Não vista de outra gente.”
“In this new hemisphere we first perceived
A constellation great and brilliant,
By all, but Lusians, hitherto unseen.”
J. Musgrave’s translation of the Lusiad.
The ladies never appeared tired of asking questions relative to the heavens; every book treating on astronomy, which could be discovered on board the vessel, was eagerly examined; and those gentlemen who were privileged to be present at the “star meetings” found both instruction and rational amusement, while some who had only studied the heavens before in a cursory manner, or even with scientific objects, were really surprised at the practical knowledge acquired by the young ladies in a few evenings.
One of these young ladies, and she was by no means a “blue stocking,” informed us that her brother, who was a naval officer, had explained to her how both the Great Bear, in the north, and the Southern Cross, in the south, might be used for correcting the variation of the compass. When called upon one evening, with the compass before her, she very clearly pointed out how, with the Pole Star in the northern hemisphere, the variation of the needle may be ascertained within tolerable limits.
A few evenings afterwards, on coming on deck, after tea, the Southern Cross was observed standing nearly upright, but inverted; that is to say, approaching its lower culmination. The same young lady held a plumb line, made of a bullet and silken thread, before her eye, until the two extreme stars of the Cross came to the meridian, nearly pointing out the true south, by which our fair navigator read off the variation of the needle very correctly.
After this, I happened to state that both the Great Bear and the Southern Cross were clocks in the heavens for the use of those inhabiting the torrid zone, and each of them served the same purpose for the inhabitants of their own hemispheres. I was immediately called upon to explain my statement, and induced to give the following account of the manner of telling the hour by the Southern Cross:—