The Great Star Shower by William B. Herron

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 15, 1867

The Great Star Shower.

By William B. Herron

THE GLORIOUS SIGHT IN SWITZERLAND—TERRIFIC “RAIN OF FIRE” IN ASIA AND AFRICA.

A letter from Switzerland, in The Springfield Republican, contains an interesting account of a night expedition up the Alps in order to witness the November Star Shower from its lofty summits.

THE STAR SHOWER AMONG THE ALPS.

“About one o’clock in the morning the signal news was heard and we soon gathered around our sentinel on the rocky ledge which commanded a view of the whole heavens.

The clouds by that time had become numerous and thick, but would, now and then, separate in a most tantalizing manner, and reveal for a moment the glorious scene beyond. Meteor succeeded meteor with such rapidity that the account kept was almost worthless, so much did the different accounts vary. Many strikingly large and brilliant meteors were observed, but their course could not be followed far by reason of the many clouds. Long trains of luminous matter marked the course taken by many, and these trains often remained long after the meteor itself had disappeared. They were, in fact, often more brilliant than the meteor, and sometimes seemed to have more than a single head, as if two or more had blended together.

Many of these trains must have been, though their length could not be seen by reason of the clouds, at least twenty degrees long. The meteors which we were fortunate enough to see seemed all to come from the constellation Leo. I have no doubt that, had the night been clear, we should have seen thousands. As it was, before the clouds had entirely covered the sky, we saw enough to know that the grandest exhibition of the kind that could be imagined was there transpiring, thus adding another proof of the accuracy of astronomical predictions.”

THE METEORIC SHOWER IN ASIA.

Beirut, Syria, Nov. 23, 1866.

“For the benefit of your scientific readers, and more especially for an old friend, Prof. Newton of Yale College, I will give a brief account of the meteoric shower of Nov. 13th and 14th: Prof. Newton’s announcement in the public journals was duly noted, and, in order to draw the attention of the people of Syria to the subject, one of the American missionaries in our city wrote an article in Arabic for the weekly Arabic newspaper, requesting the public to watch during the nights of the 13th and 14th for a grand display of falling stars. The notice was read with astonishment by some and with ridicule by others. Have they prophets in America who know when the stars will fall? Who told them? The old sheikh, a famous Arabic scholar, declared he should not believe it until he saw it. The thing was incredible. It was a piece of Western assumption to think that they knew more than we Easterners do.

On the morning of the 11th [Sunday,] at a little after midnight, some young men in Beirut, who were out of doors, saw what they described as a rain of fire, the stars seeming to have got loose and running about the sky in disorder. Soon after, a terrific thunderstorm set in, and for two hours there was an almost uninterrupted crash of thunder and glare of sheet-lightning.

On the morning of the 14th, at 4 o’clock, I was awaked from sleep by one of the Protestant young men shouting, “the stars are all coming down!” I arose immediately, and spent the rest of the night with some friends, guests in my house, walking upon the house-top. The sight was indescribably grand and beautiful. A slight mist obstructed the view toward the south, but over Lebanon and the sea, the sky was clear and the meteors were pouring down like a rain of fire. Some were small, and others were large, and almost every one left a long train of fire behind it, so that the effect was beautiful in the extreme. One immense green meteor came down over Lebanon, nearly as large, to appearance, as the moon, and burst with a loud noise, leaving a green pillar of light in the train. Many of them roared through the air, and exploded before reaching the earth.

While looking toward Lebanon the whole sky became suddenly illumined as if by the light of noon-day, and turning around we saw an immense column of light to the northwest over the sea, being evidently the train left by some enormous meteor which had fallen into the sea. It was in vain to count them, and the display continued until the dawn, when their light was obscured by the king of day. The young man who aroused me from sleep said that a half hour previous, or at half past three, the sight was terrific, and he ran into the house for fear of being overwhelmed with fire. It was, he said, a continuous fire rain of large and small stars for more than half an hour, when he remembered my request and ran to give me word. The alarm was first given by a native watchman in the Preparatory Department of the Syrian Protestant College, who had heard of the expected display, and was on the lookout. I have just received the Arabic newspaper of this week’s issue, and find in it the following news about the meteors, which, for your benefit, I will translate:

“BEIRUT DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE.—There has preceded this a notice in No. 481 of our journal, of the falling meteors on the 12th and 13th of November. There happened a marvelous thing of the kind on the night of the 13th and morning of the 14th of the said month. Many of the people of Beirut, on that night, from the ninth hour of the night until the eleventh hour thereof, (or 2½ to 4½ o’clock A. M.,) saw the meteoric stars scattered through the heavens flying from every side, and they saw thousands of these meteors mixed in commotion and confusion, and compared their extent in the heavens to the spreading out of locusts in the sky. We have news from Damascus that these same events were seen there. They compared them to mighty armies joined in a fierce strife from the four quarters of the sky, and the arrows of fire great and small dashed to and fro between them and falling to the earth, smote one another to the east and west and north and south. From the multitude of meteors of different sizes, it was impossible for one observing them to tell how many fell in a minute.”

THE SHOWER OFF THE COAST OF AFRICA.

The London Times, by the last mail, brings a brief notice of the meteoric phenomenon as observed on the morning of November 14th, from the steamship Tanjore, in the Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Tripoli, on her way to Alexandria. “The whole heavens were illuminated by thousands of meteors, shooting in a southeasterly direction.”

THE METEORIC SHOWER IN TURKEY.

A correspondent of the N. Y. Tribune, writing from Constantinople, alludes to a most beautiful display of meteors observed there on the morning of November 13th and 14th. On the first morning he noticed about 4,000 per hour, the actual number, of course, being much larger. On the 14th, the sky was obscured with clouds, until nearly sunrise; but the display of meteors, between two and three o’clock, was undoubtedly some 10,000 an hour. On both occasions they were of all sizes and colors. Many of them lit up the heavens like a flash of lightning; and in several instances they left trails of light behind them from 5° to 20° in length, which remained some five minutes. Not a few persons were alarmed at this rare and startling phenomenon, believing that the stars were falling from heaven. A great fire occurred in the midst of the display, on one night, and the writer surmises that it might have been originated by a falling meteor.

The grand shower of 1863, in this country, it may be remembered, was preceded by a display in Europe, of great beauty, the year before; a chance, therefore, seems to exist, that we may yet have an opportunity of witnessing this sublime species of celestial pyrotechnics during the fall of 1867.

Our previous expectations of grander displays over the Eastern Continent are confirmed; and the great “rain of fire” of 1866 in Asia must have been nearly if not fully equal in splendor to that of 1833 in America. God is giving the whole world the signs of the Lord’s coming.

WILLIAM B. HERRON. Boston, Mass.