“On Monday last we were permitted to see the eclipse of the Sun in a beautiful bright sky. Not a cloud was visible. We had made ample preparation, laying in a stock of smoked glass several days in advance. It was the grandest sight I ever beheld, but it frightened the Indians badly. Some of them threw themselves upon their knees and invoked the Divine blessing; others flung themselves flat on the ground, face downward; others cried and yelled in frantic excitement and terror. Finally one old fellow stepped from the door of his lodge, pistol in hand, and fixing his eyes on the darkened Sun, mumbled a few unintelligible words and raising his arm took direct aim at the luminary, fired off his pistol, and after throwing his arms about his head in a series of extraordinary gesticulations retreated to his own quarters. As it happened, that very instant was the conclusion of totality. The Indians beheld the glorious orb of day once more peep forth, and it was unanimously voted that the timely discharge of that pistol was the only thing that drove away the shadow and saved them from the public inconvenience that would have certainly resulted from the entire extinction of the Sun.” A certain Mr. F. Kerigan, in a book published in 1844, made the following remarks on ancient Jewish ideas respecting eclipses:— “The Israelites, like their benighted neighbours, esteemed an eclipse of either luminary as a supernatural and inauspicious omen, which filled them with the most gloomy and fearful apprehensions: as may fairly be deduced from the 8th chapter of Ezekiel, v. 15: ‘Then he brought me to the door of the Lord’s House, which was towards the N.; and, behold there sat women weeping for Tammuz.’ Now Tammuz is the name under which Adonis was known in Palestine: he was the favourite of Venus, or Astarte, the principal goddess of the Philistines and Phœnicians. Being killed by a wild boar, the prevailing superstition of the age induced the uninformed multitude to believe that when the Moon was eclipsed, it was in complement to their beloved goddess Venus or Astarte, who, concealed behind the full Moon, sat weeping under a dark veil for the loss of her beloved Tammuz or Adonis.”[164]