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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The Light Of These Meteors Was White, And Not
Reddish, Which Must Doubtless Be Attributed To The Absence Of
Vapour And The Extreme Transparency Of The Air.
For the same
reason, within the tropics, the stars of the first magnitude have,
at their rising, a light decidedly whiter than in Europe.
Almost all the inhabitants of Cumana witnessed this phenomenon,
because they had left their houses before four o'clock, to attend
the early morning mass. They did not behold these bolides with
indifference; the oldest among them remembered that the great
earthquakes of 1766 were preceded by similar phenomena. The
Guaiqueries in the Indian suburb alleged "that the bolides began to
appear at one o'clock; and that as they returned from fishing in
the gulf, they had perceived very small falling stars towards the
east." They assured us that igneous meteors were extremely rare on
those coasts after two o'clock in the morning.
The phenomenon ceased by degrees after four o'clock, and the
bolides and falling stars became less frequent; but we still
distinguished some to north-east by their whitish light, and the
rapidity of their movement, a quarter of an hour after sunrise.
This circumstance will appear less extraordinary, when I mention
that in broad daylight, in 1788, the interior of the houses in the
town of Popayan was brightly illumined by an aerolite of immense
magnitude. It passed over the town, when the sun was shining
clearly, about one o'clock. M. Bonpland and myself, during our
second residence at Cumana, after having observed, on the 26th of
September, 1800, the immersion of the first satellite of Jupiter,
succeeded in seeing the planet distinctly with the naked eye,
eighteen minutes after the disk of the sun had appeared in the
horizon.
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