THE AEROLITES.
Stones falling—Where they come from—Arrival at the river Orinoco.
Stones falling—Where they come from—Arrival at the river Orinoco.
Well, I extricated myself from the quagmire and returned,—though not without some difficulty, I had wandered so far, to my roosting place. The next morning as I was preparing to descend the tree, the sky being clear, and the sun shining, I was alarmed by a hissing noise in the air; and looking quickly around, I was just in time to see an immense mass of something, I could not tell what, falling from above, with a loud noise, and crushing in its fall, the branches of a lofty tamarind tree.
Hastening to the spot, I found, to my surprise, an enormous piece of metal, quite hot, which had fallen with such force that it lay half buried in the swampy ground.
I stood lost in wonder. When I was a boy, I had often picked up lumps of metal on the Wiltshire Downs,in England, but though told they were aerolites, I did not at that time believe a word of it. “Can the thin pure air,” thought I then, “form such hard bodies? Or can there be great iron mountains, and forges, and blacksmiths, and every thing of that sort, up in the air?”
But now a huge mass lay at my feet. I had seen it fall. It was still hot. The boughs of the tamarind tree lay scattered about in every direction. How could I doubt any longer? Was it reasonable to deny facts, before my eyes, because I could not account for them?
Do you wish to know if I can account for themnow? Not a whit better. The moon, some say, has volcanic mountains which throw them out. But I don’t believe it. Think what an immense force of pressure it must take to send up a huge stone from one of our volcanoes, quite beyond the sphere of the earth’s attraction, so as to be met by the attraction of the moon and be carried to it! Do you believe such a thing could ever happen?
Nearly all we know about it is briefly this. Heavy bodies, of every variety of size, from an ounce to 300 pound’s weight, have at different times fallen from the atmosphere. These heavy bodies are really composed of earth and metals. They all contain the same substances,though sometimes varying a little in the proportions; viz. iron, nickel, manganese, silica or silex, sulphur, magnesia and lime.
Perhaps I ought to add that though Iknownothing more about these wonderful phenomena, it is more generally believed that these substances areformedin the vast regions of theatmosphere, by causes unknown except to Him whocreatedthe atmosphere, “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.”
Soon after my last adventure I arrived at the Mission villages on the banks of the river Orinoco. Here I met with a Spanish gentleman of distinction, by the name of Don Calao. He was a merchant, and sold monkeys, mackaws, turtles’ eggs, &c., very odd things for a man to trade with, as I then thought. I have something to say about turtles’ eggs in my next letter.
Turtle