A. GLANCE AT THE STARS. 



155 



Brightest it shines, but ominous and dire 

 Disease portends to miserable man." 



South-east of Cards Major is the asterism of the ship Argo, in which Canopus shines, the 

 second of the stars in point of lustre, but invisible to all parts of the earth of higher 

 latitude than the southern coast of the Mediterranean. An observer in the northern 

 hemisphere can only see the stars as many degrees south of the equinoctial in the 

 southern hemisphere as his own latitude lacks of 90. All whose southern declination is 

 greater never reach his horizon. 



Among the stars of the south with which the stay-at-home Europeans are only 

 acquainted by report, the constellation of the Cross is described as pre-eminent the most 

 interesting object in the sky of that hemisphere on account of the associations connected 

 with it by a Christianised imagination. It consists of four bright stars, to which the 

 fancy readily gives a cruciform shape, the upper and lower being the pointers to the 



south pole. Von Spix and Martins, in their travels in 

 Brazil, remark : " On the 15th of June, in lat. 14 6' 45", 

 we beheld for the first time that glorious constellation of 

 the southern heavens, the Cross, which is to navigators a 

 token of peace, and, according to its position, indicates the 

 hours of the night. "We had long wished for this con 

 stellation, as a guide to the other hemisphere ; we therefore 

 felt inexpressible pleasure when we perceived it in the 

 resplendent firmament. We all contemplated it with 

 feelings of profound devotion as a type of salvation ; but 

 the mind was especially elevated at the sight of it by the 

 reflection, that even into the region which this beautiful 

 constellation illumines, under the significant name of the 

 Cross, the European has carried the noblest attributes of 

 Christianity, and, impelled by the most exalted feelings, 

 endeavours to spread them more and more extensively in the remotest regions." 

 Humboldt also refers to his first view of this constellation with peculiar feeling : " We 

 saw distinctly, for the first time," he observes, " the Cross of the South, on the night 

 of the fourth and fifth of July, in the sixteenth degree of latitude ; it was strongly 

 inclined, and appeared from time to time between the clouds, the centre of which, 

 furrowed by uncondensed lightnings, reflected a silver light. The pleasure felt on 

 discovering the Southern Cross was warmly shared by such of the crew as had lived in the 

 colonies. In the solitude of the seas we hail a star as a friend, from whom we have been 

 long separated. Among the Portuguese and the Spaniards peculiar motives seem to 

 increase this feeling ; a religious sentiment attaches them to a constellation, the form of 

 which recals the sign of the faith planted by their ancestors in the deserts of the New 

 World. The two great stars which mark the summit and the foot of the Cross have 

 nearly the same right ascension ; it follows that the constellation is almost perpendicular 

 at the moment when it passes the meridian. This circumstance is known to every 

 nation that lives beyond the tropics or in the southern hemisphere. It is known at what 

 hour of the night, in different seasons, the Southern Cross is erect, or inclined. It is a 

 timepiece, that advances very regularly nearly four minutes a day ; and no other group of 

 stars exhibits to the naked eye an observation of time so easily made. How often have 

 we heard our guides exclaim in the savannas of Venezuela, or in the deserts extending 

 from Lima to Truxillo, ' Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend ! ' How often these 

 words reminded us of that affecting scene, where Paul and Virginia, seated near the 

 source of the river of Lotaniers, conversed together for the last time ; and when the old 



