occur?
Coincidence.
Upon the 11th of June, in Upper Assam, where, upon the 12th, the center of the earthquake was going to be, torrents fell suddenly from the sky. A correspondent to the Englishman, July 14, writes that this deluge was of a monstrousness that exceeded that of any other downpour that he had ever seen in Assam, or anywhere else.
At 5:15 p.m., 12th of June, there was a sight at Shillong that would be a marvel to the more innocent of the textbook writers. I tell so much of clipping and bobbing and shearing, but also there may be considerable innocence. Not a cloud in the sky—out of clear, blue vacancy, dumped a lake. This drop of a bulk of water, or transportation, or teleportation, of it, was at the time of one of the most catastrophic of earthquakes, centering farther north in Assam.
This earthquake was an earthstorm. Hills were waves, and houses cast adrift were wrecked on them. Out into fields stormed people from villages, and long strings of them, in white summer garments, were lines of surf on the earthwaves. Breakers of them spumed with infants. In a human storm, billows of people crashed against islands of cattle. It is not only in meteorology that there are meteorological occurrences. The convulsions were so violent that there was scene-shifting. When the people recovered and looked around, it was at landscapes, changed as if a curtain had gone down and then up, between acts of this drama. They saw fields, lakes, and roads that, in the lay of the land, before the quake, had been hidden. It is not only in playhouses that there are theatrical performances. It is not exclusively anywhere where anything is, if ours is one organic existence, in which all things are continuous.
There were more deluges that will not fit into conventional explanations. Allahabad Pioneer, June 23, 1897—extremist droughts—the quake—enormous falls of water.
There are data for thinking that somewhere there was a volcanic eruption. Another datum is that, at Calcutta, after the earthquake, there was an “afterglow.” “Afterglows” are exceptional sunsets, sometimes of an auroral appearance, which are reflections of sunlight from volcanic dust high in the sky, continuing to be seen an hour or so later than ordinary sunsets. Friend of India, June 15—“The entire west was a glory of deepest purple, and the colors did not fade out, until an hour after darkness is usually complete.”
Something else that I note is that in many places in Assam, the ground was incipiently volcanic, during the earthquake. Countless small craters appeared and threw out ashes.
Considering the volcanic and the incipiently volcanic, I think of a relation between the catastrophe in Assam and a volcanic eruption somewhere else.
But there is findable no record of a volcanic eruption upon this earth to which could be attributed effects that we have noted.
I point out again that, if there were a volcanic eruption in some part of our existence, external to this earth, or upon this earth, it would, unless a special relation be thought of, be as likely to cause an “afterglow” in England or South Africa, as in India. The suggestion is that somewhere, external to this earth, if in terrestrial terms there is no explanation, there was a volcanic eruption, and that the earthquake in India was a response to it, and that bulks of water and other discharges came from somewhere else exclusively to a part of this earth that was responsively, or functionally, quaking, because a teleportative current of some kind, very likely electric, existed between the two centers of disturbances.