36 To the River Plate and Back 



in our world in future ages. The remoter heavens 

 at which we gaze are not the heavens which now are, 

 but the heavens which once were. The astronomer, 

 like the geologist, is to a certain extent the student 

 of an ancient history. 



Certain stars attracted immediate attention by their 

 brightness. One of my fellow passengers, who, like 

 myself, was fond of : 'star-gazing,' approached me 

 one evening with the request to give him the name of 

 the 'planet'' to which he pointed. Its steady and 

 brilliant light justified his momentary belief that he 

 was looking at one of the planets, but it was Sinus. 

 Even more wonderful to me than Sinus was Canopus, 

 that mountain of blue fire, which after midnight 

 glowed in the sky with a splendor second only to that 

 of the planet Jupiter. If anywhere there be a central 

 fountain of fire before which other suns pale into 

 insignificance, surely this is it. Although it shines 

 so resplendently, astronomers have not as yet been 

 able to compute its distance from our solar system. 



We saw a number of meteors. None of them were 

 very brilliant. It is really surprising how few of these 

 things ever reach the surface of the earth. Most of 

 them cannot be more than a few grains in weight. 

 They come flying out of the deeps of space, are caught 

 by the attraction of the earth, rush down toward its 

 surface but the friction generated as they move 

 through the air produces such a heat, that they ignite 

 in the presence of the oxygen of the atmosphere and 

 burn up before they reach the lower layers of the all- 

 enveloping air. My dear old friend, the late Henry 

 Ward, scoured the world in quest of meteorites. I 

 loved him very much. I have on my desk a paper- 

 knife made out of a sliver of a meteorite, which fell 



