Note 1656 — Chapter IV · STUDIES OF THE FARMER.

The sun-sets of the Mediterranean exhibit, as most travellers will have observed, a variety of gorgeous phenomena, which, as betokening certain states of the atmosphere serve as so many admonitions to the husbandman. The sun before going down “assumed,” observes Dr. Chandler, “a variety of fantastic shapes. It was surrounded, first, with a golden glory of great extent, and flamed upon the surface of the sea in a long column of fire. The lower half of the orb soon after emerged in the horizon, the other portion remaining very large and red, with half of a smaller orb beneath it, and separate, but in the same direction, the circular rim approaching the line of its diameter. These two, by degrees, united, and then changed rapidly into different figures, until the resemblance was that of a capacious punch-bowl inverted. The rim of the bottom extending upward, and the body lengthening below it, became a mushroom on a stalk with a round head. It was next metamorphosed into a flaming caldron, of which the lid, rising up, swelled nearly into an orb and vanished. The other portion put on several uncircular forms, and, after many twinklings and faint glimmerings, slowly disappeared, quite red, leaving the clouds hanging over the dark rocks on the Barbary shore finely tinged with a vivid bloody hue.” Travels, i. p. 4. Appearances similar, though of inferior brilliance and variety, are sometimes witnessed in the Western Hemisphere. Describing the beauties of an evening on the Canadian shore, Sir R. H. Bonnycastle observes: “First, there was a double sun by reflection, each disk equally distinct; afterwards, when the orb reached the mark x, a solid body of light, equal in breadth with the sun itself, but of great length from the shore, shot down on the sea, and remained like a broad fiery golden column, or bar, until the black high land hid the luminary itself.” The Canadas in 1841. v. i. p. 34.