“For the last two or three days,” Herschel wrote to his aunt, January 21, “we have been looking for houses, and have all but agreed for one, a most beautiful place four or five miles out of town, called ‘The Grove.’ In point of situation it is a perfect paradise in rich and magnificent mountain scenery, and sheltered from all winds, even the fierce south-easter, by thick surrounding woods. I must reserve for my next all description of the gorgeous display of flowers which adorns this splendid country, as well as the astonishing brilliancy of the constellations.”
“The Grove” resumed its old Dutch name of “Feldhausen” during Herschel’s occupation of it; and as “Feldhausen” it will always be memorable in astronomical history as the scene of the first effective exploration of the southern heavens. The place is essentially unchanged. Only an avenue of fir-trees has been planted by way of approach to the house, a solid Dutch structure, with a disconsolate-looking garden in front; while in an adjacent field, carpeted with yellow lupins every spring, and redolent of their perfume, an obelisk has been erected on the former site of the great reflector. Above, to the west, towers the gable-end of Table Mountain, and an exuberant growth of oaks and pines softens the sternness of its “mural precipices.”
The neighbourhood was, in those days, lonely in the human sense, although otherwise over- and ill-populated. Wolves and jackals abounded in the forests; venomous snakes slid through the grass; baboons had the run of the country; even the lion and the hippopotamus were scarcely yet extinct in the Cape Peninsula. Many a wild hyæna-shriek startled the astronomer at his nightly toil; and Dr. Whewell reported that he had “spent one night in tiger-hunting, but seemed to think it poor sport compared with the chasse aux étoiles doubles.” Tiger, it should be explained, is a local name for a species of leopard: no true tigers have ever been encountered in Africa.
His twenty-foot began its activity February 22nd, and the refractor, which was equatorially mounted in a revolving dome, was ready early in June. “But I am sorry to say,” he told Miss Herschel, “that the nights in which it can be used to advantage are rare.” And he lamented to his brother-in-law and intimate friend, Mr. James C. Stewart, that, during the hot season, “the stars tremble, swell, and waver most formidably.” The Cape heavens are indeed often exasperating. On nights meteorologically quite fine, the dismayed astronomer not uncommonly sees the stars “walking about” in the field of view; and a mere handful of cloud will, at other times, with incredible swiftness, spread over the whole face of the sky. Still, compensation is, sooner or later, sure to come in a run of magnificent observing weather. This was Herschel’s experience. He informed Francis Baily, October 23rd, 1834, that “the definition was far beyond anything experienced in England.” After rain especially, superb opportunities were afforded, when
“The starry sequence of nocturnal hours”[G]
[G] R. Garnett, “Iphigenia in Delphi.”
might be unbroken, perhaps for a week together, by a single adverse incident of climate.
Herschel took three specula with him to the Cape; one made by his father, another by himself with his father’s aid, and a third, of his own exclusive manufacture. Their rapid tarnishing kept them in constant circulation from the tube to the polisher. After half a dozen nights they had lost all brilliancy; at the end of three months, they were more than purblind. He acquired, however, such facility and skill in the use of his polishing machine, that he was able, in 1835, to report his mirrors as “more perfect than at any former time.”
He made astonishingly quick progress in observation. On October 24th, 1835, Miss Herschel was informed, “I have now very nearly gone over the whole southern heavens, and over much of it often. In short, I have, to use a homely phrase, broken the neck of the work, and my main object now is to secure and perfect what is done.”
His sweeps yielded a harvest of 1,202 double stars, and 1,708 nebulæ and clusters, only 439 of which had been previously registered. Among the novelties were a faint, delicate miniature of the ring-nebula in Lyra, and five planetaries. One of these he described as “of a beautiful greenish-blue colour, a full and intense tint.” This lovely object, situated in Centaur, is sometimes distinguished as “the blue planetary”; although its hue is shared by all the members of its class. The nature of their spectrum, in fact, obliges them to be more or less green.