The Book Of Curiosities Part 35

THE METEORIC STONE.

The following description of a meteoric stone, which fell in the year 1511, is taken from a set of observations on natural history, meteorology, &c. made in the early part of the sixteenth century, by Andrea da Prato, of Milan. These have not been published; but various copies of them exist.

They have been commented upon by Dr. Louis Rossi, in the _Giomale di Fisica, Chemica, &c._ from whence this description is taken.--"On the 4th of September, 1511, at the second hour of the night, and also at the seventh, there appeared in the air, at Milan, a running fire, with such splendour, that, the day seemed to have returned; and some persons beheld the appearance of a large head, which caused great wonder and fear in the city. The same thing happened on the following night at the ninth hour. A few days after, beyond the river Adela, there fell from heaven many stones, which being collected at Cremasco (Crema), were found to weigh eight, and even eleven pounds each. Their colour was similar to that of burnt stones."--Dr. Bossi considers this as an authentic description of the fall of an aerolite.

THE LABRADOR STONE, is a curious species of Feld-spar, or Rhombic Quartz, which exhibits all the colours of a peac.o.c.k's tail. It was discovered some years ago by the Moravians, who have a colony among the Esquimaux, in Labrador. It is found of a light or deep gray colour, but for the most part of a blackish gray. When held in the light in various positions, it discovers a diversity of colours, such as the blue of lapis lazuli, gra.s.s-green, apple-green, pea-green, and sometimes, but more seldom, a citron yellow. Sometimes it has a colour between that of red copper and tornbuck-gray; at other times the colours are between gray and violet. For the most part, these colours are in spots, but sometimes in stripes on the same piece. The stones are found in pretty large angular pieces, appear foliated when broken, and the fragments are of a rhomboidal figure.

We shall next introduce THE ASBESTOS.--This is a stone found in several places in Europe and Asia, and particularly in Sweden, Corsica, Cornwall, and the island of Anglesea in Wales. It is of a silky nature, very fine, and of a grayish colour, insipid, and indissoluble in water. It may be split into threads and filaments, from one to ten inches in length. It is indestructible by fire; whence it may be employed for many useful purposes. There are some sorts whose filaments are rigid and brittle, and others more flexible. The former cannot be spun into cloth, and the latter with difficulty. In consequence of its incombustibility, it was very much valued by the ancients for wrapping up the bodies of the dead. In the year 1702, an urn was discovered at Rome, with the bones of a human body wrapped in a cloth made of flexible asbestos. The method of preparing it is as follows: the stone is laid to soak in warm water, then opened and divided by the hands, that the earthy matter may be washed out. This earth is white like chalk, and makes the water thick and milky. This being several times repeated, the filaments are afterwards collected and dried: they are commodiously spun with flax. When the cloth is woven, it is best preserved by oil from breaking. It is then put into the fire; and the flax being burnt out, the cloth remains pure and white. It might also be made into paper; and, from its incombustibility, wills, or any other thing of importance, could be written on it. The Chinese make furnaces of this mineral, which are very portable.

THE MUSHROOM STONE, or stone capable of producing mushrooms.--In the Ephemerides of the Curious mention is made, of a stone, so called by Dr.

J. G. Wolckamerus, who saw one in Italy, which never ceases to produce, in a few days, mushrooms of an excellent flavour, by the most simple and easy process imaginable. "It is (says he) of the bigness of an ox's head, rough and uneven on its surface, and on which are also perceived some clefts and crevices. It is black in some parts, and in others of a lighter and grayish colour. Internally it is porous, and nearly of the nature of pumice stone, but much heavier; and it contains a small piece of flint, which is so incorporated with it as to appear to have been formed at the same time the stone itself received its form. This gives room to judge, that these stones have been produced by a fat and viscid juice, which has the property of indurating whatever matter it filtrates into. The stone, when lightly covered with earth, and sprinkled with warm water, produces mushrooms of an exquisite flavour, which are usually round, sometimes oval, and whose borders, by their inflections and different curvities, represent in some measure human ears. The princ.i.p.al colour of these mushrooms is sometimes yellowish, and sometimes of a bright purple, but they are always diversified with spots of a deep orange colour, or reddish brown; and when these spots are recent, and still in full bloom, they produce a very agreeable effect to the sight. But what appears admirable is, that the part of the stalk which remains adhering to the stone when the mushroom has been separated from it, grows gradually hard, and petrifies in time; so that it seems that this fungus restores to the stone the nutritive juice it received from it, and that it thus contributes to its increase." John Baptist Porta says, that this stone is found in several parts of Italy; and that it is not only to be met with at Naples, taken out of mount Vesuvius, but also on mount Pantherico, in the princ.i.p.ality of Arellino; on mount Garga.n.u.s, in Apulia; and on the summit of some other high mountains. As to the form of these mushrooms, their root is strong, uneven, divided according to its longitudinal direction, and composed of fibres as fine as hairs, interwoven one with another.

Their form, on first shooting out, resembles a small bladder, scarcely larger than the bud of a vine; and if in this state they are squeezed between the fingers, an aqueous subacid liquor issues out. When at their full growth, their pedicle is of a finger's length, larger at top than at bottom, and becomes insensibly slenderer in proportion as it is nearer the earth. These mushrooms are also formed in an umbrella shape, and variegated with an infinity of little specks, situated very near one another. They are smooth and even on the upper part, but underneath leafy, like the common mushrooms. Their taste is likewise very agreeable, and the sick are not debarred from eating them when dressed in a proper manner.--Some naturalists and physicians submitted these stones to chemical a.n.a.lysis, in order to be more competent judges of the uses they might be put to in medicine; when there first came forth, by distillation, an insipid water, and afterwards a spirituous liquor. The retort having been heated to a certain point, there arose an oil, which had nearly the smell and taste of that of guaiac.u.m; and a very acid salt was extracted from the ashes.

We must not omit THE CHANGEABLE STONE.--There are three of these remarkable stones in the British Museum; the largest of them about the size of a cherry-stone, but of an oval form. It is opaque, and coloured like a common yellow pea; it may be scratched, though not without difficulty, by a common knife, notwithstanding which, it seems to leave a mark upon gla.s.s. It does not ferment with nitrous acid. When it has lain some hours in water, it becomes transparent, and of a yellow amber colour.

The change begins soon after the immersion, and at one end, in form of a little shot; but in a small one of the same kind, the transparency begins round the edges. By degrees the spot increases, until the whole stone becomes uniformly clear throughout: when out of the water it loses its transparency, first at one end, and then gradually over the remainder, until the whole has become opaque, which change happens in less than it takes to become transparent. This change is not entirely peculiar to the hydrophanes. Bergman informs us, that some steat.i.tes produce the same effect; and M. Magellan, that the crust of chalcedonies and agates frequently produce the same appearance. Messrs. Buckman and Veltheim were the first who particularly inquired into the nature of this stone, and investigated its properties. Their account is as follows:--"As soon as the stone is put into water, it exhales a musty smell, several air-bubbles arise, and it becomes gradually transparent. Some of the stones become colourless as soon as they are thoroughly transparent; others have a more or less deep yellow colour, some acquire a beautiful ruby colour; and others gain a fine colour of mother-of-pearl, or of a bluish opal.

Whatever be the colour of the liquor in which the hydrophanes is immersed, it gains only its usual degree of transparency with the colour peculiar to it. When we look at it in its moist state, we perceive a luminous point, varying its situation as the position of the eye is altered." This luminous point is not, according to Mr. Bruckman, the immediate image of the sun, but a reflection of that image refracted in the substance of the stone itself; a phenomenon which probably gave rise to its name of OCULUS MUNDI. Mr. Bruckman left a piece of this stone, weighing 35 grains, seven hours in water, the s.p.a.ce requisite to make it perfectly transparent; and in that time he found that it had gained three grains in weight. The hydrophanes becomes much sooner transparent when put into hot water; and the same happens if it be dipped in a very dilute acid, or rather a very dilute solution of alkali. When dipped in oil of vitriol, it becomes very quickly transparent, and will continue so on account of the strong attraction of that acid for moisture, which takes as much from the atmosphere as is necessary to keep the stone transparent; but its opacity will return, if it be dipped in an alkaline liquor, and then dried.

An account of a WONDERFUL DIAMOND, IN THE ISLAND OF BORNOU.--The rajah of Mathan possesses the finest and largest diamond in the world, that has. .h.i.therto been discovered. This diamond, which is said to be of the finest water, weighs 367 carats. The celebrated Pitt diamond weighs only 127 carats. The Mathan diamond is shaped like an egg, with an indented hollow near the smaller end. It was discovered at Landak, about ninety years ago; and though the possession of it has occasioned numerous wars, it has been about eighty years in the possession of the Mathan family. Many years ago, the governor of Batavia sent a Mr. Stuvart to ascertain the weight, quality, and value of this diamond, and to endeavour to purchase it; and in his mission, he was accompanied by the sultan of Pontiana. After examining it, Mr. Stuvart offered 150,000 dollars for the diamond, the sum to which he was limited; and, in addition to this sum, two war-brigs, with their guns and ammunition, together with a certain number of great guns, and a quant.i.ty of powder and shot. The rajah, however, refused to deprive his family of so valuable an hereditary possession, to which the Malays attach the miraculous power of curing all kinds of diseases, by means of the water in which it is dipped, and with which they imagine the fortune of the family is connected.

We shall close our department of remarkable Stones, with the following account of A SINGULAR CURIOSITY.--Mr. Sloughton, the Spanish Consul at Boston, in North America, has in his possession a flint pebble, obtained amongst ballast stone, thrown from a vessel at an eastern port. When broken, it presented two half heads in profile; all the outlines of feature and hair were perfectly distinct, and the heads were of a darker colour than the rest of the stone. What is most surprising is, that the one face was male and the other female; and even the putting up of the hair was appropriate to the s.e.xes: they were situated, in the stone, face to face.

CHAP. x.x.xVIII.

CURIOSITIES RESPECTING MOUNTAINS.

_Natural Description of Mountains--The Peak in Derbyshire--Snowden in Wales--Skiddaw in c.u.mberland._

--------Sublime the uplifted mountains rise, And with their pointed heads invade the skies; While the high cliffs their craggy arms extend, Distinguish states, and sever'd realms defend.

_Blackmore._

NATURAL DESCRIPTION OF MOUNTAINS.

Almost all the tops of the highest mountains are bare and pointed; which proceeds from their being continually a.s.saulted by storms and tempests.

All the earthy substances with which they might have been once covered, have for ages been washed away from their summits; and nothing is left but immense rocks, which no tempest has. .h.i.therto been able to destroy.

Nevertheless, time is every day making depredations, and huge fragments are seen tumbling down the precipices, either loosened from their summits by the rains and frost, or struck down by lightning. Nothing can exhibit a more terrible picture than one of these enormous ma.s.ses, commonly larger than a house, falling from its height, and rolling down the side of the mountain with a noise louder than thunder. Dr. Plot tells us of one in particular, which being loosened from its bed, rolled down the precipice, and was partly shattered into a thousand pieces. One of the largest fragments, however, still preserving its motion, travelled over the plain below, crossed a rivulet in the midst, and at last stopped on the other side of the bank! These fragments are often struck off by lightning, and sometimes undermined by rains; but the most usual manner in which they are disunited from the mountain is by frost: the rains first insinuate and find their way between the interstices of the mountain, and continue there until by the intense cold they are converted into ice, when the water swells with an irresistible force, and produces the same effect as gunpowder, splitting the most solid rocks, and thus shattering their summits. Sometimes whole mountains are, by various causes, disunited from each other. In many parts of the Alps, there are amazing clefts, the sides of which so exactly correspond with the opposite, that no doubt can be entertained of their having been once joined. At Cajeta, in Italy, a mountain was split in this manner by an earthquake; and there is a pa.s.sage opened through it, that appears as if done by the industry of man.

In the Andes these breaches are often seen. That at Thermopylae in Greece has been long famous. The mountain of the Troglodytes in Arabia has thus a pa.s.sage through it; and that in the late duchy of Savoy, which Nature began, and which Victor Amadeus completed, is an instance of the same kind. "In June, 1714, a part of the mountain of Diableret, in the district of Valais, in France, suddenly fell down, between two and three P. M. the weather being very calm and serene. This mountain, which was of a conical figure, destroyed fifty-five cottages in its fall. Fifteen persons, with about one hundred beasts, were also crushed beneath its ruins, which covered an extent of ground of a league square. The dust it occasioned instantly enveloped all the neighbourhood in darkness. The heaps of rubbish were more than three hundred feet high. They stopped the current of a river that ran along the plain, which now is formed into several new and deep lakes. There appeared, through the whole of this rubbish, none of those substances that seemed to indicate that this catastrophe had been occasioned by means of subterraneous fires. Most probably, the base of this rocky mountain had been decomposing through the lapse of many ages, and thus fell without any extraneous violence."

In 1618, the town of Fleurs, in France, was buried beneath a rocky mountain, at the foot of which it was situated. Such accidents are produced by various causes: by earthquakes; by being decayed at the bottom; or by the foundation of one part of the mountain being hollowed by waters, and, thus wanting a support, breaking from the other. Thus it generally has been found in the great chasms in the Alps; and it is almost always the case in those disruptions of hills, called land-slips: these are nothing more than the sliding down of a higher piece of ground, driven from its situation by subterraneous inundations, and settling upon the plain below. There is not an appearance in nature that so much astonished our ancestors as these land-slips. To behold a large upland, with its houses, corn, and cattle, at once loosened from its place, and floating as it were upon the subjacent water,--to see it quitting its ancient situation, and sailing forward like a ship,--is certainly one of the most extraordinary appearances that can be imagined, and, to a people ignorant of the powers of nature, might well be considered as a prodigy.

Accordingly, we find all our old historians mentioning it as an omen of approaching calamities. In this more enlightened age, however, its cause is well known; and, instead of exciting ominous apprehensions in the populace, it only gives rise to some very ridiculous law-suits among the several claimants, whose the property thus divided from its kindred soil shall be; whether the land shall belong to the original possessor, or to him upon whose grounds it has encroached and settled.

In the lands of Hatberg, in Ireland, there stood a declivity gradually ascending for nearly half a mile. On the 10th of March, 1713, the inhabitants perceived a crack on its side, like a furrow made with a plough, which they imputed to the effects of lightning, as there had been a thunder-storm the night before. However, on the evening of the same day, they were surprised to hear a hideous confused noise issuing all around from the side of the hill; and their curiosity being awakened, they resorted to the place. There, to their amazement, they found an extent of ground, of nearly five acres, all in gentle motion, and sliding down the hill upon the subjacent plain. This motion, together with the noise, continued the remaining part of the day, and the whole of the following night; the noise proceeding, probably, from the attrition of the ground beneath. The day following, this strange journey down the hill ceased; and above an acre of the meadow below was found covered with what before composed a part of the declivity. But such tremendous land-slips, when a whole mountain's side descends, happen very rarely.

There are some of another kind, however, much more common; and as they are always sudden, much more dangerous. These are snow-slips, or avalanches, well known, and greatly dreaded by travellers. They are justly described in the following beautiful lines of one of our poets:--

By an hundred winters piled, Where the glaciers, dark with death, Hang o'er precipices wild, Hang suspended by a breath.

If a pulse but throb alarm, Headlong down the steeps they fall; For a pulse will break the charm, Bounding, bursting, burying all.

It often happens, that when snow has long been acc.u.mulated on the tops and on the sides of mountains, it is borne down the precipice either by tempests, or by its own melting. At first, when loosened, the volume in motion is but small, but it gathers as it continues to roll; and by the time it has reached the habitable parts of the mountain, it is generally grown to an enormous bulk. Wherever it rolls, it levels all things in its way, or buries them in unavoidable destruction. Instead of rolling, it sometimes is found to slide along from the top; yet even thus, it is generally fatal. Nevertheless, we had an instance a few years ago, of a small family in Germany, that lived for above a fortnight under one of these snow-slips. Although they were buried during the whole of that time in utter darkness, and under a bed of some hundreds of feet deep, yet they were providentially taken out alive; the weight of the snow being supported by a beam that kept up the roof, and nourishment supplied to them by the milk of a she-goat, that was buried under the same ruin.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PEAK IN DERBYSHIRE, from Moritz's Travels in several parts of England.

Having arrived in Derbyshire, a distance of 170 miles from London, the author thus describes the town of Castleton, in which the Peak is situated:--

"I ascended one of the highest hills, and all at once perceived a beautiful vale below me, which was traversed by rivers and brooks, and inclosed on all sides by hills. In this vale lies Castleton, a small town, with low houses; so named from an old castle, whose ruins are still to be seen here.

"A narrow path, which wound itself down the side of the rock, led me through the vale into the street of Castleton, where I found an inn, and dined. After dinner, I made the best of my way to the cavern.

"A little rivulet, which runs through the middle of the town, led me to its entrance.

"I stood here a few moments, full of wonder and astonishment at the amazing height of the steep rock before me, covered on each side with ivy and other shrubs. At its summit are the decayed walls and towers of an ancient castle, which formerly stood on this rock; and at its foot the monstrous aperture, or mouth to the entrance of the cavern; where it is totally dark, even at mid-day.

"As I was standing here full of admiration, I perceived at the entrance of the cavern, a man of a rude and rough appearance, who asked me if I washed to see the Peak; and an echo strongly reverberated his coa.r.s.e voice.

"Answering him in the affirmative, he next inquired if I should want to be carried to the other side of the stream; telling me at the same time what the sum would be which I must pay for it.

"This man had, along with his black stringy hair, and his dirty and tattered clothes, such a singularly wild and infernal look, that he actually struck me as a real Charon: his voice, and the questions he asked me, were not of a kind to remove this notion; so that far from its requiring any effort of imagination, I found it not easy to avoid believing, that at length I had actually reached Avernus,--was about to cross Acheron,--and to be ferried by Charon!

"I had no sooner agreed to his demand, than he told me, all I had to do was boldly to follow him,--and thus we entered the cavern.

"In the entrance of the cavern lay the trunk of a tree that had been cut down, on which several of the boys of the town were playing.

"Our way seemed to be altogether on a descent, though not steep; so that the light, which came in at the mouth of the cavern near the entrance, gradually forsook it; and when we had gone forward a few steps farther, I was astonished by a sight, which, of all others, I here the least expected: I perceived to the right, in the hollow of the cavern, a whole subterranean village, where the inhabitants, on account of its being Sunday, were resting from their work, and with happy and cheerful looks were sitting at the doors of their huts along with their children.

"We had scarcely pa.s.sed these small subterranean houses, when I perceived a number of large wheels, on which on weekdays these human moles, the inhabitants of the cavern, made ropes.

"I fancied I here saw the wheel of Ixion, and the incessant labour of the Danades.

"The opening through which the light came, seemed, as we descended, every moment to become less and less, and the darkness at every step to increase, till at length only a few rays appeared, as if darting through a crevice, and just tingeing the small clouds of smoke which at dusk raised themselves to the mouth of the cavern.

"This gradual increase of darkness awakens in a contemplative mind a soft melancholy. As you go down the gentle descent of the cavern, you can hardly help fancying the moment is come when you are about to bid a final farewell to the abodes of mortals.

"At length the great cavern in the rock closed itself, in the same manner as heaven and earth seem to join in the horizon. We then approached a little door, where an old woman came out of one of the huts, and brought two candles, of which we each took one.

"My guide now opened the door, which completely shut out the faint glimmering of daylight, which till then it was still possible to perceive, and led us to the inmost centre of this dreary temple of old Chaos and Night, as if till now we had only been traversing the outer coasts of their dominions. The rock was here so low that we were obliged to stoop very much for some few steps, in order to get through; but how great was my astonishment, when we had pa.s.sed this narrow pa.s.sage, and again stood upright, at once to perceive, as well as the feeble light of the candles would permit, the amazing length, breadth, and height of the cavern, compared to which, the monstrous opening through which we had already pa.s.sed was nothing.