... We dined about two, the
windows all open, and two candles burning on the table.
"In the time of the greatest darkness some of the ... fowls
went to their roost. Cocks crowed in answer to one another as
they commonly do in the night. Woodcocks, which are night
birds, whistled as they do _only_ in the dark. Frogs peeped. In
short, there was the appearance of midnight at noonday.
"About three o'clock the light in the west increased, the
motion of the clouds [became] more quick, their color higher
and more brassy than at any time before. There appeared to be
quick flashes or coruscations, not unlike the aurora
borealis.... About half past four our company, which had passed
an unexpected night very cheerfully together, broke up."
Of the night following, this gentleman (then at Salem) wrote:
"Perhaps it never was darker since the children of Israel left
the house of bondage. This gross darkness held till about one
o'clock, although the moon had fulled but the day before."
The Boston _Independent Chronicle_ of June 8 quoted from Thomas's
_Massachusetts Spy_:
"During the whole time a sickly, melancholy gloom overcast the
face of nature.
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