186 COSMOS. 



catalogue of the Almagest, Achernar, a star of the 1st mag- 

 nitude, the last in Eridanus, (Achir el-nahr, in Arabic,) is also 

 given, although it was 9 below the horizon. A report of the 



stars in the vicinity of the South Pole are declared for a 

 singular reason to have been more recently created than the 

 northern. When Brahminical Indians were emigrating 

 from the north-west to the countries around the Ganges, 

 from the 30th degree of north latitude to the lands of the 

 tropics, where they subjected the original inhabitants to 

 their dominion, they saw unknown stars rising above the 

 horizon as they advanced towards Ceylon. In accordance 

 with ancient practice, they combined these stars into new 

 constellations. A bold fiction represented the later- seen 

 stars as having been subsequently created by the mira- 

 culous power of Visvamitra, who threatened " the ancient 

 gods that he would overcome the northern hemisphere, 

 with his more richly starred southern hemisphere." (A. W.von 

 Schlegel, in the Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 

 bd. i. s. 240.) While this Indian myth figuratively depicts 

 the astonishment excited in wandering nations by the aspect 

 of a new heaven (as the celebrated Spanish poet, Garcilaso 

 de la Vega, says of travellers, "they change at once their 

 country and stars," mudan de pays y de estrellas^} we are 

 powerfully reminded of the impression that must have been 

 excited, even in the rudest nations, when, at a certain part of 

 the earth's surface, they observed large, hitherto unseen stars 

 appear in the horizon, as those in the feet of the Centaur, in 

 the Southern Cross, in Eridanus or in Argo, whilst those 

 with which they had been long familiar at home wholly dis- 

 appeared. The fixed stars advance towards us, and again 

 recede, owing to the precession of the equinoxes. We 

 have already mentioned that the Southern Cross was 7 

 above the horizon, in the countries around the Baltic, 2900 

 years before our era ; at a time, therefore, when the great 

 pyramids had already existed five hundred years. (Compare 

 Cosmos, pp. 139 and 660.) " Canopus, on the other hand, can 

 never have been visible at Berlin, as its distance from the 

 South Pole of the ecliptic amounts to only 14. It would have 

 required a distance of lmore to bring it within the limits of 

 visibility for our horizon." 



