Disregarding for the present the exquisite circlet of Corona Borealis, the “Northern Crown,” and the quadrilateral figure in Hercules, seen northeast of Arcturus, we turn to the great dragon, Draco, whose diamond-shaped head may be seen far over in the northeast above sparkling Vega, which is just on the horizon. As a reference to the charts of the circumpolar stars at the end of the book will show, Draco is a remarkably crooked constellation, its line of stars winding round between the “Little Dipper” in Ursa Minor, which has Polaris at the end of its handle, and the “Great Dipper” of Ursa Major. Its most interesting, though not now its brightest, star is Alpha, or _Thuban_, Arabic for “dragon.” It lies between the end of the handle of the Great Dipper and the bowl of the small one. About forty-six hundred years ago Alpha Draconis was the Pole-star, and is believed to have shone down the long tube-like passage in the great pyramid of Cheops into the watching eyes of the priestly astronomers, assembled to view it in the mysterious chamber hollowed out of the solid rock deep under the foundations of the mighty pile. They thus had a telescope more than three hundred feet long as immovable as the solid earth, but, alas for their calculations, the star itself shifted its position, and their gigantic observing tube became useless until modern science inferred from its position the date of their building. How imposing to the imagination this association between a particular star and the mightiest structure made by human hands on the earth! Two centuries ago Thuban was more than twice as bright as it is now, and when the Egyptian priests sedulously observed it from their gloomy cavern, more than a thousand years before the magic-working days of Moses, it may have been brighter still. Gamma (γ), or Eltanin (the “Dragon”), in the triangular head, is now the brightest star in the constellation, and it, too, has a history. Lockyer and others have identified it as the orientation star of Rameses’ great temple at Karnak, and of the temples of Hathor and Mut at Dendera and Thebes. There is something magnificent in this thought of the ancient temple-builders--to square their work by the stars, and to construct long rows of sphinxes and majestic columns to conduct a ray from the sky to the eye of the god in his dark and hidden chamber, where no impious foot dared follow. When you are tired of tracing the windings of the Dragon, turn to Ursa Minor and Polaris. The “Little Bear,” it has been remarked, has an even more preposterous tail than his greater brother. Polaris is at the end of the tail, or the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, and the bowl of the latter is on the bear’s flank.