Winter from caverns and camp-fires and great towers, 

 Stars, have watched it ' incline its ravishing courses ' 

 about the Mountain of the North, ' coveting 

 not ' to drown its white fires in the polar seas. 

 Here, however, it is strange to note the 

 universality of the Ursine image with the 

 Greeks and Romans and the nations of the 

 South, and the universality with the Teutonic 

 peoples of designations such as the Wain and 

 the Plough. It was not till the Age of 

 Learning set in among the Northern peoples 

 that the classic term came into common use. 

 Thus in a tenth-century Anglo-Saxon manual 

 of astronomy the writer, in adopting the Greek 

 Arctos (still used occasionally instead of the 

 Bear), adds 'which untaught men call Carles- 

 waen,' that is Charles's Wain, the Waggon. 

 A puzzling problem is why a designation which 

 primarily arose from an association of the early 

 Greeks concerning Arkas, their imaginary 

 racial ancestor, with Kallisto his mother, who 

 had been changed into a great bear in the 

 heavens, should also suggest itself to other 

 peoples, to races so remote in all ways as the 

 North American Indians. Yet before the 

 white man had visited the tribes of North 

 America the red men called the constellation 

 by names signifying a bear. The historian 

 Bancroft has proved that alike among the 



294 



