"This morning Mr. Lathrop of Boston called upon me. Soon after he
came in I observed a remarkable cloud coming up and it appeared
dark. The cloud was unusually brassy with little or no rain. Mr.
Sewell and Colonel Wigglesworth came in. The darkness increased
and by eleven o'clock it was so dark as to make it necessary to
light candles ... at half-past eleven in a room with three large
windows, southeast and south, could not read a word in large
print close to windows .... About twelve it lighted up a little,
then grew more dark.... At one o'clock very dark.... The windows
being still open, a candle cast a shade so well defined on the
wall that profiles were taken with as much ease as they could
have been in the night. ... We dined about two, the windows all
open and two candles burning on the table. In the time of the
greatest darkness some of the dunghill fowls went to roost, cocks
crowed in answer to one another, woodcocks, which are night
birds, whistled as they do only in the dark, frogs peeped, in
short there was the appearance of midnight at noonday.... At four
o'clock it grew more light.... Between three and four we were out
and perceived a strong sooty smell. Some of the company were
confident a chimney in the neighborhood must be burning; others
conjectured the smell was more like that of burnt leaves."
These gentlemen went over to the tavern near by and found the
people there greatly excited and tried to reassure them. They
proved to them from the black ashes of leaves, which had settled
like a scum on the rainwater standing in tubs, that the darkness
was not supernatural, but probably came from the burning of
forests far away.
Dr. Ezra Stiles, who was then president of Yale College in New
Haven, gave the same explanation. He says:--
"The woods about Ticonderoga [in New York] and eastward over to
New Hampshire and westward into New York and the Jerseys were all
on fire for a week before this Darkness and the smoke in the
wilderness almost to suffocation. No rain since last fall, the
woods excessively dry.... Such a profusion of settlers pushing
back into the wilderness were everywhere clearing land and
burning brush. This set the forests afire far beyond intention,
so as to burn houses and fences.... The woods burned extensively
for a week before the nineteenth of May and the wind all the
while northerly."
A quaint old ballad, said to have been written about that time,
gives a description of this Dark Day:--
[Illustration:
From Harper's Weekly, Copyright 1893. Copyright Harper and
Brothers