“When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks.”
Longfellow’s vivid lines reproduce the popular impression of the character of the season when the descending sun again touches the equator, giving the whole world once more days and nights of equal length, before he dips to the south and leaves the northern hemisphere to face the oncoming blasts of winter. There is no superstition more deeply planted than that of the “equinoctial storms.” There are such storms, it is true, but they by no means always burst at the epoch of the Equinox. The readjustment of atmospheric conditions goes on gradually, and there is often, just at the equinoctial moment, a spell of serene weather that can hardly be matched at any other season of the year. The atmosphere, recovered from the excessive heats of summer, possesses a quality of softness and “misty fruitfulness” that tranquillizes the spirit and makes nature doubly charming. It is the late afternoon of the year, when life, refreshed by the siestas of summer, resumes its activity, and the heavens no less than the face of the earth greet the eye with a smile of divine beauty.
To every season its flowers—and to every season its stars. The gardens of the sky are not the same in autumn as in summer, either in their arrangement or in the peculiarities of their bloom. There is less parade of flaming beauty, but the richness of the coup d’œil is not inferior. And just as in our September parterres some of the summer beauties remain, though a little faded, to support with their charms their stately successors, so in the skies of autumn a few of the summer stars are yet seen, though somewhat robbed of their pristine splendor as they sink toward the sunset. The garland of the Milky Way has now been flung all across the firmament, from northeast to southwest, and while Vega and Altair hang half-way down the curtain of the west, recalling the glories of the solstice, Capella appears rising in the northeast, and Cassiopeia, not less beautiful in the sky than when she awoke the jealousy of the sea-nymphs, is seen seated in her “shiny chair” east of the meridian in the north. Between Cassiopeia and Capella flashes Perseus, with his uplifted sword marked by a curve of stars embedded in the Milky Way, and above Perseus stands Andromeda, upright, with her feet toward her rescuer and her head touching the “Great Square of Pegasus,” near the middle of the sky, east of the meridian. Cepheus, the King, is on the meridian above the pole. Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Andromeda, and Perseus constitute the “Royal Family” of the sky, more enduring than the proud dynasties that by turns have ruled terrestrial affairs.
CHART III—THE AUTUMN EVENING SKY
Low down in the south, east of the meridian, glows Fomalhaut, the “Fish’s Mouth,” the leading and the only bright star of Piscis Austrinus, the “Southern Fish.” With this singular star we may begin our description of the beauties of the autumn sky. Fomalhaut well deserves the epithet singular, if for nothing else than on account of its loneliness. In this respect it is more remarkable than Cor Hydræ, which it resembles in its ruddy color. Fomalhaut is the characteristic star of autumn in our latitudes, for the same reasons that cause Antares to represent the summer. Like Antares, it startles the wandering eye and fixes the attention, although, unlike the great star of Scorpio, it has no brilliant entourage to emphasize its supremacy over the quarter of the sky where it shines. It is one of the sailors’ stars. To me Fomalhaut is full of boyhood memories and impressions gained when I learned the stars in the country, among the hills that shut in the Schoharie before it pours out into the valley of the Mohawk. Fortunately, Thomas Dick’s works and Burritt’s Geography of the Heavens had a place in our house, and neither The Arabian Nights nor The Swiss Family Robinson was able to dull my appetite for them. In the course of time I knew all the great stars by name, and found a wonderful pleasure in their acquaintance, although at times they daunted me with their imposing associations with Egypt, the Nile, Babylonia, and everything that is most ancient. I shall never forget Fomalhaut flashing along in the south, just skipping the hilltops on an autumn night. A great star is never so imposing nor so mysterious as when it thus appears to be watching the earth.
How immensely would the interest of many travellers’ tales be heightened if only they had known the names of the stars whose appearance they have recorded. When you have the name of the star that was seen, the season and the hour of the night are fixed at once, and the whole scene is filled with new life. When an Alpine climber, waiting in his lonely camp high on the mountain-side for the coming of day, tells me, “I saw Sirius glancing at us over a lofty peak far in the east,” I know immediately the approximate time of night and the aspect of the heavens, and the narrative gains in vividness; but if he says merely that he saw “a star” his stroke of description misses. And, then, the names of many of the stars, by their oddity and beauty, enrich the page and awake the imagination. They are, in themselves, an incantation.
The lover of the stars is grateful for any reference to them by a great writer, and yet he is often disappointed by the inadequacy of descriptions that might easily have been made memorable if only their authors had known the starry heavens a little better. How disappointing, for instance, is this passage in R. H. Dana’s Two Years before the Mast:
“Wednesday, November 5th—The weather was fine during the previous night, and we had a clear view of the Magellan Clouds and of the Southern Cross. The Magellan Clouds consist of three small nebulæ in the southern part of the heavens—two bright, like the Milky Way, and one dark. They are first seen just above the horizon after crossing the southern tropic. When off Cape Horn they are nearly overhead. The Cross is composed of four stars in that form, and it is said to be the brightest constellation in the heavens.”
That is all, and the reader’s dissatisfaction is not confined to the evidence of the writer’s lack of familiarity with the stars, but becomes yet keener when he reflects upon the brilliant picture which Mr. Dana’s powers of description should have enabled him to make of those strange sights of the southern sky, which, in his day, were so rarely seen by northern eyes.