by Charles Fort
Upon the 25th of June, dust fell from the sky, near Calcutta (The Englishman, July 3). In the issue of this newspaper, of July 14th, a meteorologist, employed in the Calcutta Observatory, described “a most peculiar mist,” like volcanic smoke, which had been seen in the earthquake regions. In his opinion it was “cosmic dust,” or dust that had fallen to this earth from outer space. He said nothing of possible relationship with the earthquakes. He would probably have called it “mere coincidence.” Then he told of a fall of mud, upon the 27th of June, at Thurgrain (Midnapur). There was a fall of mud, in the Jessore District of Bengal, night of June 29th. “It fell from a cloudless sky, while the stars were shining” (Madras Mail, July 8).
Suppose it were “cosmic dust.” Suppose with the conventionalists that this earth is a swiftly moving planet that had overtaken a cloud of “cosmic dust,” in outer space. In one minute, this earth would be more than one thousand miles away from this point of contact, by orbital motion, and would turn away axially.
But other falls of dust came upon India, while the shocks were continuing, as if settling down from an eruption somewhere else, to a world that was not speeding away orbitally, and to a point that was not turning away by daily rotation.
Five days after the first fall of dust, “a substance resembling mud” fell at Ghattal (Friend of India, July 14). For descriptions of just such a “dry fog,” as has often been seen in Italy, after an eruption of Vesuvius, see the Madras Mail, July 5, and the Friend of India, July 14—“a perpetual haze on the horizon, all around,” “sky covered with thick layers of dust, resembling a foggy atmosphere.” About the first of July, mud fell at Hetamphore (Beerbhoom) according to the Friend of India, July 14.
I list these falls of dust and mud, but to them I do not give the importance that I give to the phenomena that preceded this earthquake. I have come upon nobody’s statement that they were of volcanic material. But it may be that there were other precipitations, and that they were of a substance that is unknown upon this earth.
In the Englishman (Calcutta), July 7, a correspondent wrote that, several days before, at Khurdah, there had been a shower at night, and that the air became filled with the perfume of sandalwood. The next morning everything was found covered with “a colored matter, which emitted the scent of sandalwood.” About the same time, somebody else wrote to the Madras Mail (July 8) that, at Nadia, there had been a fall from the sky, of a substance “more or less resembling the sandal used by natives in worshiping their gods.”
The moon turns green before an earthquake.
Torrential rains precede an earthquake.
We have only begun listing phenomena that appear before catastrophes. They are interpretable as warnings. Clipped from events, by barbershop science.
There was an investigation of phenomena in Assam. It was scientific, in the sense that the tonsorial may be the scientific. Dr. Oldham enormously reduced a catastrophe to manageable dimensions. He lathered it with the soap of his explanations, and shaved it clean of all unconventional details. This treatment of “Next!” to catastrophes is as satisfactorily beautifying, to neat, little minds, as are some of the marcel waves that astronomers have ironed into tousled circumstances. For a review of Dr. Oldham’s report, see Nature, 62-305. There is no mention of anything that was seen in the sky, nor of anything that fell from the sky, nor of occurrences anywhere else. Dr. Charles Davison, in A Study of Recent Earthquakes, gives fifty-seven pages to his account of this catastrophe, and he, too, mentions nothing that was seen in the sky, or that fell from the sky. He mentions no simultaneous phenomena anywhere else. It is a neat and well-trimmed account, but there’s a smell that I identify as too much bay rum.
Simultaneous phenomena that always are left out of a conventionalist’s account of an earthquake—one of the most violent convulsions ever known in Mexico, while the ground in India was quaking. There was a glare in the sky, and the Mexicans thought that the glare was volcanic. If so, no active volcano in Mexico could be found (New Orleans Daily Picayune, June 22). Deluges fell upon this quaking land. One of the falls of water, upon a Mexican town, drowning some of the inhabitants, is told of, in the San Francisco Chronicle, June 17.
In all this part of our job, our opposition is not so much denial of data, as assertions that the occurrences in which we see relationship were only coincidences. If I ever accept any such explanation, I shall be driven into extending it to everything. We’ll have a theory that in our existence there is nothing but coincidence: and, according to my experience with theorists, we’ll develop this theory somewhat reasonably. Chemical reactions, supposed to be well-known and accounted for, do not invariably work out, as, according to formula, they should work out. Failures are attributed to impurities in chemicals, but perhaps it is only by persistent coincidence, like that of glares so often occurring at times of earthquakes, that water appears when oxygen and hydrogen unite. Meteors frequently fall to this earth during earthquakes, but that may be only by coincidence, just as offsprings so often appear after marriage—indicating nothing exclusively of relationships, inasmuch as we have heard of cases of alleged independent reproduction. Let the feminists become only a little more fanatical, and they will probably publish lists of instances of female independence. It is either that our data are not of coincidences, or that everything’s a coincidence.
As to some deluges, at times of earthquakes, there is no assertion of coincidence, and there is no mystery. There’s an earthquake, and water falls from the sky. Then it is learned that a volcano—one of this earth’s volcanoes—had been in eruption, and that, responsively to it, the earth had quaked, and that volumes of water, some of them black, and some of them not discolored, had been discharged by this volcano, falling in bulks, or falling in torrential rains upon the quaking ground. Sometimes the sky darkens during earthquakes, and there is no assertion of coincidence, and there is no mystery. Upon March 11, 1875, for instance, a vast, black cloud appeared at Guadalajara, Mexico. There was an earthquake. See L’Année Scientifique, 1876-322. In this instance, the darkened sky at the time of an earthquake was explained, because it was learned that both phenomena were effects of an eruption of the volcano Caborucuco. There have been unmysterious showers of meteors, or of fireballs that looked like meteors, at times of earthquakes. There were eruptions upon this earth, and the fireballs, or meteors, came from them. There were especially spectacular showers of volcanic bombs that looked like meteors, or that were meteors, during the eruptions in Java, August, 1883; New Zealand, June, 1886; West Indies, May, 1902.
But our data are of such phenomena in the sky, during earthquakes, at times when no terrestrial volcano that could have had such effects was active.
So far we have not correlated with anything that could be considered a volcanic eruption anywhere in regions external to this earth. Now we are called upon, not only for data seemingly of volcanic eruptions in a nearby starry shell around this earth, but for data that may be regarded as observations upon celestial volcanoes in action.
25
With a surf and a glare, this earth quaked a picture—
Or, in the monistic sense, there was, in Peru, a catastrophe that was a hideous and magnificent emotion. It is likely that there’s a wound in a brain, at a time of intensest excitement—
Red of the writhing earth, and red of the heaving ocean—and, in between, a crimson gash of surf, slashed from Ecuador to Chile—
Or so was visualized a rage, by super-introspection.
According to the midgets of orthodoxy, such a picture cannot be accepted. See the little De Ballore school of criticism. But quakes that were pictures by a very independent artistry—
Snow that was white on the peaks of mountains—cataclysm—peaks struck off—avalanches of snow, glaring red, gushing in jugular spouts from the decapitations. Glints from the fiery sky—upon land and sea, tossing houses and ships were spangles. Forests lashed with whips of fire, from which shot out sparks that were birds and running animals.
Aug. 13, 1868—people in Peru, rushing from their falling houses, stumbling in violations of streets, seeing the heavens afire, crying: “El Vulcan!”
Away back in the year 1868, scientific inpudence had not let loose, and there was no scientific clown to laugh off a blazing sky, with a story of lights in horse cars. The mystery of this occurrence is in the belief in Peru that there was, somewhere, at this time, a volcanic eruption.
Cities were flung in the sea. The sea rushed back upon ruins. It doubled all ordinary catastrophes by piling the wrecks of ships upon the ruins of houses. Fields poured over cliffs into the Bay of Arica. It was a cataract of meadows. We have gone far in our demonstration of continuity, which has led from showers of frogs to storms of meadows.
Vast volumes of water fell from the sky. It was appalling providence: this water was needed. The waters soaked into the needful earth, and surplus beneficences made new rivers. In the streams, there was a ghastly frou-frou of torrents of corpses, and the coast of Peru was frilled with fluttering bodies. Almost Ultimate Evil could be stimulated by such a lingerie. These furbelows of dead men, flounced in the waves, were the drapery of Providence.
Upon August 19th, there was another violent quake, and again there was a glare in the sky. Both times there was no accounting for such a spectacle except by thinking that there had been an eruption in Peru. According to the New York Herald, September 29, the volcano Moquequa was suspected. London Times, October 21—letter from someone who had seen the flaming sky, and had heard that Canderave was the volcano. It was said that the eruption had been at Aqualonga, and then that it had not been Aqualonga, but Cayambe. An illumination in the sky, lasting several hours, is described in Comptes Rendus, 67-1066, and here a writer gives his opinion that the volcano was Saajama. Other observers of the glare said that it came from Cotopaxi. Cosmos, n.s., 3-3-367—it was supposed that Cotocachi was the volcano. But it is not possible to find anything o£ this disagreement in any textbook: all agree upon attributing to one volcano—it was Mt. Misti.
New York Herald, Oct. 30, 1868—that Mt. Misti had not been active.
See Comptes Rendus, 69-262—the results of M. Gay’s investigations—that, in this period, not one of the suspected volcanoes had been active. See the Student, 4-147.
Sometimes volcanic eruptions upon this earth shine, at a distance, like stars. It will be my acceptance that new stars are new volcanic eruption in Starland. For a description of a terrestrial eruption that shone like a star, see the Amer. Jour. Sci., 2-21-144. See a description, in the New York Times, Sept. 23, 1872, of an eruption of Mauna Loa, which far away looked star-like.
At 12:30 p.m., September 4th, appeared something that has often been seen at Naples, when Vesuvius has discharged. It was like the volcanic discharge that we have noted, at Guadalajara, Mexico. A dense, mountain-like cloud appeared, in the western sky, at Callao, Peru. The earth heaved with violence equal to that of August 13th.
New York Tribune, October 7—that in the southwestern sky was seen a star.
It is my expression that this was the star that broke Peru.
Night of Feb. 4, 1872—another glare in the sky—that the constellation Orion was afire—that a tragedy upon this earth began in the sky, with a spectacle that excited peoples of this earth, from Norway to South Africa—but that, underlying tragedies written by human beings, or wrought in sky and lands, are the same conventions, and that Organic Drama is no more likely to let catastrophe come, without preceding phenomena that may be interpreted as warnings, than would stagecraft of this earth permit final calamity, without indications of its approach—
That a surprise was preceded by a warning that was perhaps of the magnitude of a burning of all the forests of North America—testimony of the sun and the moon to coming destruction—announcements that were issued in blazes—showers of gleaming proclamations—brilliant and long-enduring advertisement—
But that mind upon this earth was brutalized with dogmas—and that scientific wisemen, stupefied by a creed, presided over a slaughter, or were surprised when came the long and brilliantly advertised.
This night of Feb. 4, 1872—a blaze in the constellation Orion. From centers of alarm upon this earth there was telegraphing. City called upon city. People thought that a neighboring community was burning. In the West Indies, island called upon island. In each island, the glare in the sky was thought to come from a volcanic eruption in some other island. At Moncalieri, Italy, an earthquake, or a response in this earth to cataclysm somewhere else, was recorded by seismographs. There may have been special relation with the ground, in Italy.
With this glare, which was considered auroral, because there was no other way of conventionally explaining it, though auroras never have been satisfactorily explained, came meteors. Denza recorded them, as seen in Italy, and noting the seeming relation to the glare, explained that the seeming relation was only a coincidence. That’s got to be thought by everybody who opposes all that this book stands for. If it was not a coincidence, the meteors came to this earth from wherever the glare was. If the glare was in the constellation Orion, Orion may be no farther from Italy than is San Francisco.
Upon the night of February 22nd, another glare was seen in the sky, and “by coincidence,” it was identical in all respects, except magnitude, with the glare of the 4th. “By coincidence” again meteors appeared. See Comptes Rendus, 74-641.
Five days after this second seeming eruption in Orion, dust fell from the sky, at Cosenza, Italy (C.R., 74-826).
The meteors that were seen at the time of the first glare were extraordinary. They appeared only in the zone of Italy. As seen with the glare, in India, they are told of in the Allahabad Pioneer Mail, February 12, and the Bombay Gazette, February 19. See other records of ours of zone-phenomena.
Sixteen days after the second glare in Orion, reddish yellow dust fell in Sicily, and continued to fall the second day, and fell in Italy.
Trembling trillions—or a panic of immensities—and the twinkles of the stars are the winks of proximities—and our data are squeezing supposed remoteness into familiarities—because, if from a constellational eruption, dust drifted to this earth in a few weeks, it did not drift trillions of miles—
But was this dust a discharge from a volcano?
It was volcanic dust, according to Prof. Silvestri. See the Jour. Chem. Soc. London, 25-1083. Prof. Silvestri thought that it must have come from an eruption somewhere in South America. But my notes upon phenomena of this year 1872 are especially numerous, and I have no record of any eruption in South America, or anywhere else—upon this earth—to which could be attributed this discharge.
For records of a stream of events that then started flowing, see Comptes Rendus, vols. 74, 75, and Les Mondes, vol. 28. In Italy, upon the first of April, began successions of “auroral” lights and volleys of meteors. Night of April 7-8—many meteors, at Mondovi, Italy. Solar and lunar haloes, which may, or may not, be attributed to the presence of volcanic dusts, were seen in Italy, April 6th, 7th, and 8th. Two days .later, Vesuvius became active, but there were only minor eruptions.
There was uneasiness in Italy. But it was told, in Naples, that the wisemen were watching Vesuvius. Because of the slight eruptions, some of the peasants on the slopes began to move. These were a few of the untrustful ones: the others believed, when the wisemen said that there was no reason for alarm. Night after night, while this volcano in Italy was rumbling, meteors came to the skies of Italy. There is no findable record that they so came anywhere else. They came down to this one part of this earth, as if this earth were stationary.
April 19th—the third arrival of dust—volumes of dust, of unknown origin, fell from the sky, in Italy.
There was alarm. The sounds of Vesuvius were louder, but a quiet fall of dust, if from the unknown, spreads an alarm of its own.
The wisemen continued to study Vesuvius. They paid no more attention to arrivals of dusts and meteors in the sky of a land where a volcano was rumbling, than to arrivals
of song birds or of tourists, in Italy. Their assurances that there was no reason for alarm, founded only upon their local observations, held back upon the slopes of the volcano all but a few disbelievers—
The 20th of April—
Eruption of Vesuvius.
Convolutions of clouds—scrimmages of brains that had broken out of an underground academy of giants—trying to think for themselves—struggling to free themselves from subterranean repressions. But clouds and brains are of an underlying oneness: struggles soon relapsed into a general fogginess. Volcanic or cerebral—the products are obscurities. Naples was in darkness.
The people of Naples groped in the streets, each in a hellish geometry of his own, each seeing in a circle, a few yards in diameter, and hearing, in one dominant roar, no minor sounds more than a few yards away. Streams of refugees were stumbling into the streets of Naples. People groped in circles, into which were thrust hands, holding up images, or clutching loot. Fragments of sounds in the one dominant roar—geometricity in bewilderment—or circles in a fog, and something dominant, and everything else crippled. The flitting of feet, shoulders, bandaged heads—cries to the saints—profanity of somebody who didn’t give a damn for Vesuvius—legs of a corpse, carried by invisibles—prayers to God, and jokers screeching false alarms that the lava was coming.