Produced by Eric Hutton, Markus Brenner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE STORY OF ECLIPSES _SIMPLY TOLD FOR GENERAL READERS._ WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN OF MAY 28, 1900. BY GEORGE F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S. _Of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law._ AUTHOR OF “THE STORY OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM”; “THE STORY OF THE STARS”; “A HANDBOOK OF DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY,” ETC. LONDON: GEORGE NEWNES, LTD. SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND 1899. _The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._ [Illustration: FIG. 1.—THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN, Sept. 7, 1858 (_Liais_).] PREFACE. The present Volume is intended as a sequel to my two former volumes in the Newnes Series of “Useful Stories,” entitled respectively the “Story of the Solar System,” and the “Story of the Stars.” It has been written not only as a necessary complement, so to speak, to those works, but because public attention is already being directed to the forthcoming total eclipse of the Sun on May 28, 1900. This eclipse, though only visible as a partial one in England, will be total no further off than Portugal and Spain. Considering also that the line of totality will pass across a large tract of country forming part of the United States, it may be inferred that there will be an enormous number of English-speaking spectators of the phenomenon. It is for these in general that this little book has been written. For the guidance of those who may be expected to visit Portugal or Spain, a temporary Appendix has been prepared, giving a large amount of information showing how those countries can be best reached, whether by sea or overland, from the shores of England. If anyone is inclined to doubt whether an eclipse expedition is likely to provide non-astronomical tourists with incidents of travel, pleasant, profitable, and even amusing, perhaps the doubt will be removed by a perusal of the accounts of Sir F. Galton’s trip to Spain in 1860 (_Vacation Tourists in 1860_, p. 422), or of Professor Tyndall’s trip to Algeria in 1870 (_Hours of Exercise in the Alps_, p. 429), or of Professor Langley’s Adventures on Pike’s Peak in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S., in 1878 (_Washington Observations_, 1876, Appendix III. p. 203); or of some of the many Magazine and other narratives of the Norway eclipse of 1896 and the Indian eclipse of 1898. Subject to these special points no further prefatory explanation seems needed, the general style of the contents being, _mutatis mutandis_, identical with the contents of the Volumes which have gone before.