STRANGE PHENOMENON AT TONGA:

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXII, Issue 3207, 14 December 1894, Page 2

STRANGE PHENOMENON AT TONGA:

. The New Zealand Herald's Tonga correspondent writes as follows :-J } n addition to the average monthly quantity of average earthquakes, we have been treated to a decided disturbance up aloft. On the 3rd instant, at about nine o'clock in the morning, the whole group of islands m this neighbourhood was .startled by tremendous explosions. It sounded like the report of a very big erun close to every man's house. But there is no gun on the Pacific station fi; to make that noise There is certtiaty not one on this island, let alone at everybody's house so that we put the idea of a man-of-war out of our heads. Another man was about to dynamite a shoal of tish and thought he had blown himself upbut Le was stiil in flesh, and so it wasn't that. And then as time wore on reports began to come in of earthquakes and tidal waves, but the evidence thereof . would only support a strong effort of imagination. With, out being able to certify to it, the conclusion come to is to accept the report of some islanders who were at the time on the sea between here and Haapai, and who declare they saw an explosion high up in the Heavens, and then a commotion in the sea underneath as of fragments falling hissing into the water, from which we infer that we were favoured by the near visit of a meteorolite. Some of us more needy ones wish that it might have lodged in our back garden without doing us too much damage, for such a visit is not an everyday affair and the presence of such a curiositywould perhaps have made up for the trade which this year is said to be not so good as it should be.