On the 27th day of February, 1826, (to begin as M. Dumas would commence one of
his novels,) M. Biela, an Austrian officer, residing at Josephstadt, in Bohemia, discovered a comet in the constellation Aries,
which, at that time, was seen as a small round speck of filmy cloud. Its
course was watched during the following month by M. Gambart at Marseilles and by
M. Clausen at Altona, and those observers assigned to it an elliptical orbit,
with a period of six years and three quarters for its
revolution.
M. Damoiseau subsequently calculated its path, and announced that on its next return the comet would cross the orbit of he earth, within twenty
thousand miles of its track, and but about one month before the earth
would have arrived at the same spot!
This was shooting close to the bull's-eye!
He estimated that it would lose nearly ten days on its return trip,
through the retarding influence of Jupiter and Saturn; but, if it lost
forty days instead of ten, what then?
But the comet came up to time in 1832, and the earth missed it by one
month.
| And it returned in like fashion in 1839 and 1846. But here a surprising thing occurred. Its proximity to the earth had split it in two; each half had a head and tail of its own; each had set up a separate government for itself; and they were whirling through space, side by side, like a couple of race-horses, about sixteen thousand miles apart, or about twice as wide apart as the diameter of the earth. |
|
In 1852, 1859, and 1866, the comet should have returned, but it did
not. It was lost. It was dissipated. Its material was hanging around the
earth in fragments somewhere. I quote from a writer in a recent issue of
the "Edinburgh Review":
"The puzzled astronomers were left in a state of tantalizing
uncertainty
as to what had become of it. At the beginning of the year 1866 this
feeling of bewilderment gained expression in the Annual Report of the
Council of the Royal Astronomical Society. The matter continued,
nevertheless, in the same state of provoking uncertainty for another six
years. The third period of the perihelion passage had then passed, and
nothing had been seen of the missing luminary. But on the night of
November 27, 1872, night-watchers were startled by a sudden and a very
magnificent display of falling stars or meteors, of which there had been
no previous forecast...
But did the earth escape with a mere shower of fireworks?
I have argued that the material of a comet consists of a solid nucleus,
giving out fire and gas, enveloped in a great gaseous mass, and a tail
made up of stones, possibly gradually diminishing in size as they recede
from the nucleus, until the after-part of it is composed of fine dust
ground from the pebbles and boulders; while beyond this there may be a
still further prolongation into gaseous matter.
Now, we have seen that Biela's comets lost their tails. What became of
them?... Did anything out of the usual order occur on the face of the earth
about this time?
Yes. In the year 1871, on Sunday, the 8th of October, at half past nine
o'clock in the evening, events occurred which attracted the attention of
the whole world, which caused the death of hundreds of human beings, and the
destruction of millions of property, and which involved three
different States of the Union in the wildest alarm and terror.
The summer of 1871 had been excessively dry; the moisture seemed to be evaporated out of the air; and on the Sunday above named the atmospheric
conditions all through the Northwest were of the most peculiar character. The writer was living at the time in Minnesota, hundreds of miles from the scene of
the disasters, and he can never forget the condition of things. There was a
parched, combustible, inflammable, furnace-like feeling in the air, that was
really alarming. It felt as if there were needed but a match, a spark, to cause
a world-wide explosion. It was weird and unnatural. I have never seen nor felt
anything like it before or since. Those who experienced it will bear me out in
these statements.
At that hour, half past nine o'clock in the evening, at apparently the
same moment, at points hundreds of miles apart, in three different
States, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, fires of the most peculiar and
devastating kind broke out, so far as we know, by spontaneous combustion.
In Wisconsin, on its eastern borders, in a heavily timbered country, near
Lake Michigan, a region embracing four hundred square miles, extending
north from Brown County, and containing Peshtigo, Manistee, Holland, and
numerous villages on the shores of Green Bay, was swept bare by an
absolute whirlwind of flame. There were seven hundred and fifty people
killed outright, besides great numbers of the wounded, maimed, and
burned, who died afterward. More than three million dollars' worth of
property was destroyed [See "History of the Great Conflagration"
Sheahan & Upton, Chicago 1871, pp 393, 394, etc.].
It was no ordinary fire. I quote:
"At sundown there was a lull in the wind and comparative stillness. For two hours there were no signs of danger; but at a few minutes after nine
o'clock, and by a singular coincidence, precisely the time at which the
Chicago fire commenced, the people of the village heard a terrible roar.
It was that of a tornado, crushing through the forests. Instantly the
heavens were illuminated with a terrible glare. The sky, which had been
so dark a moment before, burst into clouds of flame.
A
spectator of the
terrible scene says the fire did not come upon them gradually from burning
trees and other objects to the windward, but the first notice they had of
it was a whirlwind of flame in great clouds from above the tops of the
trees, which fell upon and entirely enveloped everything. The poor people
inhaled it, or the intensely hot air, and fell down dead. This is verified
by the appearance of many of the corpses. They were found dead in the
roads and open spaces, where there were no visible marks of fire near by, with
not a trace of burning upon their bodies or clothing. At the Sugar
Bush, which is an extended clearing, in some places four miles in width,
corpses were found in the open road, between fences only slightly burned. No
mark of fire was upon them; they lay there as if asleep. This phenomenon seems to explain the fact that so many were killed in compact masses.
They seemed to have huddled together, in what were evidently regarded at the
moment s the safest places, far away from buildings, trees, or other inflammable
material, and there to have died together [Ibid 372].
Another spectator says:
"Much has been said of the intense heat of the fires which destroyed
Peshtigo, Menekaune, Williamsonville, etc., but all that has been said can
give the stranger but a faint conception of the reality. The heat has been
compared to that engendered by a flame concentrated on an object by a
blow-pipe; but even that would not account for some of the phenomena. For
instance, we have in our possession a copper cent taken from the pocket of a
dead man in the Peshtigo Sugar Bush, which will illustrate our point. This cent
has been partially fused, but still retains its round form,
and the inscription upon it is legible. Others, in the same pocket, were
partially melted, and yet the clothing and the body of the man were not
even singed. We do not know in what way to account for this, unless, as
is asserted by some, the tornado and fire were accompanied by electrical
phenomena" [Ibid 373].
"It is the universal testimony that the prevailing idea among the people
was, that the last day had come. Accustomed as they were to fire, nothing like
this had ever been known. They could give no other interpretation to this
ominous roar, this bursting of the sky with flame, and this dropping down of
fire out of the very heavens, consuming instantly everything it touched.
"No two give a like description of the great tornado as it smote and
devoured the village. It seemed as if 'the fiery fiends of hell had been
loosened,' says one. 'It came in great sheeted flames from heaven,' says
another. 'There was a pitiless rain of fire and *sand*.' 'The atmosphere
was all afire.' Some speak of 'great balls of fire unrolling and shooting
forth in streams_.' The fire leaped over roofs and trees, and ignited
whole streets at once. No one could stand before the blast. It was a race
with death, above, behind, and before them" [Ibid 374].
A civil engineer, doing business in Peshtigo, says:
"The heat increased so rapidly, as things got well afire, that, when
about four hundred feet from the bridge and the nearest building, I was
obliged to lie down behind a log that was aground in about two feet of
water, and by going under water now and then, and holding my head close to the
water behind the log, I managed to breathe. There were a dozen others behind the
same log. If I had succeeded in crossing the river and gone among the buildings
on the other side, probably I should have been lost, as many were."
In Michigan, one Allison Weaver, near Port Huron, determined to remain,
to protect, if possible, some mill-property of which he had charge. He
knew the fire was coming, and dug himself a shallow well or pit, made a
thick plank cover to place over it, and thus prepared to bide the
conflagration.
I quote:
"He filled it nearly full of water, and took care to saturate the ground
around it for a distance of several rods. Going to the mill, he dragged
out a four-inch plank, sawed it in two, and saw that the parts tightly
covered the mouth of the little well. 'I kalkerated it would be tech and
go,' said he, 'but it was the best I could do.' At midnight he had everything
arranged, and the roaring then was awful to hear. The clearing was ten to twelve
acres in extent, and Weaver says that, for two hours before the fire reached
him, there was a constant flight across the ground of small animals. As he
rested a moment from giving the house another wetting down, a horse dashed into
the opening at full speed and made for the house. Weaver could see him tremble
and shake with excitement and
terror, and felt a pity for him. After a moment, the animal gave utterance
to a snort of dismay, ran two or three times around the house, and then
shot off into the woods like a rocket."
"Not long after this the fire came. Weaver stood by his well, ready for
the emergency, yet curious to see the breaking-in of the flames. The
roaring increased in volume, the air became oppressive, a cloud of dust
and cinders came showering down, and he could see the flame through the trees.
It did not run along the ground, or leap from tree to tree, but it
came on like a tornado, _a sheet of flame reaching from the earth to the
tops of the trees_. As it struck the clearing he jumped into his well, and
closed over the planks. He could no longer see, but he could hear. He says that
the flames made no halt whatever, or ceased their roaring for an
instant, but he hardly got the opening closed before the house and mill
were burning tinder, and both were down in five minutes. The smoke came down
upon him powerfully, and his den was so hot he could hardly breathe.
"He knew that the planks above him were on fire, but, remembering their
thickness, he waited till the roaring of the flames had died away, and
then with his head and hands turned them over and put our the fire by
dashing up water with his hands. Although it was a cold night, and the
water had at first chilled him, the heat gradually warmed him up until he
felt quite comfortable. He remained in his den until daylight, frequently
turning over the planks and putting out the fire, and then the worst had
passed. The earth around was on fire in spots, house and mill were gone,
leaves, brush, and logs were swept clean away as if shaved off and swept with a
broom, and nothing but soot and ashes were to be seen" [Ibid 390].
In Wisconsin, at Williamson's Mills, there was a large but shallow well
on the premises belonging to a Mr. Boorman. The people, when cur off by
the flames and wild with terror, and thinking they would find safety in
the water, leaped into this well. "The relentless fury of the flames drove
them pell-mell into the pit, to struggle with each other and die - some by
drowning, and others by fire and suffocation. None escaped. Thirty-two
bodies were found there. They were in every imaginable position; but the
contortions of their limbs and the agonizing expressions of their faces
told the awful tale" [Ibid 386].
The recital of these details, horrible though they may be, becomes
excusable when we remember that the ancestors of our race must have
endured similar horrors in that awful calamity which I have discussed in
this volume.
James B. Clark, of Detroit, who was at Uniontown, Wisconsin, writes:
"The fire suddenly made a rush, like the flash of a train of gunpowder,
and swept in the shape of a crescent around the settlement. It is almost
impossible to conceive the frightful rapidity of the advance of the
flames. The rushing fire seemed to eat up and annihilate the trees."
They saw a black mass coming toward them from the wall of flame:
"It was a stampede of cattle and horses thundering toward us, bellowing,
moaning, and neighing as they galloped on; rushing with fearful speed,
their eyeballs dilated and glaring with terror, and every motion betokening
delirium of fright. Some had been badly burned, and must have plunged through a
long space of flame in the desperate effort to escape.
Following considerably behind came a solitary horse, panting and snorting
and nearly exhausted. He was saddled and bridled, and, as we first
thought, had a bag lashed to his back. As he came up we were startled at
the sight of a young lad lying fallen over the animal's neck, the bridle
wound around his hands, and the mane being clinched by the fingers. Little
effort was needed to stop the jaded horse, and at once release the
helpless boy. He was taken into the house, and all that we could do was
done; but he had inhaled the smoke, and was seemingly dying. Some time
elapsed and he revived enough to speak. He told his name - Patrick
Byrnes - and said: 'Father and mother and the children got into the wagon.
I don't know what became of them. Everything is burned up. I am dying. Oh! is
hell any worse than this?'" [Ibid 383]
When we leave Wisconsin and pass about two hundred and fifty miles
eastward, over Lake Michigan and across the whole width of the State of
Michigan, we find much the same condition of things, but not so terrible
in the loss of life. Fully fifteen thousand people were rendered homeless
by the fires; and their food, clothing, crops, horses, and cattle were
destroyed. Of these five to six thousand were burned out the same night
that the fires broke out in Chicago and Wisconsin. The total destruction
of property exceeded one million dollars; not only villages and cities,
but whole townships, were swept bare.
But it is to Chicago we must turn for the most extraordinary results of
this atmospheric disturbance. It is needless to tell the story in detail.
The world knows it by heart:
"Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone,
On the charred fragments of her shattered throne,
Lies she who stood but yesterday alone."
I have only space to refer to one or two points,
The fire was spontaneous. The story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow having started the
conflagration by kicking over a lantern was proved to be false. It was the
access of gas from the tail of Biela's comet that burned up Chicago!
The fire-marshal testified: "I felt it in my bones that we were going to
have a burn." He says, speaking of O'Leary's barn:
"We got the fire under control, and it would not have gone farther; but
the next thing I knew they came and told me that St. Paul's church, about
two squares north, was on fire" [Ibid 163].
They checked the church-fire, but - "The next thing I knew the fire was in
Bateham's planing-mill."
A writer in the New York "Evening Post" says he saw
in Chicago "buildings far beyond the line of fire, and in no contact with
it, burst into flames from the interior."
It must not be forgotten that the fall of 1871 was marked by extraordinary
conflagrations in regions widely separated. On the 8th of October, the same
day the Wisconsin, Michigan, and Chicago fires broke out, the States of
Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, and Illinois were severely devastated by
prairie-fires; while terrible fires raged on the Alleghenies, the Sierras of the
Pacific coast, and the Rocky Mountains, and in the region of the Red River of
the North.
"The Annual Record of Science and Industry" for 1876, page 84, says:
"For weeks before and after the great fire in Chicago in 1872, great
areas of forest and prairie-land, both in the United States and the
British Provinces, were on fire."
The flames that consumed a great part of Chicago were of an unusual
character and produced extraordinary effects. They absolutely melted the
hardest building-stone, which had previously been considered fire-proof.
Iron, glass, granite, were fused and run together into grotesque conglomerates,
as if they had been put through a blast-furnace. No kind of
material could stand its breath for a moment.
I quote again from Sheahan & Upton's work:
"The huge stone and brick structures melted before the fierceness of the
flames as a snow-flake melts and disappears in water, and almost as
quickly. Six-story buildings would take fire and disappear for ever from
sight in five minutes by the watch... The fire also doubled on its track
at the great Union Depot and burned half a mile southward in the very
teeth of the gale - a gale which blew a perfect tornado, and in which no
vessel could have lived on the lake... Strange, fantastic fires of blue,
red, and green played along the cornices of buildings" ["History of
the
Chicago Fire" 85, 86].
Hon. William B. Ogden wrote at the time: "The fire was accompanied by
the fiercest tornado of wind ever known to blow here" [Ibid 87].
"The most striking peculiarity of the fire was its intense heat. Nothing
exposed to it escaped. Amid the hundreds of acres left bare there is not
to be found a piece of wood of any description, and, unlike most fires,
it left nothing half burned... The fire swept the streets of all the ordinary
dust and rubbish, consuming it instantly" [Ibid 119].
The Athens marble burned like coal!
"The intensity of the heat may be judged, and the thorough combustion of
everything wooden may be understood, when we state that in the yard of one of
the large agricultural-implement factories was stacked some hundreds of tons of
pig-iron. This iron was two hundred feet from any building. To the south of it
was the river, one hundred and fifty feet wide. No large building but the
factory was in the immediate vicinity of the fire. Yet, so great was the heat,
that this pile of iron melted and run, and is now in one large and nearly solid
mass" [Ibid 121].
The amount of property destroyed was estimated by Mayor Medill at one
hundred and fifty million dollars; and the number of people rendered
houseless, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand. Several hundred lives were
lost.
(From www.traveldesk.com/a/Air_Comet_S_A.html )
"What eyewitnesses described was more like a holocaust from heaven than an accidental fire started by a nervous cow. And in fact, according to a theory propounded by Minnesota Congressmen Ignatius Donnelly, the devastating fires of 1871 did fall from above, in the form of a wayward cometary tail. During it's 1846 passage, Biela's comet had inexplicably split in two; it was supposed to return in 1866, but failed to appear. Biela's fragmented head finally showed up in 1872 as a meteor shower.
"Donnelly suggested the separated tail appeared in 1871 and was the prime cause of the widespread firestorm that swept the Midwest, damaging or destroying a total of twenty-four towns and leaving 2,000 or more dead in its wake. Drought conditions that fall no doubt contributed to the extent of the conflagration.
"History today concentrates on the Chicago Fire alone and largely overlooks the Peshtigo Horror, as it was then called. It ignores altogether Biela's comet and it's unaccounted-for tail.
(from http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Gold/9912/ )
Email Ken Rieli: krieli@up.net
