Orientalist Hammer-Purgstall, the origin of the characteristic surface
given to the famous Damascus blades. A most interesting modern example
of a meteoric-iron weapon is a dagger made by Von Widmanstädt for
Emperor Francis I of Austria, out of the famous Bohemian siderite long
preserved in the Rathaus at Elbogen and known as the “Verwünschte
Burggraf.” On the surface of this blade, however, the lines were
angular, while on the true Damascus blade the lines are wavy.[166] An
unsuccessful attempt to forge a sword from a piece of meteoric iron is
reported by Avicenna in the case of a siderite that fell at Jurgan in
1009 A.D., from which swords that were ordered to be made by the Sultan
of Khorassan could not be executed.[167]
In an Arabic work bearing the name of Avicenna and entitled “The Cure,”
the writer mentions a meteorite which fell in the Jordan, and of which
Sultan Mohammed Ghazni wished to have a sword made for him, thus proving
that the Sultan believed that meteorites possessed marvellous
properties.[168]
A number of Greek and Roman coins bearing representations of these
sacred meteorites have come down to us, and more than two hundred
specimens may be seen in the section of meteorites in the Natural
History Museum (Königlich-kaiserliches naturhistoriches Hofmuseum) in
Vienna. These coins are of great value in determining the history of
those aerolites which were preserved in the temples of certain
divinities.
The Viennese collection of meteorites is the finest in the world, and
this is largely due to the zeal and intelligence of the late Dr.
Aristides Brezina, while superintendent of the department of mineralogy
and meteorites in the Museum. In regard to the impression made upon the
mind of man in ancient times by the fall of meteorites, Dr. Brezina
writes:[169]
The ancients supposed the stars to be the domiciles of the gods;
falling stars and falling meteorites signified the descending of a god
or the sending of its image to the earth. These envoys were received
with divine honor, embalmed and draped, and worshipped in temples
built for them.
[Illustration:
Title-page of one of the earliest treatises on meteorites.
]
The coins to which we have alluded were usually struck in honor of the
sanctuaries wherein the aerolites were objects of adoration, and the
temple is often rudely figured with the stone set up in the centre. In
many cases the meteorite was preserved in its original form, which, if
conical, was regarded as a phallic symbol; in other cases, the mass was
rudely shaped into the conventional form of some divinity.
It is stated in Spangenberg’s Chron. Saxon. that in 998 A.D. two immense
stones fell at Magdeburg during a thunder-storm. One of these is said to
have fallen in the town itself and the other in the open country, near
the river Elbe. The description of a meteoric fall given in an
eighteenth century treatise on meteors, presents a vivid picture of the
phenomena attending—or believed to have attended—such a fall. We are
told that on June 16, 1794, at about seven o’clock in the evening a
thunder cloud was seen in Tuscany, near the city of Siena and the town
of Radacofani. This cloud came from the north, and shot forth sparks
like rockets, smoke rising from it like a furnace; at the same time a
series of explosions was heard, not so much resembling the sound of
thunder as that produced by the firing of cannon or the discharge of
many muskets. The cloud remained suspended in the air for some time,
during which many stones fell to the earth, some of which were found.
One of them is described as being of irregular form, with a point like a
diamond; it weighed about five pounds and gave out a “vitriolic smell.”
Another weighed three and a half pounds, was very hard, of the color of
iron, and “smelled like brimstone.”[170]
The following passage written in the fourteenth, or perhaps in the
thirteenth century, shows considerable accuracy of observation:[171]
There are some who fancy that the thunder is a stone, for the reason
that a stone often falls when it thunders in stormy weather. This is
not true, for if the thunder were a stone, it would wound the people
and animals it strikes, just as any other falling stone does. However,
this is not the case, for we see that the people who have been struck
by thunder (sic) show no wounds, but they are black from the stroke,
and this is because the hot vapor burns the blood in their hearts.
Therefore, they perish without wounds.
The fall of a siderite twenty miles east of Lahore in India, on April
17, 1621, is reported in contemporary records. From this iron, which
weighed about 3¼ pounds, the Mogul Emperor Jehangir ordered two sabres
to be made, as well as a knife and a dagger, and commanded that the fact
should be properly registered. Here, as in other similar cases, the
weapons were believed to possess a quasi-magic power because of the
celestial origin of the material employed.[172]
Michele Mercato[173] (d. 1593) gives a vivid description of the fall of
a meteor which was observed near Castrovilarii, in Calabria, January 10,
1583. Some men in a meadow observed a black, whirling cloud rushing
through the air, and saw it descend to the earth not far from where they
were standing. The noise accompanying the descent of the meteorite was
so deafening that it was heard far and wide, and the poor men fell to
the ground almost unconscious from terror. People from the neighborhood
hastened to the spot and, after restoring the terrified witnesses of the
phenomena, discovered a mass of iron weighing thirty-three pounds at the
spot where the black cloud had touched the earth.
The startling phenomenon of a rain of stones from the sky which took
place under rather queer circumstances is reported by the Jesuit priest
Alvarus as having occurred in China in 1622. The Taoist priests of that
land enjoyed the repute of being able to bring down rain from the sky by
their magic or religious rites, and when, during the year mentioned,
China was visited by a drought of unexampled severity, the aid of these
rain-makers was invoked. Yielding, perhaps not unwillingly, to the
popular entreaty, a group of priests ascended a hill and proceeded to
pronounce their invocations. To the joy of the onlookers the sky became
darkened and a rushing sound was heard, at first mistaken for an
oncoming rainstorm, but to the dismay of all an immense shower of stones
of all sizes fell upon the earth, destroying what remained of the
parched fruits and grain crops, and killing or maiming many persons. So
terrifying was the sight that the Jesuits who were watching the result
of the affair half-believed that the Last Day had come. When the panic
had finally subsided, the people fell upon the unlucky Taoist priests
and beat them soundly.[174]
In the “Annals of the Ottoman Empire,” by Subhi Mohammed Effendi, there
is an account of the fall of a meteor at Hasergrad, on the banks of the
Danube, on the fourth of Saban, A. H. 1153 (October 25, 1740). The
weather was fine, not a cloud was to be seen in the sky, and not a
breath of air was stirring. Suddenly there arose a whirlwind, the air
became obscured with clouds of dust, rain fell in torrents, and it
became dark as night. While all who were out of doors were hastening to
seek shelter from the storm, three terrific peals of thunder were heard,
as loud as the sound of many cannon. After the storm had passed several
strange masses partly of stone and partly of iron were discovered in a
nearby field. The Vizier bore two of these as great rarities to the
Sultan in Constantinople.[175]
The influence exerted by popular beliefs, even upon the learned, is well
illustrated by the opinion given by some of the leading French
physicists of the eighteenth century as to the character of meteorites.
When a meteoric stone fell at Luce, Dept. Marne, France, September 13,
1768, three French scientists, among them the celebrated Lavoisier, were
sent to investigate the matter. In their report to the Academy of
Sciences, they state that there must have been some error in the
accounts given of the event, for it was an assured fact that no such
things as _pierres de foudre_, or thunder-stones, existed. This was, of
course, perfectly true, but Lavoisier and his companions did not stop to
think that stones might fall to the earth in some other way. The result
of the investigation was summed up as follows:
If the existence of thunder-stones was regarded as doubtful at a time
when physicists had scarcely any idea of the nature of thunder, it is
even less admissible to-day, when modern physicists have discovered
the effects of this natural phenomenon are the same as those of
electricity. There is no record that the fulgarite, the fused sand or
rock struck by the lightning, has ever been used.
The opinion which seems the most probable to us, and that which is
most in accord with the accepted principles of physics as well as with
the facts reported by Abbé Bacheley, and our own investigation, is
that the stone was originally covered with a slight crust of earth and
turf, and was struck by lightning and so made visible.
Chladni reports in a pamphlet published in 1794 that the mass of
meteoric iron discovered by Dr. Pallas in Siberia, and known as the
Pallas or Krasnojarsk iron meteorite, was regarded by the Tartars as a
sacred object which had fallen from heaven.[176] As it is somewhat
unlikely that this belief could be accounted for by an ancient
tradition, we must seek an explanation in the conviction among primitive
peoples that any mass of rock or metal of unusual appearance and
differing notably from the surrounding formations must have come from
the sky. In this way primitive instinct often anticipates the results of
modern scientific investigation. This siderite, of irregular form and
weighing some 1500 pounds, was seen by Dr. Pallas in 1772, and deposited
by him in 1776; he learned that it had been found in 1749 at the summit
of a mountain situated between Krasnojarsk and Abakansk, by a Cossack.
Most of this famous siderite is preserved in the St. Petersburg Museum.
A singular circumstance in regard to the fall of a meteor, and one that
in ancient times would have been explained in a miraculous way, is that
during the desperate and bloody battle of Borodino, won by Napoleon over
the Russians, September 6, 1812, a meteorite is said to have fallen near
the headquarters of the Russian general. This would certainly have been
regarded—after the event—as a manifestation of divine wrath, and hence a
prognostic of the Russian defeat. However, had the French been defeated,
the meteorite would have been looked upon as a sign of divine favor, and
it would have been honored and reverenced. In modern times the natural
phenomenon is taken for what it is worth, and the only interest excited
is a purely scientific one.
Of all the meteorites that have been discovered, the most remarkable are
undoubtedly those found at Melville Bay, about 35 miles east of Cape
York, West Greenland, in 1894, by Admiral, then Lieutenant, Robert E.
Peary, and brought by him to the United States in 1895 and 1897.[177]
They are now to be seen in the American Museum of Natural History, New
York. The first report of the existence of meteoric iron in the vicinity
came from Captain Ross, who in 1818 was given two iron knives, or
lance-heads, by some Eskimo of Regent’s Bay. An analysis of the metal
revealed the presence of nickel and immediately suggested a meteoric
origin of the material; nothing more definite could be learned at the
time from the Eskimo than that the metal had been taken from an “iron
mountain” not far away. In 1840, the King of Denmark, whose interest had
been aroused in the matter, authorized the sending out of an expedition
to seek for the suspected siderites, but the search proved unsuccessful;
a later attempt made by the officers of the _North Star_, a Franklin
relief ship, in 1849–50, also failed. For a time the determination of
the telluric origin of the supposed siderites discovered at Ovifak,
Disko Island, West Greenland, by Baron N. A. E. Nordenskiold in 1870,
cast some doubt upon the true meteoric character of the iron of which
the Cape York knives had been made, and rather discouraged further
searches. It was not until 1894 that these extraordinary masses of
meteoric iron were at last seen and located by a European, one of the
hunters of the Tellikontinah tribe of Smith Sound Eskimos serving as
Lieutenant Peary’s guide. The siderites were three in number, the two
smaller having been named by the Eskimo “The Dog” and “The Woman,”
respectively, while the largest was known as “The Tent.” It now bears
the name of Ahnighito, that of the daughter of the explorer.
[Illustration:
By courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.
“AHNIGHITO,” THE GREAT CAPE YORK METEORITE, WEIGHING MORE THAN 36½
TONS
In the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Obtained by
Admiral Peary.
]
[Illustration:
By courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.
“THE WOMAN,” CAPE YORK METEORITE
In the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Weight 3
tons. Obtained by Admiral Peary.
]
The two smaller ones reposed loosely upon gneissic rocks, but Ahnighito,
found on a small island some six miles away, on a terrace 80 feet above
tide-water and about 100 feet from the shore, lay almost buried in rocks
and sand.
Eskimo legend had woven its web about these enigmatic meteorites and the
natives saw in them an Innuit woman, who with her dog and tent had been
hurled from the sky in a bygone age by Tornarsuk, the Evil One.
Originally the mass called “The Woman” was said to have closely
resembled the figure of a woman, seated and engaged in sewing, but by
the gradual chipping away of fragments of the iron this form had almost
disappeared. Peary was told that not long before, the “head” had fallen
off and that a party of Eskimo had tried to carry it away, lashed to a
sledge; however, as they were passing over the ice, it suddenly broke
up, so that sledge, iron and dogs sank in the water and the Eskimo
themselves barely escaped with their lives.
The dimensions of Ahnighito, the largest siderite ever discovered, are
given as follows: length, 10 feet 11 inches; height, 6 feet 9 inches;
thickness, 5 feet 2 inches. It weighs something over 36½ tons. The
weight of “The Woman” is 3 tons, and that of “The Dog” 1100 pounds. The
chemical compositions of these three siderites, which are regarded as
having originally constituted a single mass, have been determined by J.
E. Whitfield. In addition to small quantities of copper, sulphur,
phosphorus and carbon, the following proportions of the main
constituents were ascertained:[178]
The Dog The Woman Ahnighito
Iron 90.99 91.47 91.48
Nickel 8.27 7.78 7.79
Cobalt .53 .53 .53
Though smaller and less imposing by its mass than the greatest of the
Cape York meteorites, that called “Willamette” from having been found
two miles northwest of the town of that name in Clackamas County,
Oregon, ranks as the fourth, or possibly the third largest iron
meteorite in the world, and is the largest discovered within the
territory of the United States; remarkable peculiarities of form make it
an especially interesting object.[179] It was a chance find, made in
1902 by two prospectors in their search for gold or silver. Noting what
appeared to be a very slight rock projection they tapped this with their
hammers and the sound of the blow revealed the presence of metal;
digging down here and there, they ascertained the existence of a
considerable mass of iron. Although at first no one supposed that it was
a meteorite, before long this fact became known, and the finder, by very
primitive methods and by dint of tireless efforts, succeeded in
transporting the iron to his own land. His courageous attempt to acquire
possession of it was not, however, crowned with success, as the courts
decided that the company owning the land whereon it had been found
possessed the right to reclaim it from the finder.
[Illustration:
By courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.
“THE DOG,” CAPE YORK METEORITE
In the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Weight 1100
pounds. Obtained by Admiral Peary.
]
[Illustration:
By courtesy of Rochester (N. Y.) Academy of Sciences.
TWO VIEWS OF THE WILLAMETTE METEORITE NOW IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF
NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK CITY
Found in Clackamas County, Oregon, near the town of Willamette. Weight
31,107 pounds.
]
When weighed on the railroad scales in Portland, Oregon, the net weight
of this siderite was shown to be 31,107 pounds. The most striking
peculiarity is the abundance of pittings and hollows and their unusual
size. That these resulted in part from the effects of the enormous heat
generated by the swift flight of this weighty mass through the earth’s
atmosphere, is generally admitted; but some of the deepest pits are
believed to owe their origin to the decomposition of spheroidal nodules
of troilite, and the cylindrical holes to the decomposition of rod-like
masses of the same substance. Willamette, which was donated to the
American Museum of Natural History, by Mrs. William E. Dodge, is 10 feet
long, 6 feet 6 inches high, and has a thickness of 4 feet 3 inches.[180]
Chemical analyses have been made by Mr. J. M. Davison of the University
of Rochester and by J. E. Whitfield of Philadelphia. Their respective
determinations are here given:
Davison Whitfield
Iron 91.65 91.46
Nickel 7.88 8.30
Cobalt .21 ?
Phosphorus .09 ?
————— —————
99.83 99.76
The famous Cañon Diablo meteorite possesses a surpassing mineralogical
interest.[181] In 1891, at the Tenth International Geologic Congress,
Washington, D. C., the mineralogist Koenig announced that he had
discovered some microscopic diamonds in this meteorite, and later
investigations by Prof. Henri Moissan confirmed this discovery and
enlarged its scope. A mass of the iron weighing about 400 pounds was
used by Professor Moissan; this was cut by means of a steel ribbon saw.
As had been the case in Koenig’s investigations, the saw soon
encountered excessively hard portions that obstructed its operation, so
that twenty days’ labor was requisite to separate the iron into two
parts, each with a section area of nearly 100 square inches. On close
examination it became evident that the obstacles to the cutting
consisted of round or elliptical nodules, of a dark gray to black hue,
and enclosed in the bright iron. These nodules were mainly composed of
troilite (iron protosulphide). After chemical treatment an insoluble
residue remained, consisting of silica, amorphous carbon, graphite and
diamond. Many of these very minute diamonds were black, but a few were
transparent crystals, octahedrons with rounded edges.[182] The presence
of this diamond material in the interior of the iron mass of the
meteorite indicates their formation from carbon by the combined agencies
of high temperature and great pressure, as in the case of the artificial
diamonds experimentally produced by Moissan in an iron mass first
subjected to intense heat in the electric furnace and then rapidly
contracted in volume by sudden chilling. The fervid imagination of early
writers would certainly have attributed wonderful talismanic powers to
stones like these, probably generated in some lost planet and reaching
our earth through the wastes of celestial space, could they have been
able to observe and distinguish them with the incomplete optical
resources of their time.
The first announcement of the discovery of these diamonds from the Cañon
Diablo meteorite was made by Dr. A. E. Foote, and not long after
Professor Koenig’s determination of their character, the present writer
suggested an experiment that would afford absolute proof that the
material was really diamond. This was to charge a new skaif, or
diamond-polishing wheel, with the supposed diamond dust obtained from
the meteorite; should the material polish a diamond there could be no
doubt as to its character. On September 11, 1893, this experiment was
tried at the Mining Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition. After
the skaif had been charged with the residuum separated from the
meteorite by Dr. O. W. Huntington, it was given a speed of 2500
revolutions to the minute, and in less than fifteen minutes a small flat
surface had been ground down and polished on a cleavage-piece of rough
diamond held against the wheel. The experiment was then repeated several
times on other diamonds and always successfully. This showed
conclusively that the residuum of the meteorite contained many minute
diamond fragments.[183]
A most important group of meteorites were found in 1886 in Brenham
township, Kiowa County, Kansas, by some of the farmers of this district
in the course of their farming operations.[184] Entirely unaware of
their scientific value, the finders used these objects to weight down
haystacks, or for similar uses to which they would put small boulders.
In all some twenty of these specimens have been recovered, varying in
weight all the way from 466 pounds down to a single ounce. Most of them
were taken from an area of about sixty acres, although some were
scattered over a wider tract. The largest piece of the group, that on
which the farmers had bestowed the fanciful name of the “moon
meteorite,” had lain only three inches beneath the surface of the ground
and broke a ploughshare when it was first struck; none of the masses
appear to have been buried deeper down than from five to six inches. The
largest mass measures twenty-four inches across the widest part and
fourteen and a half at the thickest part. These Kiowa meteorites are in
a sense gem-meteorites, for a number of beautiful and brilliant olivine
crystals occur in them; many are in two distinct zones, the inner one
being a bright transparent yellow, while the outer one is of a dark
brown iron olivine, in reality a mixture of troilite and olivine. The
character and composition of the worked iron of meteoric origin found in
some of the Turner group of Indian mounds, in the Little Miami Valley,
Ohio, indicate that the latter may perhaps be brought into connection
with this group of meteorites. For here, as in the Frozen North among
the Esquimo, and in a number of other cases, the iron available for
primitive man was mainly that of meteorite origin.
In view of the relatively small number of meteorites that have fallen in
historical times, and of the small part of the earth’s surface actually
occupied by human settlements, we need scarcely be surprised at the
statement that there is but one credibly recorded instance of the
killing of a human being by a meteorite. This unique disaster is said to
have happened at Mhow in India, and fragments of the meteorite which
fell then are to be seen in museum collections. The great weight of some
meteorites would have rendered them very destructive had they not fallen
in the open country; the heaviest single mass actually _known_ to have
fallen, came to the ground at Knyahinya, Hungary, in 1866, and weighed
547 pounds; it buried itself 11 feet in the ground. Of course much
heavier aerolites and siderites, satisfactorily recognizable as such,
have been found, the heaviest being perhaps that at Bacubrit, Mexico, 13
feet in length with a width of 6 feet and a thickness of 5 feet; the
weight of this mass is estimated to be some 50 tons. Of meteorites which
have fallen in more or less close proximity to human beings, may be
noted one at Tourinnes-la-Grosse, which broke the street pavement;
another at Angers, which fell into a garden, near to where a lady was
standing; and still another at Brunau, which passed through a cottage
roof.[185]