Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/794

774 sometimes a mournful human voice, and has been described by several travelers, English, Dutch, and German. Autenrieth, Richard Pohl, Schubert, and others have endeavored to trace it to natural causes, but Schleiden gives up a satisfactory explanation of it. Persian traditions tell of a similar phenomenon, the cry of the Gule which is heard in the mountain-region of that country, together with the noises of the ringing of metals, the sound of drums, and the trampling of horses. The traveler Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, told of noises of weapons and horsemen, the voices of men and musical harmonies which were heard frequently in the desert of Lob; and his contemporary, the monk Rubriquis, described the regions north of the Altai Mountains as the scene of similar manifestations. The devil's voice in Ceylon has been ascribed to the effects of excessive heat; these sounds of the more northern regions are possibly due to the dryness of the climate. The region of Mount Sinai is rich in curious harmonious sounds.

Unaccounted-for sounds have been accompanied in some of the hotter parts of Africa by a light, which may indicate an electrical origin; this has been noticed by several observers on a mountain near Cape Town. A manifestation, which may be called a sound mirage, was described in the "Magasin Pittoresque" in 1852 by an English writer, who related that while traveling in the desert at a time when the atmosphere was clear, and the heat glowing, and everything was quiet, he heard for about ten minutes a joyous sound like the ringing of church-bells. He suggested that the organs of hearing might have been set in vibration through the extreme dryness of the air. (Kinglake, in "Eöthen," relates a similar incident, if this is not the same.) The missionary Cabruta heard on the Orinoco a sound like the reverberations of cannon coming alternately from opposite directions, to which no one could assign an origin; and Humboldt says that the Indians of the same regions tell of the sound of the holy trumpets blown by the Great Spirit.

Similar phenomena have been noticed at different places in Europe, and people remote from each other have alike referred them to a supernatural origin. Among them were the sounds in the air heard by a priest at Aufacq, near Beauvais, of which an account is given in a manuscript of the last century, and the noise of the Arlecan which was heard in a churchyard near Aries. The Slavic peoples on the Adriatic and the Scandinavians of the North are equally inclined to believe in such manifestations and to notice them. The mirage of the Fata Morgana is sometimes accompanied with a sound like thunder. The Scottish Highlanders hear a mournful sound in the clefts of the rocks which they ascribe to an evil spirit. Arndt tells of soft tones and cries emanating from the mountains of the Orkney and Shetland Islands. Distinct cracking sounds are heard on the Adriatic Sea.