noise of boiling." The
chronicle of Rheims describes the appearance, as if all the stars in
heaven were driven like dust before the wind. "By the reporte of the
common people, in this kynge's time (William Rufus)," says Rastel,
"divers great wonders were sene--and therefore the king was told by
divers of his familiars, that God was not content with his lyvyng, but
he was so wilful and proude of minde, that he regarded little their
saying." There can be no hesitation now in giving credence to such
narrations as these, since similar facts have passed under the notice of
the present generation.

The first grand phenomena of a meteoric shower which attracted attention
in modern times was witnessed by the Moravian Missionaries at their
settlements in Greenland. For several hours the hemisphere presented a
magnificent and astonishing spectacle, that of fiery particles, thick as
hail, crowding the concave of the sky, as though some magazine of
combustion in celestial space was discharging its contents toward the
earth. This was observed over a wide extent of territory. Humboldt, then
traveling in South America, accompanied by M. Bonpland, thus speaks of
it: "Toward the morning of the 13th November, 1799, we witnessed a most
extraordinary scene of shooting meteors. Thousands of bodies and falling
stars succeeded each other during four hours. Their direction was very
regular from north to south. From the beginning of the phenomenon there
was not a space in the firmament equal in extent to three diameters of
the moon which was not filled every instant with bodies of falling
stars. All the meteors left luminous traces or phosphorescent bands
behind them, which lasted seven or eight seconds." An agent of the
United States, Mr. Ellicott, at that time at sea between Cape Florida
and the West India Islands, was another spectator, and thus describes
the scene: "I was called up about three o'clock in the morning, to see
the shooting stars, as they are called. The phenomenon was grand and
awful The whole heavens appeared as if illuminated with sky-rockets,
which disappeared only by the light of the sun after daybreak. The
meteors, which at any one instant of time appeared as numerous as the
stars, flew in all possible directions, except from the earth, toward
which they all inclined more or less; and some of them descended
perpendicularly over the vessel we were in, so that I was in constant
expectation of their falling on us." The same