The huntsmen are up in America

The huntsmen are up in America, writes Thomas Browne in The Garden of Cyrus, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia.
The shadow of night is drawn like a black veil across the earth, and since almost all creatures, from one meridian to the next, lie down
after the sun has set, so, he continues, one might, in following the setting sun, see on our globe nothing but prone bodies, row upon row,
as if levelled by the scythe of Saturn -- an endless graveyard for a humanity struck by falling sickness.

from W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn