Due South; or, Cuba Past and PresentBallou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
History
Due South; or, Cuba Past and Present
Ballou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
Cuba
It was interesting to remain on deck at night and watch the heavens,
as we glided silently through the phosphorescent sea. Was it possible
the grand luminary, which rendered objects so plain that one could
almost read fine print with no other help, shone solely by borrowed
light? We all know it to be so, and also that Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn shine in a similar manner with light reflected from the
sun. It was curious to adjust the telescope and bring the starry
system nearer to the vision. If we direct our gaze upon a planet we
find its disk sharply defined; change the direction and let it rest
upon a star, and we have only a point of light, more or less
brilliant. The glass reveals to us the fact that the star-dust which
we call the Milky Way is an aggregation of innumerable single suns.
Sweeping the arching blue with the telescope, we find some stars are
golden, some green, others purple, many silvery-white, and some are
twins. Probably there is no such thing as stars of the first and
second magnitude, as the common expression names them. It is most
likely only a question of distance, which regulates the brightness to
our vision. Science reduces the distances of heavenly bodies from our
earth to figures, but they are so immense as to be simply bewildering.
At the North the moon is silvery, but in tropical skies at night it
becomes golden, glowing, and luxurious in its splendor, never pale and
wan as it seems with us.
When the lonely lighthouse which marks Cape Maysi, at the easterly
point of Cuba, hove in sight on the starboard bow, the dim form of the
mountains of Hayti was also visible on the opposite horizon. A
subterranean connection is believed to exist between the mountain
ranges of the two islands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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