SHOOTING-STARS AND THEIR CHARACTER.--A REMARKABLE VOYAGE.
The voyage from Penang to Rangoon was an agreeable one for our young
friends, as the sea was not disturbed by storms, and the temperature on
deck, both night and day, was delightful. In the cabins it was too warm
for comfort, as the iron sides of the ship absorbed a great deal of
heat, and the arrangements for ventilation were not able to carry it
off. The passengers slept on deck beneath the triple awning that covered
the whole stern of the ship, and the boys had a table arranged there
where they wrote their journals, and the letters describing what they
had seen. The evenings were devoted to conversation on whatever topics
happened to come up, and before they reached Rangoon the boys had made a
material addition to their already extensive stock of information.
The distance from Penang to Rangoon is 1194 miles, and the steamer took
five days to make the voyage. Consequently, the boys had all the time
they wished for bringing their writing up to date, and getting ready for
the new sights and sensations that awaited them in Burmah.
[Illustration: FIRST VIEW OF THE METEOR.]
On their first evening out from Penang the travellers were sitting near
the stern of the steamer, and gazing out over the moonlit waters. The
stars were bright in the sky, and the boys were designating the various
clusters and constellations, as they had learned them at school, when
suddenly there was a flash of light about half-way from the horizon to
the zenith, and directly in their line of vision. Then it moved across
the heavens from right to left, with a slightly downward course, and, as
the youths fixed their eyes upon it, there was an appearance of an
explosion, and the sky assumed its former aspect.
[Illustration: EXPLOSION OF THE METEOR.]
"A shooting-star!" Frank exclaimed.
"Or perhaps a meteor," Fred responded.
"Either way you like," said the Doctor, "as both names are used for the
phenomenon. It also has the name of 'falling-star,' as the path is
generally downward, or apparently so."
Frank asked what a shooting-star, meteor, or falling-star was composed
of, and what was the reason of its appearance.
"That is a question more easily asked than answered," the Doctor
replied. "Scientific men in all parts of the world have devoted a great
deal of time and attention to the subject, but they are not, as yet,
satisfactorily informed as to the character of the meteor."
"Don't they fall on the earth sometimes?" Fred inquired. "I have read
of aerolites that came from the air to the earth, and were composed of
solid matter. Are not these aerolites parts of shooting-stars?"
"Circumstantial evidence favors the theory that some of the aerolites
come from falling-stars; but, at the same time, no solid matter has
reached the earth that can be directly traced to one. The amount of
solid matter in an ordinary shooting-star is so small that it is thought
to be consumed in its passage through the air, where its great velocity
causes it to be heated to a very high degree; whenever anything has
fallen from the sky to the earth, and been found at the time of its
fall, it is always intensely hot."
"How far off was that meteor we just saw?" said Frank.
"Fifty or sixty miles, I presume," the Doctor answered. "It has been
determined that shooting-stars begin to be visible at distances varying
from forty to one hundred and twenty miles, and disappear at from thirty
to eighty miles. During the time we saw it, it moved about ninety miles;
it was in sight three or four seconds, and its velocity was, therefore,
not far from thirty miles a second; a pretty fast rate of travelling."
"Ever so much faster than a cannon-ball," Fred remarked. "No wonder it
gets heated so that it is consumed."
"But you didn't tell us about the aerolites, and what they are made of,"
Frank protested.
"Nor about the circumstantial evidence in favor of their coming from the
shooting-stars," added Fred.
"Several instances may be given," Doctor Bronson replied; "but the
following from Professor Loomis will be sufficient to illustrate the
theory:
"On the morning of December 14th, 1807, a meteor of great brilliancy was
seen moving in the atmosphere over the town of Weston, in Connecticut.
Its apparent diameter was about half that of the full-moon; when it
disappeared several persons heard a sound resembling the discharge of a
cannon, followed by smaller reports like a fire of musketry. Soon after
the explosions a man heard a sound like the falling of a heavy body, and
upon examination he discovered that a stone had fallen upon a rock near
his house and was dashed into fragments, which were quite hot when
picked up. When put together they were found to weigh about twenty
pounds.
"In another place, five miles away from the first one, somebody found a
hole in the turf, and on digging down about two feet he brought up a
stone weighing thirty-five pounds. Other stones were found in the
neighborhood weighing respectively ten, thirteen, twenty, and thirty-six
pounds, and at a spot several miles distant there were a dozen
fragments, evidently broken from a mass of two hundred pounds or more,
that struck a large rock with great force. The entire weight of all the
pieces of the meteor found in Weston exceeded three hundred pounds, and
one of the specimens, weighing thirty-six pounds, is preserved in the
cabinet at Yale College."
"The proof is pretty conclusive that the fragments came from the
shooting-star," one of the boys remarked. "Do they know how high it was
in the sky when it blew up?"
"It was first seen near Albany," was the reply, "and it disappeared near
Weston. When first seen it was about eighty miles high; its course
carried it toward the earth, so that when it exploded it was only eight
miles high. Probably the greater part of the meteor fell into Long
Island Sound and was lost, as the direction in which it was going would
take it there.
"There have been some twenty or more aerolites in the United States
whose falls have been known at the time of their occurrence, besides a
good many discoveries of meteoric stones. There was one in Ohio in 1860
that burst in the air one day about noon; several stones were seen to
fall and were secured, the largest of them weighing one hundred and
three pounds. The surface of all the stones was covered with a crust, as
though they had been melted.
"Now we come to the composition of the meteoric fragments. It varies
greatly, some of them containing ninety-six per cent. of iron, while
others have only one per cent.; in some there will be eighteen per cent.
of nickel, and in others less than one per cent. There are many
aerolites that consist of silica, lime, magnesia, and kindred
substances; these are called meteoric stones, to distinguish them from
those where iron preponderates, the latter having the name of meteoric
iron.
"Aerolites generally contain small quantities of cobalt, tin, copper,
and one or two other metals, in addition to the iron. The latter, when
in large proportion, is readily malleable, and can be wrought by the
blacksmith with the utmost ease. You know that iron ore is one of the
most abundant minerals, but metallic iron in a state of nature is
exceedingly rare. The curious thing about these meteors is that the iron
in them is always metallic, and not in the shape of ore.
[Illustration: THE SANTA ROSA AEROLITE.]
"I will now tell you," he continued, "about the structure of these
masses of iron that fall from the sky. Their surfaces are more or less
dotted and indented, and sometimes they suggest that there were large
bubbles of air on them at the time they were cooled. One that fell near
Lockport, in the State of New York, is honey-combed as though cavities
had been dug in it with a chisel, and another that came from Santa Rosa,
in New Grenada, has a less number of dimples in it, but they are deeper.
And let me say, before I forget it, that this aerolite from Santa Rosa
weighs 1600 pounds, and has about one cubic foot of volume; it is
consequently very dense, and is composed of nearly pure iron."
Fred asked if that was the largest meteor ever found.
[Illustration: MELBOURNE AEROLITE.]
"Not by any means," the Doctor answered. "The largest in any collection
was sent from Melbourne, Australia, to the British Museum, and weighs
8257 pounds. The same museum has one from Otumpa, South America, that
weighs 1400 pounds, and was detached from a mass estimated to weigh more
than fifteen tons. This is the largest mass of meteoric iron known to
exist.
[Illustration: STRUCTURE OF THE TEXAS AEROLITE.]
"Meteoric iron has a highly crystalline formation, which can be found
by polishing a surface and then heating it to whiteness. When it is
cooled it will be found covered with curious lines and streaks that
remind you of the frost-marks on a window-pane. An aerolite found in
Texas was submitted to the heating process; the streaks that were
developed remained there permanently, and the same is the case with
several others. Ordinary iron will not exhibit these marks, but they can
sometimes be produced in iron that has been melted out of volcanic
rocks."
"How does the iron get up in the atmosphere to form these aerolites?"
one of the boys inquired.
"That is a conundrum I give up without trying," the Doctor replied.
"Nobody has yet been able to tell us, and we must be content with the
fact that it is there.
"And there is a good deal of it up in the regions beyond the clouds," he
continued, "if we are to judge by the number of meteors or
shooting-stars that are seen every year. It has been estimated that more
than a thousand meteors fall daily through the air so near the earth
that they might be seen from one place if the clouds and the sun and
moon would permit; taking this as a basis, there are more than 8,000,000
of meteors visible every day from all over the earth. Once in a while we
have meteoric showers, when thousands of meteors can be seen from one
point in an hour's time, and frequently the fall is so rapid that they
cannot be counted. But it is a curious circumstance that in these
showers no meteor or its fragments have been known to strike the
earth."
A good deal more was said on this subject that we have not space for
recording, and from meteors the conversation wandered to the moon, and
around among the stars generally, till it was bedtime. In the latter
part of their talk they were joined by the captain of the ship, who told
them that the natives of the Malay peninsula and the coast of Burmah
have a remarkable knowledge of astronomy, so far as it relates to the
navigation of their sailing craft. "To find our positions at sea," said
he, "we must use elaborate instruments and take several observations,
particularly in getting our longitude; but these natives will work up
their longitude by observations on the stars with a simple apparatus
consisting of a stick and a string. The string is twice as long as the
stick, and is fastened to its ends; there are several knots on the
string and notches on the stick, and by holding this rude instrument in
a certain position, and observing the relations between the knots and
notches with some of the more prominent stars, they will get their
longitude exactly.
"It is too late now," said the captain, "or I would tell you about a
most remarkable voyage that was made across the Bay of Bengal, a few
years ago, by men who had no knowledge whatever of navigation. Perhaps
we'll have it to-morrow night."
With this remark he left them, and, as before stated, the evening
session came to an end at the hour for retiring to sleep.
According to promise the captain joined our friends the next evening,
and told them of the feat performed by a small party of natives in
crossing the Bay of Bengal in an open boat.[4]
[4] The story here given was narrated to the author by Captain H. B.
Smith, of the British India Steam Navigation Company's ship _Madura_,
during a voyage up the east coast of India in 1878.
[Illustration: RIVER-BOATS IN BURMAH.]
"There were five of them," said the captain, "and they went to sleep in
their boat one night, so as to take an early start up the river from
Rangoon. The boat was made from a hollowed log, and was about
twenty-five feet long by four wide in the centre; it had a mast with a
small square sail, like what you generally see on the native boats in
the East, and its sides were not more than a foot above water. This was
the craft that safely carried five men a thousand miles across the open
sea.
"They went to sleep, as I said, and when they waked in the morning, just
at dawn, they found themselves at sea. The boat had become untied from
the stake where it was fastened; the strong current of the river, with
the ebb-tide, had floated them down at a rapid rate, and before they
knew it they were out of sight of land.
"Not one of them had ever been at sea before; they were all from the
upper country, and some of them had not even heard there was any water
in the world beyond their own river. The oldest of the party was captain
of the boat; he had heard something about 'the black water' that was so
salt as to poison those who drank it, but beyond that he had very little
information concerning it.
[Illustration: OUT ON THE WATERS.]
"He had no idea in what direction he should steer to reach land, but
remembered that it was necessary to keep a straight course to get
anywhere. Whether to go east, west, north, or south, he could not say,
and in fact he hardly knew the points of compass. He had no compass, or
anything of the sort, and so he concluded that to steer properly he
should keep the sun constantly on his left hand. It was unfortunate that
he did not decide to keep the sun on the right hand, as he would then
have brought up on the coast of Burmah, while the course he took was
westward, across the Bay of Bengal.
"The boat was loaded with salt belonging to an English house in Rangoon,
and consigned to their agency up the river. The old man ordered the salt
thrown overboard to lighten the boat; then he divided the provisions,
giving each man his share. The sail was spread to the light wind that
was blowing, and with the sun on the left the boat moved on.
[Illustration: A WRECK AT SEA.]
"The only provisions were a couple of bags of rice, and with care this
could be made to last a month. They had very little fresh water, and the
old man's ingenuity was set to work to devise means of collecting some.
They had a little furnace on some earth in the middle of the boat where
they did their cooking, and they had a bag or two of charcoal. Whenever
they were engaged in cooking their daily allowance of rice, the
_padrone_ caused his companions to dip a couple of tin plates in the
sea; when these plates were cooled as much as the sea-water could cool
them, they were wiped dry and held in the steam that rose from the
rice-kettle, and in this way a few drops of water could be obtained. As
soon as they were heated, the water that had accumulated on the plates
would be wiped off, and the dipping in the sea would be renewed. Enough
water was collected in this way to prevent their dying of thirst, but
not enough to save them from considerable suffering. Of course the rice
contained a good deal of water which it absorbed in the process of
cooking: the usual mode of preparing rice in the East is to steam it
above a boiling kettle, and not to place it in the water, after the
American manner. Occasionally they were surrounded by flying-fish, but
they never caught any, though they tried to do so.
[Illustration: A FLYING-FISH.]
"On and on they sailed. Day after day passed with no sign of land, and
no ship to bring them assistance. Their coals were exhausted on the
seventeenth day; on the next and the next they suffered terrible thirst,
because they could no longer make use of their condenser, and the old
chief said that if they found no relief by the twentieth day they would
have to give up.
"But at ten o'clock in the night of the nineteenth day the boat slid up
on a sandy beach, and the party stepped on shore. Fortune willed it that
they landed on the beach in front of the French town of Pondicherry;
they had seen the lights for an hour or more, but mistook them for
stars.
"The boat was pulled up high and dry on the beach, which was deserted at
that hour. One man was left to guard it, and the other four, with the
old man leading, walked in single file through the streets of
Pondicherry in search of assistance.
"At every few steps the leader called out, 'Does any one speak Burmese?'
People stared at him, and some laughed, and thought him insane, but he
kept on up and down the streets with his comrades, repeating his inquiry
in his own language, for he knew no other--'Does any one speak Burmese?'
"For nearly an hour he continued in this way, and just as he was about
to give up, and try some other means of making himself understood, some
one who spoke Burmese stepped from the crowd and asked what he wanted.
"His first inquiry was whether there was an agency of the firm to whom
the cargo of salt belonged. Finding there was none, he named other
houses of Rangoon with no better luck, and at last asked for the British
India Steam Navigation Company.
"He went at once to the Company's agency, but it was closed for the
night. He was there bright and early next morning, and his first request
was for a telegram to be sent to his employers at Rangoon, so that they
would know he had not run away with the cargo of salt. He wanted his
character vindicated first of all, and then he asked if he and his
comrades could be sent to Rangoon, and allowed to pay their passage on
arrival, as they had not sufficient money to pay in advance.
"Those who heard his story could hardly believe it, especially when they
saw the boat in which the five men had come across the Bay of Bengal.
But they were fully convinced when a despatch came from the house at
Rangoon to send the men back, and draw for expenses. The firm had full
faith in the honesty of the old man, as he had been a long time in their
employ.
"The agent of the French Steamship Company bought their boat for a good
price, to keep as a curiosity, and gave them a free passage to Madras;
from Madras the British India Company gave them passage to Rangoon,
where they arrived safely, and were heroes in the eyes of all their
neighbors and friends."
Doctor Bronson reminded the captain that there were several instances on
record of boats not over twenty feet long that had safely crossed the
Atlantic Ocean.
"Yes," the captain answered, "that is quite true; but bear in mind that
the boats you speak of were specially built for the voyages they
undertook; they were well provisioned and watered, and were in the track
of steamships, from which they could obtain fresh supplies nearly every
day if they wanted them. The men who managed them were experienced
sailors, and were provided with instruments by which they could work
out their positions, and know where they were. In the case I speak of
the boat was totally unfit for ocean navigation, the men on board had
never looked on the sea, and knew nothing about it; they had no proper
supply of provisions, no instruments whatever, and even if they had
possessed any, they were ignorant of their use. When you consider all
the circumstances, I think you will agree with me that the voyage of the
five Burmese was the most remarkable you ever heard of."
[Illustration: LANDING ON THE BEACH.]