You will readily recollect that, previously to the commencement of the darkness, the sky was overcast with the common kind of clouds, from which there was, in some places, a light sprinkling of rain. Between these and the earth there intervened another stratum, to appearance, of very great thickness. As this stratum advanced, the darkness commenced, and increased with its progress till it came to its height; which did not take place till the hemisphere was a second time overspread. [...]
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[...] The rays, that fortunately effected their passage through the first, were [...] turned out of their direct course, so that they must have struck upon the second very obliquely. [...] The Wonder is much greater, that any of them were able to penetrate. [...]
The darkness of the following evening was probably as gross as ever has been observed since the Almighty fiat gave birth to light. It wanted only palpability to render it as extraordinary, as that which over spread the land of AEgypt in the days of Moses. [...] I could not help conceiving at the time, that if every luminous body in the universe had been shrouded in impenetrable shades, or struck out of existence, the darkness could not have been more complete. A sheet of white paper held within a few inches of the eyes was equally invisible with the blackest velvet. Considering the small quantity of light that was transmitted by the clouds, by day, it is not surprising that, by night, a sufficient quantity of rays should not be able to penetrate the same strata, brought back by the shifting of the winds, to afford the most obscure prospect even of the best reflecting bodies.
Letter of Samuel Tenney (an eye-witness at Rowley [Mass.?]), dated Exeter [N.H.?], Dec., 1785, in
Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, For the Year 1792, vol. 1, Boston: Munroe & Francis, printers to the Historical Society, 1806, pp. 95, 97, 98.
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