was closed, and nobody
was admitted while he stayed there, but the clang of hammers was heard in
his house all night, sparks shot from his chimney, and strange odors were
diffused. When all was ready for his adventure he set forth, his path
marked by a faint light that moved before him and stopped at the closed
entrance to the cavern.

Loud were the Moodus noises that night. The mountain shook and groans and
hisses were heard in the air as he pried up the stone that lay across the
pit-mouth. When he had lifted it off a light poured from it and streamed
into the heaven like a crimson comet or a spear of the northern aurora.
It was the flash of the great carbuncle, and the stars seen through it
were as if dyed in blood. In the morning Steele was gone. He had taken
ship for England. The gem carried with it an evil fate, for the galley
sank in mid-ocean; but, though buried beneath a thousand fathoms of
water, the red ray of the carbuncle sometimes shoots up from the sea, and
the glow of it strikes fear into the hearts of passing sailors. Long
after, when the booming was heard, the Indians said that the hill was
giving birth to another beautiful stone.

Such cases are not singular. A phenomenon similar to the Moodus noises,
and locally known as "the shooting of Nashoba Hill," occurs at times in
the eminence of that name near East Littleton, Massachusetts. The
strange, deep rumbling was attributed by the Indians to whirlwinds trying
to escape from caves.

Bald Mountain, North Carolina, was known as Shaking Mountain, for strange
sounds and tremors were heard there, and every moonshiner who had his
cabin on that hill joined the church and was diligent in worship until he
learned that the trembling was due to the slow cracking and separation of
a great ledge.

At the end of a hot day on Seneca Lake, New York, are sometimes heard the
"lake guns," like exploding gas. Two hundred years ago Agayentah, a wise
and honored member of the Seneca tribe, was killed here by a
lightning-stroke. The same bolt that slew him wrenched a tree from the
bank and hurled it into the water, where it was often seen afterward,
going about the lake as if driven by unseen currents, and among the
whites it got the name of the Wandering Jew. It is often missing for
weeks together, and its reappearances are heralded by the low booming
of--what? The Indians said that the sound was but the echo of Agayentah's
voice, warning them of dangers and summoning t