Beside me was Elliot with the watch and lantern, while Lieutenant Archer, of the Royal Engineers, had the kindness to take charge of my note-book. I mentioned, and he wrote rapidly down, such things as seemed worthy of remembrance. Thus my hands and mind were entirely free; but it was all to no purpose. A patch of sunlight fell and rested upon the landscape some miles away. It was the only illuminated spot within view. But to the north-west there was still a space of blue which might reach us in time. Within seven minutes of totality another space towards the zenith became very dark. The atmosphere was, as it were, on the brink of a precipice, being charged with humidity, which required but a slight chill to bring it down in clouds. This was furnished by the withdrawal of the solar beams: the clouds did come down, covering up the space of blue on which our hopes had so long rested. I abandoned the telescope and walked to and fro in despair. As the moment of totality approached, the descent towards darkness was as obvious as a falling stone. I looked towards a distant ridge, where the darkness would first appear. At the moment a fan of beams, issuing from the hidden sun, was spread out over the southern heavens. These beams are bars of alternate light and shade, produced in illuminated haze by the shadows of floating cloudlets of varying density. The beams are practically parallel, but by an effect of perspective they appear divergent, having the sun, in fact, for their point of convergence. The darkness took possession of the ridge referred to, lowered upon M. Janssen's observatory, passed over the southern heavens, blotting out the beams as if a sponge had been drawn across them. It then took successive possession of three spaces of blue sky in the south-eastern atmosphere. I again looked towards the ridge. A glimmer as of day-dawn was behind it, and immediately afterwards the fan of beams, which had been for more than two minutes absent, revived. The eclipse of 1870 had ended, and, as far as the corona and flames were concerned, we had been defeated.