nn, Jr., the acting United States Consul stationed at
Biskra, who happened to be dining with the abbot of the Franciscan
monastery at Linares, sent the following account of the flight of the
Ring to the State Department at Washington, where it is now on file.
[See Vol. 27, pp. 491-498, with footnote, of Official Records of the
Consular Correspondence for 1915-1916.] After describing general
conditions in Algeria he continues:

We had gone upon the roof in the early evening to look at the sky
through the large telescope presented to the Franciscans by Count
Philippe d'Ormay, when Father Antoine called my attention to a
comet that was apparently coming straight toward us. Instead,
however, of leaving a horizontal trail of fire behind it, this
comet or meteorite seemed to shoot an almost vertical beam of
orange light toward the earth. It produced a very strange effect on
all of us, since a normal comet or other celestial body that left a
wake of light of that sort behind it would naturally be expected to
be moving upward toward the zenith, instead of in a direction
parallel to the earth. It looked somehow as if the tail of the
comet had been bent over. As soon as it came near enough so that we
could focus the telescope upon it we discovered that it was a new
sort of flying machine. It passed over our heads at a height no
greater than ten thousand feet, if as great as that, and we could
see that it was a cylindrical ring like a doughnut or an anchor
ring, constructed, I believe, of highly polished metal, the inner
aperture being about twenty-five yards in diameter. The tube of the
cylinder looked to be about twenty feet thick, and had circular
windows or portholes that were brilliantly lighted.

The strangest thing about it was that it carried a superstructure
consisting of a number of arms meeting at a point above the centre
of the opening and supporting some sort of apparatus from which the
beam of light emanated. This appliance, which we supposed to be a
gigantic searchlight, was focused down through the Ring and could
apparently be moved at will over a limited radius of about fifteen
degrees. We could not understand this, nor why the light was thrown
from outside and above instead of from inside the flying machine,
but the explanation may be found in the immense heat that must