The other stars and constellations now visible are already familiar to us. But we turn again for a moment to Polaris, which, being practically fixed in the sky, can be seen at any season. I have referred to the fact that this star for a long series of centuries has been a universal guide to all the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere. In that character its history is no less romantic than practically important. One of the deepest impressions of my childhood was produced by an acquaintance with a remarkable man who at that time seemed to me to be a most wonderful traveller, since he had seen the Gulf of Mexico, the Everglades of Florida, the Dismal Swamp of Virginia, and, according to his story (which no boy would doubt), had battled with alligators and tasted the delights of vagabond life on the great cotton plantations of the South. I think he was the first who ever pointed out the North Star to me, and he fired my imagination by tales of its connection with the escape of negro slaves--escapes in which he professed to have played a part. Many long winter evenings he sat by my father’s fireside and fascinated his hearers with narratives of his adventures. But nothing interested me more than what he said of the slaves following the lead of the North Star, through the darkness of tangled swamps, among deadly moccasins and lurking alligators, always fixing their eyes upon “the star,” falling on their knees to it as their only friend and guide. Trembling at the bay of pursuing bloodhounds, they would lie in concealment during the daylight hours, and as soon as night came on would look for their celestial sentinel, and follow unquestioningly its indication of the way to freedom. However apocryphal these stories may have been, they certainly had a basis of truth, and the impressions then produced upon my mind concerning the character of Polaris as the sure friend of those who are lost and in trouble have remained undimmed in my memory. What a triumph will be that of the man who first visits the north pole by night, and sees that star gleaming directly over his head, while all the constellations solemnly circle about it, unresting and unsetting! FOOTNOTES: [2] It should be said that throughout this book I am indebted for many of the translations of star names to Richard Hinckley Allen’s _Star Names and Their Meanings_, the most complete work of its kind in existence. V THE PLANETS The beginner will often be troubled in his observations by the presence in some constellation of a brilliant object which outshines all of the stars shown in his charts, and is plainly an interloper among them. He may at once set the stranger down for one of the planets--it may be Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, or Venus, or possibly, if close to the horizon, Mercury. Uranus and Neptune will not disturb his equanimity, for the latter is never, and the former seldom, visible to the naked eye.