fore, ashes had fallen from the sky, at Summerville, S.C.(33) It is said that the material was undoubtedly ashes. Then it was said that it had been discovered that, upon the day of [345/346] this occurrence, there has been "an extensive forest fire near Summerville."
Monthly Weather Review, October and November, 1886 -- under "Forest and Prairie Fires," there is no mention of a forest fire, either small or extensive, in either North or South Carolina.(34)
Summerville, and not Charleston, was the center of the disturbances. Ashes came from somewhere exactly to this central point.
In A Study of Recent Earthquakes, Dr. Charles Davison gives 36 pages to an account of phenomena at Charleston.(35) He studies neither meteors nor anything else that was seen in the sky. He studiously avoids all other occurrences upon this earth, at this time. Refine such a study to a finality of omissions, and the vacancy of the imbecile is the ideal of the student. I approve this, as harmless.
The other occurrences were enormous. Destruction in South Carolina was small compared with a catastrophe in Greece. Upon the day of the first slight shock, at Charleston (Aug. 27th) there was a violent quake in Greece, and at the same time, torrents poured from the sky, in Turkey, carrying away houses and cattle and bridges (Levant Herald, Sept. 2).(36) Thousands of homes collapsed, and hundreds of persons perished. This day, there was a shock, at Srinagar, Kashmir: shocks in Italy and Malta; and increased activity of Vesuvius. Just such an inky cloud as was seen at Charleston, was seen in the eastern Mediterranean, at the time of the catastrophe in Greece -- reported by the captain of the steamship La Valette -- see Malta Standard, Sept. 2 -- "a mass of thick, black smoke, changing into a reddish colour."(37) "The sea was perfectly calm, at the time." In the sky of Greece, there was a glare, like the light of a volcanic eruption (Comptes Rendus, 103-565).(38) [346/347]
I confess to childish liking for making little designs, or arrangements of data, myself. And every formal design depends upon blanks, as much as upon occupied spaces. But my objection to such a pattern-maker as Dr. Davison is to the preponderance of what he leaves out. In Dr. Davison's 36 pages upon the lesser catastrophe, at Charleston, he spins thin lines of argument, in a pretty pattern of agreements, around omissions. It is his convention that all earthquakes are of local, subterranean origin -- so he leaves out all appearances in the sky, and mentions none of the other violences that disturbed a zone around this earth. It is a monstrous disproportion, when a mind that should be designing embroidery takes catastrophes for the lines and blanks of its compositions.
It is my expression that if a clipper of data should mislay his scissors, or should accidentally let in an account of one of the many localized repetitions of meteors, he would tell of an indication that this earth is, or almost is, stationary. Night of Oct. 20th -- meteors falling at Srinagar, Kashmir. There was an earthquake. Shocks and falls of meteors continued together. According to my searches in Indian newspapers, these repeating meteors were seen nowhere else. As to zone-phenomena, I point out that there is a difference of only one degree of latitude between Charleston and Srinagar. For the data, see the Times of India, Nov. 5.
If a string of meteors should be flying toward this earth, and if the first of them should fall to this earth, at Srinagar, how is anybody going to think of the rest of them falling exactly here, if this earth is speeding away from them? Sometimes I am almost inclined to have a little faith, of course not in general reasoning, but anyway in my own reasoning, and I go on to observe that a long string of meteors can be thought [347/348] of, as coming down to the one point where the first fell, if that point is not moving away from them. But I begin to suspect that the trouble with me is that I am simple-minded, and that mine enemies, whom I call "conventionalists," are more subtle than I am, and pr