266 OBSERVATOEY AT CORDOBA, ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 



analogous to that of Bessel and Argelander was naturally an alluring 

 problem. 



The singularity and strange beaut^^ of some portions of the southern 

 sky has from the first attracted the attention of navigators. At the 

 ver}^ beginning of the sixteenth century the luminous patches now 

 called the "Magellanic clouds,'' as well as the "Coal-sacks," those dark 

 blots upon the brilliant milky-way, had been vividly i)ortrayed; and 

 even Amerigo Vespucci boasted that he had looked upon the four stars 

 which, according to Dante, had been 



" Ne'er seen before, save by the primal people," 



but which have been now, for more than three centuries and a half, 

 renowned in song and story under the name of the "Southern Cross." 

 l!^or need we wonder at the poet's fervor when he adds : 



" Rejoicinjif in the liaraelets seemed the heaven. 

 O thou septentrional and widowed site, 

 In that thou art deprived of seeing these!" 



The glory of the southern sky in the region near the Cross is indescri- 

 bable. There, where the Milky Way is crossed by the thick stream of 

 bright stars which skirts this river of light, its binlliancy is wondrously 

 increased, and it exhibits a magnificence unequaled in any other portion 

 of the heavens. There glitter a multitude of bright stars, more thickly 

 scattered than in any region within our northern view, while the back- 

 ground is gorgeous in its splendor. Often, on some clear night, when 

 this region has suddenly been brought to my view in passing some 

 edifice, or turning some street-corner, I have stood amazed at the flood 

 of light which it diffused ; and often, too, when leaving the observatory 

 in the early morning-hours after a night of wearying labor, I have felt 

 reluctant to abandon the magnificent spectacle, for the sake of mucii- 

 needed repose. In close proximity are the rich constellations of the 

 Centaur, the Keel and Sails of the ship Argo, and the Wolf; and the 

 glory reaches through the Altar even to the southern portion of the 

 Scorpion. There extend large tracts which rival the Pleiades in the 

 profusion of their stars, gleaming upon a background of nebula. Else- 

 where the southern heavens are not so brilliant as the northern, nor do 

 they contain so many stars as bright as the faintest which we can dis- 

 cern ; but there is nothing between the two poles comparable in beauty 

 with the tract to which I refer. 



Yet the earliest accurate observations of southern stars were those 

 of Halley, afterwards Astronomer Royal of England, who visited St. 

 Helena for the purpose between the j^ears 1676 and 1678, under the pat- 

 ronage of King Charles II and the East India Company, and there 

 determined the positions of 341 stars. Seventy -five years later, in 1751, 

 the French astronomer Lacaille undertook a similar expedition to 

 the Cape of Good Hope, then a Dutch colony, at the expense of the 

 French government, and with the official support of the French 



