The apparent crowding together of the stars into dense clouds in the Milky Way is partly an effect due to our position in the Milky Way. When we look at the heavens in a direction at right angles to this plane we find comparatively few stars lying along our line of vision because the stars are actually fewer in number in this direction. If we look _along_ the plane of the Milky Way, however, we see to a greater distance through an enormous depth of stars. Though individual stars may not be much closer together in the Milky Way than they are outside of it, there are on the whole more of them and the effect of greater density is produced. Father Hagen of the Vatican Observatory, who has for years made a study of the dark clouds of obscuring matter and dark nebulæ that abound in space, has found evidence of the existence of many vast clouds of dark obscuring matter over the entire heavens above and below the plane of the Milky Way as well as surrounding the Milky Way in its own plane. The existence of such clouds of non-luminous matter would account partly for the comparative fewness of stars in space outside of the plane of the Milky Way since many stars would be concealed from our eyes by these obscuring clouds. There is, however, in addition, an actual crowding of all the visible stars toward this plane. The peoples of all ages have honored the Milky Way in story and legend. It has been universally referred to as The Sky River and The Pathway of Souls. To the little Hiawatha, we remember, the "wrinkled old Nakomis" "Showed the broad white road in heaven Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows, Running straight across the heavens, Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows. To the Kingdom of Ponemah To the land of the hereafter." In _The Galaxy_, Longfellow thus describes the Milky Way: "Torrent of light and river of the air Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen Like gold and silver sands in some ravine Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!" In Sweden, where the Milky Way arches high through the zenith in winter, it is called the Winter Street, and Miss Edith Thomas writes thus beautifully of it in her poem entitled, "The Winter Street": "Silent with star dust, yonder it lies-- The Winter Street, so fair and so white; Winding along through the boundless skies, Down heavenly vale, up heavenly height. Faintly it gleams, like a summer road When the light in the west is sinking low, Silent with star dust! By whose abode Does the Winter Street in its windings go? And who are they, all unheard and unseen-- O who are they, whose blessèd feet Pass over that highway smooth and sheen? What pilgrims travel the Winter Street? Are they not those whom here we miss In the ways and the days that are vacant below? As the dust of that Street their footfalls kiss Does it not brighter and brighter grow?"