e lee bow, which was so brilliant
that it lighted everything distinctly, even to the mast-head. The light
spread over the whole sea, between the two shores, and the waves, which
before had been tranquil, now began to be agitated. Capt. Bonnycastle
describes the scene as that of _a blazing sheet of awful and most
brilliant light_. A long and vivid line of light, superior in brightness
to the parts of the sea not immediately near the vessel, showed the base
of the high, frowning, and dark land abreast; the sky became lowering,
and more intensely obscure. Long tortuous lines of light showed immense
numbers of large fish, darting about as if in consternation. The topsail
yard and mizzen boom were lighted by the glare, as if gas-lights had
been burning directly below them; and until just before daybreak, at
four o'clock, the most minute objects were distinctly visible."[263]

The other assumption, that the sun could not possibly have existed
without giving light to the earth, is contradicted by the most familiar
facts. The earth and each of the planets might have been, and most
probably were, surrounded by a dense atmosphere, through which the sun's
rays could not penetrate. It is not at all necessary to prove that such
was the fact. I am only concerned to prove the _possibility_; for the
Infidel's objection is founded on the presumed _impossibility_ of the
coexistence of a dark earth and a shining sun. Any person who has ever
been in Pittsburg, Glasgow, or the manufacturing districts of England,
and has seen how the smoke of even a hundred factory chimneys will
shroud the heavens, can easily comprehend how a similar discharge, on a
larger scale, from the thousands of primeval volcanoes,[264] would cover
the earth with the pall of darkness. By the eruption of a single
volcano, in the island of Sumbawa, in 1815, the air was filled with
ashes, from Java to Celebes, darkening an area of more than 200,000
square miles; and the darkness was so profound in Java, three hundred
miles distant from the volcano, that nothing equal to it was ever
witnessed in the darkest night.[265] Those who have witnessed the fogs
raised on the Banks of Newfoundland, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in
the Bay of San Francisco, by the mingling of currents of water of
slightly different temperatures, can be at no loss to conceive the
density of the vapors produced by the boiling of the sea around and over
the multitude of volcanoes[266] which have produ