276 EIGHTH OF JANUARY. 
trilDuted bands of primitive colors, blending softly into 
the clear blue overhead ; and then, by an almost magic 
transition, night occupying the western sky. Stars 
of the first magnitude, and a wandering planet here 
and there, shone dimly near the debatable line ; but 
a little further on were all the stars in their glory. 
The northern firmament had the familiar beauty of a 
pure winter night at home. The Pleiades glittered 
" like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver-braid," 
and the great stars that hang about the heads of Orion 
and Taurus were as intensely bright as if day was not 
looking out upon them from the other quarter of the 
sky. I had never seen night and day dividing the 
hemisphere so beautifully between them. 
On the 8th we had, of course, our national festivi- 
ties, and remembered freshly the hero who consecrated 
the day in our annals. The evening brought the the- 
atricals again, with extempore interludes, and a hearty 
splicing of the main-brace. It was something new, 
and not thoroughly gladsome, this commemoration of 
the victory at New Orleans under a Polar sky. There 
were men not two hundred miles from us, now our 
partners in a nobler contest, who had bled in this very 
battle. But we made the best of the occasion ; and 
if others some degrees further to the south celebrated 
it more warmly, we had the thermometer on our side, 
with its —20°, a normal temperature for the " lauda- 
tur et alget." 
But the sun was now gradually coming up toward 
the horizon : every day at meridian^ and for an hour 
before and after, we were able to trace our progress 
eastward by some known headland. We had passed 
Cape Castlereagh and Cape Warrender in succession, 
and were close on the meridian of Cape Osborn. The 
