Page:In the high heavens.djvu/84

 to greet the total eclipse and to utilise to the utmost the advantages of an early station. Then the shadow began its journey across the South American Continent.

With a speed of something like 3,000 miles an hour, far swifter than any rifle bullet ever moved, the silent obscurity sweeps across wide deserts in the interior, and then over the noble rivers and glorious forests of Brazil, to quit the land after barely an hour has been occupied in the transit. Along its track it has been watched in two or three places by interested observers armed with spectroscopes, photographic cameras, and the other paraphernalia of the modern astronomer. Doubtless the sudden gloom caused no little dismay to many a tribe of savages in the deep interior of tropical America. We may also conjecture that other creatures besides man had their share of astonishment. Darwin and Bates have charmed all readers by their exquisite delineation of these virgin forests of Brazil, where organic nature is developed with a luxuriance which those whose rambles have been confined to sterner climes can hardly realise. Probably in Brazil, as elsewhere under similar conditions, tender plants evinced their belief that night had prematurely arrived. Beautiful flowers no doubt closed their petals as they are wont to do after sunset. Other flowers, again, which open out at night to solicit the attention of moths, to whom the darkness is congenial, doubtless began to expand their charms. With the advancing gloom such plants as emit their delicious perfume only when the glory of the day has vanished were likewise deceived, as they have been known to be on other occasions of a like kind.

We can also speculate on the amazement which the total eclipse must have produced among the various races