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The Book of the Damned

In the  Canadian Institute Proceedings, 2-7-198  … there is an account, by the Deputy Commissioner at Dhurmsalla, of the extraordinary Dhurmsalla meteorite--coated with ice. …………….. That within a few months of the fall of this meteorite there had been a fall of live fishes at Benares, a shower of red substance at Furruckabad, a dark spot observed on the disk of the sun, an earthquake, "an unnatural darkness of some duration," and a luminous appearance in the sky that looked like an aurora borealis—

‘Stones ‘

Whatever "it" was, "it" is so persistently alluded to as "a meteorite" that I look back and see that I adopted this convention myself. But in the London Times, Dec. 26, 1860, Syed Abdoolah, Professor of Hindustani, University College, London, writes that he had sent to a friend in Dhurmsalla, for an account of the stones that had fallen at that place. The answer:

"... divers forms and sizes, many of which bore great resemblance to ordinary cannon balls just discharged from engines of war."

Text-books tell us that the Dhurmsalla meteorites were picked up "soon," or "within half an hour." But, according to the Deputy Commissioner of Dhurmsalla, these stones had been picked up "immediately" by passing coolies.  These stones were so cold that they benumbed the fingers.
We accept that the icy meteorites of Dhurmsalla could have fallen with no great velocity, but the sound from them was tremendous.

And they had fallen with a great light.

Flames

 It is described as "a flame of fire about two feet in depth and nine feet in length." …..this light was not the light of molten matter…………………

In the Dhurmsalla meteorites we have support for our expression that things entering this earth's ‘atmosphere’ sometimes shine with a light that is not the light of incandescence--....--but we accept, also, that some things that have entered this earth's atmosphere, disintegrate with the intensity of flame and molten matter--but some things, we accept, enter this earth's atmosphere and collapse non-luminously, quite like deep-sea fishes brought to the surface of the ocean. ………………

Lights

The Deputy Commissioner writes that, in the evening, after the fall of the Dhurmsalla meteorite, or mass of stone covered with ice, he saw lights. Some of them were not very high. They appeared and went out and reappeared. I have read many accounts of the Dhurmsalla meteorite—July 28, 1860--but never in any other of them a mention of this new correlate--…….. This writer says that the lights moved like fire balloons, but:

"I am sure that they were neither fire balloons, lanterns, nor bonfires, or any other thing of that sort, but bona fide lights in the heavens."

On the chemical and mineralogical composition of the dhurmsalla meteoric stone  Samuel Haughton   Published:01 January  1867 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspl.1866.0048

On the 14th July 1860, at 2.15 p .m ., a remarkable meteoric stone fell at Dhurmsalla, in the Punjab; a small specimen of which was forwarded to the Geological Museum of Trinity College, which I have analyzed with the results contained in the following paper. The direction of the motion of the meteorite was ascertained to be from N. N. W. to S. S. E. The cold of the fragments that fell was so intense as to benumb the hands of the coolies who picked them up but who were obliged, in consequence of their coldness, instantly to drop them.