OBSERVATORY AT CORDOBA, ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 275 



performed than this, which I should hardly have been justified in ask- 

 ing, but was contributed with the readiest good will. 



The climate of Cordoba did not correspond with my expectations- 

 Knowing that it was rainless during half the year, and remembering 

 the astonishing continuance of favorable weather which Gilliss had 

 enjoyed in Santiago, I had counted upon an abundance of unclouded 

 sky. But to my sorrow it soon became evident that absence of rain by 

 no means implies absence of clouds 5 and judging from my memory, I 

 should not estimate the number of good nights in Cordoba as much 

 greater than in Boston ; although, to be sure, we should there scarcely 

 be favored with our present experience of a four days' northeaster at 

 midsummer. The sky has provoking tricks of suddenly clouding over 

 just at nightfall, after a magnificent day, or covering itself in a few 

 minutes with a thick veil of mist without previous warning. Thus the 

 rapidity with which the survey progressed has been by no means pro- 

 portional to the labor expended. Still the conclusion of the first year 

 of the observations in September last showed the gratifying number of 

 429 zones, containing more than 56,000 observations, and, so far as I 

 could judge, about two-thirds of the region to be explored were dis- 

 posed of. And it was manifest that, with no belter fortune in the 

 weather than in the year past, all the remaining work could be accom- 

 plished, and all the unsatisfactory zones repeated in less than a year 

 more. I have not mentioned that the width of the region to be explored 

 had been increased by one-half from ray original i^lan. Instead of 

 taking 29° as the northern limit, and thus lapping 2° upon Argelander's 

 work, I had, at the earnest instance of Argelander himself, commenced 

 at 23°, thus overlapping his zones by 8°, and beginning at a point 16° 

 above the horizon of Bonn 5 and instead of going only to Gilliss's 

 northern limit at the southern polar circle, the Cordoba zones extend to 

 within 10° of the pole itself, thus covering a belt 57° wide, or about 

 one-third of the whole heavens as measured from pole to pole. On the 

 13th of April, when my last observation was made, the number of zones 

 observed had reached 619, and the number of star-places was nearly 

 83,000. These were, furthermore, in the full tide of preparation for the 

 press, five persons being engaged in transcribing and preparing them 

 for computation. 



Although the object of labor is not to conquer difficulties — this part 

 of the process being only a means and not an end, and the only proper 

 motive being to secure results — it is pardonable to look back upon the 

 obstacles and impediments, and I can truly say that these have been 

 neither few nor small, nor indeed conquerable, except with the aid of 

 such faithful and able co-workers as I have been favored with. I will 

 not weary you with the tale of all the mishaps, large and small — instru- 

 ments disturbed, apparatus giving out, tornadoes, dust-storms and the 

 like; of insects in one's nose and eyes and mouth, when the hands 

 could not be used to fight them nor the head moved from the telescope 



