Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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From The Position Of The
Mountains And Thick Forests Which Surround The Missions Of The
Cataracts And The Little Village Of Maroa, I Presume That The
Bolides Were Still Visible At 20 Degrees Above The Horizon.
On my
arrival at the southern extremity of Spanish Guiana, at the little
fort of San Carlos, I found some Portuguese, who had gone up the
Rio Negro from the Mission of St. Joseph of the Maravitans.
They
assured me that in that part of Brazil the phenomenon had been
perceived at least as far as San Gabriel das Cachoeiras,
consequently as far as the equator itself.* (* A little to the
north-west of San Antonio de Castanheiro. I did not meet with any
persons who had observed this meteor, at Santa Fe de Bogota, at
Popayan, or in the southern hemisphere, at Quito and Peru. Perhaps
the state of the atmosphere, so changeable in these western regions,
prevented observation.)
I was forcibly struck by the immense height which these bolides
must have attained, to have rendered them visible simultaneously at
Cumana, and on the frontiers of Brazil, in a line of two hundred
and thirty leagues in length. But what was my astonishment, when,
on my return to Europe, I learned that the same phenomenon had been
perceived on an extent of the globe of 64 degrees of latitude, and
91 degrees of longitude; at the equator, in South America, at
Labrador, and in Germany! I saw accidentally, during my passage
from Philadelphia to Bordeaux,* (* In the Memoirs of the
Pennsylvanian Society.) the corresponding observation of Mr.
Ellicot (latitude 30 degrees 42); and upon my return from Naples to
Berlin, I read the account of the Moravian missionaries among the
Esquimaux, in the Bibliothek of Gottingen.
The following is a succinct enumeration of the facts:
First. The fiery meteors were seen in the east, and the
east-north-east, at 40 degrees of elevation, from 2 to 6 a.m. at
Cumana (latitude 10 degrees 27 minutes 52 seconds, longitude 66
degrees 30 minutes); at Porto Cabello (latitude 10 degrees 6
minutes 52 seconds, longitude 67 degrees 5 minutes); and on the
frontiers of Brazil, near the equator, in longitude 70 degrees
west of the meridian of Paris.
Second. In French Guiana (latitude 4 degrees 56 minutes, longitude
54 degrees 35 minutes) "the northern part of the sky was suffused
with fire. Numberless falling-stars traversed the heavens during
the space of an hour and a half, and shed so vivid a light, that
those meteors might be compared to the blazing sheaves which shoot
out from fireworks." The knowledge of this fact rests upon the
highly trustworthy testimony of the Count de Marbois, then living
in exile at Cayenne, a victim to his love of justice and of
rational, constitutional liberty.
Third. Mr. Ellicot, astronomer to the United States, having
completed his trigonometric operations for the rectification of the
limits on the Ohio, being on the 12th of November in the gulf of
Florida, in latitude 25 degrees, and longitude 81 degrees 50
minutes, saw in all parts of the sky, "as many meteors as stars,
moving in all directions.
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