The perfect form of an Indian bow appeared in
the air at New Plymouth, which was looked upon by the inhabitants
as a "prodigious apparition." At Hadley, Northampton, and other
towns in their neighborhood "was heard the report of a great
piece of ordnance, with a shaking of the earth and a considerable
echo."* Others were alarmed on a still sunshiny morning by the
discharge of guns and muskets; bullets seemed to whistle past
them, and the noise of drums resounded in the air, seeming to
pass away to the westward; others fancied that they heard the
galloping of horses over their heads; and certain monstrous
births which took place about the time filled the superstitious
in some towns with doleful forebodings. Many of these portentous
sights and sounds may be ascribed to natural phenomena--to the
northern lights which occur vividly in those latitudes, the
meteors which explode in the air, the casual rushing of a blast
through the top branches of the forest, the crash of fallen trees
or disrupted rocks, and to those other uncouth sounds and echoes
which will sometimes strike the ear so strangely amidst the
profound stillness of woodland solitudes. These may have startled
some melancholy imaginations, may have been exaggerated by the
love for the marvellous, and listened to with that avidity with
which we devour whatever is fearful and mysterious.
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