t were variously compared to
fusillades, to thunder, to roaring in the air, to the breaking of rocks,
to reports of cannon. A man who was on Mount Tom while the noises were
violent describes the sound as that of rocks falling into immense caverns
beneath his feet and striking against cliffs as they fell. Houses shook
and people feared.

Rev. Mr. Hosmer, in a letter written to a friend in Boston in 1729, says
that before white settlers appeared there was a large Indian population,
that powwows were frequent, and that the natives "drove a prodigious
trade at worshipping the devil." He adds:--"An old Indian was asked what
was the reason of the noises in this place, to which he replied that the
Indian's god was angry because Englishman's god was come here. Now,
whether there be anything diabolical in these things I know not, but this
I know, that God Almighty is to be seen and trembled at in what has been
often heard among us. Whether it be fire or air distressed in the
subterranean caverns of the earth cannot be known for there is no
eruption, no explosion perceptible but by sounds and tremors which are
sometimes very fearful and dreadful."

It was finally understood that Haddam witches, who practised black magic,
met the Moodus witches, who used white magic, in a cave beneath Mount
Tom, and fought them in the light of a great carbuncle that was fastened
to the roof. The noises recurred in 1888, when houses rattled in
witch-haunted Salem, eight miles away, and the bell on the village church
"sung like a tuning-fork." The noises have occurred simultaneously with
earthquakes in other parts of the country, and afterward rocks have been
found moved from their bases and cracks have been discovered in the
earth. One sapient editor said that the pearls in the mussels in Salmon
and Connecticut Rivers caused the disturbance.

If the witch-fights were continued too long the king of Machimoddi, who
sat on a throne of solid sapphire in the cave whence the noises came,
raised his wand: then the light of the carbuncle went out, peals of
thunder rolled through the rocky chambers, and the witches rushed into
the air. Dr. Steele, a learned and aged man from England, built a
crazy-looking house in a lonely spot on Mount Tom, and was soon as much a
mystery as the noises, for it was known that he had come to this country
to stop them by magic and to seize the great carbuncle in the cave--if he
could find it. Every window, crack, and keyhole