The Total Solar Eclipse Of 1883

AN ASTRONOMERS VOYAGE TO FAIRY-LAND.

(From The Atlantic Monthly, May, 1890.)

By

PROF. E.S. HOLDEN.

In 1883 calculations showed that a solar eclipse of unusually long duration (5 minutes, 20 seconds) would occur in the South Pacific Ocean. The track of the eclipse lay south of the equator, but north of Tahiti. There were in fact only two dots of coral islands on the charts in the line of totality, Caroline Island, and one hundred and fifty miles west Flint Island (longitude 150 west, latitude 10 south). Almost nothing was known of either of these minute points. The station of the party under my charge (sent out by the United States government under the direction of the National Academy of Sciences) was to be Caroline Islands.

Every inch of that island (seven miles long, a mile or so broad) is familiar now; but it is almost ludicrous to recollect with what anxiety we pored over the hydrographic charts and sailing instructions of the various [pg 262] nations, to find some information, however scanty, about the spot which was to be our home for nearly a month. All that was known was that this island had formerly been occupied as a guano station. There was a landing then.

After the personnel of the party had been decided on, there were the preparations for its subsistence to be looked out for. How to feed seventeen men for twenty-one days? Fortunately the provisions that we took, and the fresh fish caught for us by the natives, just sufficed to carry us through with comfort and with health.

In March of 1883 we sailed from New York, and about the same time a French expedition left Europe bound for the same spot. From New York to Panama, from Panama to Lima, were our first steps. Here we joined the United States steamship Hartford, Admiral Farragut's flagship, and the next day set sail for our destined port,—if a coral reef surrounded by a raging surf can be called a port. About the same time a party of French observers under Monsieur Janssen, of the Paris Academy of Sciences, left Panama in the Eclaireur.

BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE CAROLINE ISLANDS.

It was an ocean race of four thousand miles due [pg 263] west. The station Caroline Islands was supposed to be more desirable than Flint Island. Admiral Wilkes's expedition had lain off the latter several days without being able to land on account of the tremendous surf, so that it was eminently desirable to "beat the Frenchman," as the sailors put it. With this end in view our party had secured (through a member of the National Academy in Washington) the verbal promise of the proper official of the Navy Department that the Hartford's orders should read "to burn coal as necessary." The last obstacle to success was thus removed. We were all prepared, and now the ship would take us speedily to our station.

Imagine our feelings the next day after leaving Callao, when the commanding officer of the Hartford opened his sealed orders. They read (dated Washington, in February), "To arrive at Caroline Islands (in April) with full coal-bunkers!"

Officialism could go no further. Here was an expedition sent on a slow-sailing ship directly through the regions of calms for four thousand miles. It was of no possible use to send the expedition at all unless it arrived in time. And here were our orders "to arrive with full coal-bunkers."

Fortunately we had unheard-of good-luck. The trade-wind blew for us as it did for the Ancient Mariner, and we sped along the parallel of 12° south at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles a day under sail, while the Eclaireur was steaming for thirty days a little nearer the equator in a dead calm. We arrived off the island just in time, with not a day to spare. It was a narrow escape, and a warning to all of us never to sail again [pg 264] under sealed orders unless we knew what was under the seal.

Here we were, then, lying off the island and scanning its sparse crown of cocoanut palms, looking for a French flag among their wavy tufts. There was none in sight. We were the winners in the long race. Directly a whale-boat was lowered, and rowed around the white fringe of tremendous surf that broke ceaselessly against the vertical wall of coral rock. There was just one narrow place where the waves rolled into a sort of cleft and did not break. Here was the "landing," then.

Landing was an acrobatic feat. In you went on the crest of a wave, pointing for the place where the blue seas did not break into white. An instant after, you were in the quiet water inside of the surf. Jump out everybody and hold the boat! Then it was pick up the various instruments, and carry them for a quarter of a mile to high-water mark and beyond, over the sharp points of the reef.

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