CHAPTER XIV. 
Moonlight and Starlight in the Bahamas. New Heavens. The Crescent 
and the Cross. The Starry Cross of Southern Skies. Midnight Watchings, 
with their Results. 
‘The stars—they are the poetry of heaven, 
And in their bright leaves we may read the fate 
Of men and empires.” —Cxitp Hazotp. 
“The eye 
Breathed on by fancy, with enlarged sense 
Through the protracted and deep hush of night, 
May note the fairies, coursing the lazy hours 
In various changes, and without fatigue; 
A fickle race, who tell their time by flowers, 
And live on zephyrs, and have stars for lamps, 
And night dews for ambrosia.”—Smams. 
WE found in the Bahamas not only anew earth, but the canopy 
of stars at night was in some respects unlike that to which we 
had been accustomed. Our astronomical knowledge was too 
limited to enable us to indulge in a roll call of the heavenly hosts; 
but, from the extreme north, old stars had disappeared, while 
others, new to us, with seeming modesty, shone with a subdued 
light from-lowly positions in the southern sky. Planets and 
great central suns appeared to have wandered from their spheres, 
and, with renewed fires, brilliantly gleamed from new positions 
in night’s bluedome. The constellations of Orion and the Great 
Bear were, with a few others, too marked in their individuality 
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