North Star

“ We had long lost sight of our old friend the North Star and his pointers, who guide the mariner, should he be without a compass, in northern latitudes, making acquaintance now with a new constellation, the Southern Cross, which grew more brilliant each night as we ran further and further below the Equator. Other stars, too, of surpassing brightness made the heavens all radiant as soon as the sun set each evening, there being no twilight to speak of—the night and its glories coming upon us as quickly as the last scrap of daylight fled. ”

“ Sweet with the life of my sunburned days When the sheaves were ripe, and the apples red.
The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son The North Star whispers: "You are one Of those whose course no chance can change. You blunder, but are not undone, Your spirit-task is fixed and strange. "When here you walk, a bloodless shade, A singer all men else forget. Your chants of hammer, forge and spade Will move the prairie-village yet. "That young, stiff-necked, reviling town Beholds your fancies on her walls, And paints them out or tears them down, Or bars them from her feasting-halls. ”

“ The eye took in the firmament from the Southern Cross to the North Star, those two constellations which in 12,000 years, by reason of the succession of equinoxes, will resign their part of the polar stars, the one to Canopus in the southern hemisphere, the other to Wega in the northern. Imagination loses itself in this sublime Infinity, amid which the projectile was gravitating, like a new star created by the hand of man. ”

“ Higher in the sky it melts into orange, and that into green and pale blue; and then comes deep blue, star-sown, and then infinite space, where no dawn will ever break. In the north are quivering arches of faint aurora, trembling now like awakening longings, but presently, as if at the touch of a magic wand, to storm as streams of light through the dark blue of heaven—never at peace, restless as the very soul of man. I can sit and gaze and gaze, my eyes entranced by the dream-glow yonder in the west, where the moon’s thin, pale, silver sickle is dipping its point into the blood ”

“ As mentioned before, all the stars travel in unchanged order along their arcs from east to west except this one star which marks the north pole of the heavens. There is no star directly above the pole of the southern hemisphere of our earth. The North Star, or "Polaris," is therefore the only star which remains in an apparently fixed position in the sky, and all the other stars visible to us whirl around it as a center, although in most cases only a portion of their arcs may be seen. ”

“ Who that knows the North can ever deny its lure? Wherever you be, it will call and call to you. In the sluggish South you will hear it, will long for the keen tingle of its silver days, the vaster glory of its star-strewn nights. In the city's heart it will come to you till you hunger for its big, clean spaces, its racing rivers, its purple tundras. In the homes of the rich its voice will seek you out, and you will ache for your lonely camp-fire, a sunset splendouring to golden death, the night where the silence clutches and the heavens vomit forth white fire. ”

“ Every breeze which could possibly blow upon us, no matter from what point of the horizon, must be a south wind. Where we were, one day and one night constituted a year, a hundred such days and nights constituted a century. Had we stood in that spot during the six months of the arctic winter night, we should have seen every star of the northern hemisphere circling the sky at the same distance from the horizon, with Polaris (the North Star) practically in the zenith.
THE RECONNOITERING PARTY AT THE POLE
(On the Sledge are Merely the Instruments, a Tin of Pemmican and a Skin or Two.) ”

“ The north star or Polaris, because of its position with reference to the earth, never seems to move. If you draw an imaginary line through the two pointers up into the heavens, the first bright star you come to, which is just a little to the right of this line, is the north star. ”

“ Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming;
Forest your couch, and your candle a star.
You who this faint day the High North is luring
Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet;
You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring,
Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat:
Honor the High North ever and ever,
Whether she crown you, or whether she slay;
Suffer her fury, cherish and love her —
He who would rule he must learn to obey.
Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you;
Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast. ”

“ Polaris or pole-star is known generally as North Star, and this star is most important to the outdoor girl. At all times the North Star marks the north, its position never changes, and seeing that star and knowing it, you will always know the points of the compass. ”

“ The North Star has long since disappeared, and the Great Bear and other constellations with which we are, or ought to be, familiar, have settled down in the north, and new constellations have taken their [Pg 48] places. The awning, which we had placed over our house, as a protection from the heat, has been removed. The passengers no longer lodge there, and their beds have been returned to their berths. A fair wind is driving us onward, and a few days will find us in the regions of storms, snows, and perhaps of icebergs. ”

“ North Star, The, is the nearest conspicuous star to the north pole. All stars describe circles, those nearest to the celestial equator the largest circles and those farthest from the celestial equator or nearest to the poles the smallest circles. ”

“ But the youth must wander away to a far land. She bids him take her Bible. They will think of each other as they look at the North Star. He saw the North Star hang over the turrets of many a foreign town. ”

“ Suppose you were standing on the exact top of the world during one of its long polar nights, then the North Star would be directly over your head and the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia would serve to mark the passing of days as well as of nights, that is, if you were at the north pole in the wintertime. ”

“ Roger Bracknell smiled. “There is no hurry. I thought I might winter up here—that is if you are agreeable.”
She looked at him reproachfully. “You know——”
“Wait! You have not heard everything, Joy! Down the river I passed the missionary priest, Father Doherty. He is going North—racing the winter. He knows he has already lost the race, and that he will have to finish his journey on the ice. I ventured to persuade him to break the journey at the Lodge, and he agreed to do so. It was very audacious of me——”
“Why should it be audacious? Travellers are always welcome at North Star.” ”

“ Because it always points directly, or nearly directly towards the north star. If the needle gets out of order it will not point to the star. Now turn the compass so that the needle will be directly back of the letter N.
Walter did so.
I can’t see any star there. Now I see hundreds of them. Which one is the north star?
It is a small, twinkling star. It will appear and then disappear. Did your father ever show you the big dipper, or great bear?
Oh, I know the big dipper, but I never saw the great bear.
They are both one, boy. The two lower stars are called pointers. ”

“ We were now to the northward of the line, and every day added to our latitude. The Magellan Clouds, the last sign of south latitude, had long been sunk, and the North Star, the Great Bear, and the familiar signs of northern latitudes, were rising in the heavens. Next to seeing land, there is no sight which makes one realize more that he is drawing near home, than to see the same heavens, under which he was born, shining at night over his head. ”

“ The other stars and the constellations revolve around it; Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, is most conspicuous, and by a line through its two front stars we may always locate the North Star and, hence, the direction, north. Mariners have steered by this star for centuries. Many a lost and wandering man has found his way to safety by its fixed light. ”

“ Let it be, then, what the Polar Star is in the heavens—brilliant, dignified, standing in bold relief, and, above all, so constant to its position, that the bewildered mariner is sure of his reckoning if he can but fix his eye upon it. ”

“ The investigator in searching for the spirit world has but to direct his attention to the north star and his eye will embrace, unwittingly, the locality of that world. The north pole is the great gate which leads to it direct.
The aurora borealis or Northern lights is an electric current which flows from that world to earth, and is sent in through the great gate. The scintillations of these rays are caught up by the clouds and vapors and are repeated in many portions of the globe, and faint rays from them are seen even in this temperate climate.
ADAH ISAACS MENKEN.
_HOLD ME NOT_. ”

“ The assumption is that in search of their food supplies they constantly advance against an opposing current, which takes them through the earth, from pole to pole.
"Arctic explorers have observed in the long night of the polar regions that the north star rises to the zenith at a certain latitude, and then declines over the stern of their vessels as they advance further northward, which is directly in contradiction to what it should do, had they not already reached the verge and begun to pass inward toward the interior. ”

“ The sun is a star of the torrid and temperate zones, and is out of place thirty degrees from the North Pole. The true sky of this country is the pure frigid sky of winter, bright with constellations, and sometimes flushed with the glory of the Aurora Borealis. ”

“ This night, the wind being aft and the sea very smooth, thanks be to God, they made 29 leagues. The North Star appeared very high, as it does off Cape St. Vincent. The [235] Admiral was unable to take the altitude, either with the astrolabe or with the quadrant, because the rolling caused by the waves prevented it. That day he steered his course E.N.E., going 10 miles an hour, so that in eleven hours he made 27 leagues. ”

“ The North Pole is that hitherto unattainable point on our globe on which, if an observer could take his station, he would find that the phenomena of the rising and the setting of the stars, so familiar elsewhere, was non-existent. Each star viewed from the coign of vantage offered by the North Pole would move round and round in a horizontal circle ”

“ This advice is by no means unnecessary, for there are many intelligent persons who are unable to indicate true north within many degrees, though standing on their own doorstep. Having found the north point as near as you can, look upward about forty degrees from the horizon, and you will see the lone twinkler called the north or pole star. Forty degrees is a little less than half-way from the horizon to the zenith. ”

“ They sing a salutation at every door, familiarly naming old and young by their Christian names; and the eyes that look upward from the vales to the hanging huts among the plats and cliffs, see the shadows of the dancers ever and anon crossing the light of the star-like window, and the merry music is heard like an echo dwelling in the sky. ”

“ You cannot look into a cradle and read the secret message traced by a divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay, any more than you can see the North Star in the magnetic needle. ”

“ It is pretty cold work walking with the thermometer at 40° Fahr. below zero, and the wind blowing with a velocity of 16 feet per second straight in your face. But now we are certainly drifting fast to the north under Liv’s star. After all, it is not quite indifferent to me whether we are going north or south. When the drift is northward new life seems to come into me, and hope, the ever-young, [370] springs fresh and green from under the winter snow. I see the way open before me, and I see the home-coming in the distance—too great happiness to believe in. ”

“ It will appear to remain in the same place in the sky, while the other stars change their places from hour to hour. It is very fortunate that we have a star like this in the northern heavens; the astronomers in Australia or New Zealand can see no bright star lying near the Southern Pole which will answer the purposes that the Pole Star does so conveniently for us in the north. ”

“ XVIII
“THE CHAMPION OF THE CROSS”
The late spring in the far North is full of a wonderful beauty, that seems more bewitching because eager eyes have watched through the long, white wintry hours for its gracious coming. ”

“ Can it be that there we are utterly forgotten! No star hanging higher than the Andes in heaven—but sole-sitting at midnight in a small chamber—a melancholy man are we — and there seems a smile of consolation, O Wordsworth! ”

“ Law, that holds out its shield to me.
Star of the North! upon that shield
Thou shinest. O forever shine!
The negro, from the cotton-field,
Shall then beneath its orb recline,
And feed the Lion couched before it,
Nor heed the Eagle screaming o'er it.—Pierpont.
↑ The constellations Aquila, Leo, and Virgo, are here meant by the astronomical fugitive. ”

“ The earth has reached the other side of the sun, but the axis has remained parallel to itself, consequently the North Pole is now inclined entirely away from the sun. The earth continues to turn round as before, but its movements do not bring the North Pole or the surrounding Arctic regions out of the dark hemisphere, and consequently the night must be unbroken in these dismal circumstances. ”

“ It is a privilege of astronomers to be able to predict events that will happen in thousands of years to come, and to describe things accurately though they never saw them, and though nobody else has ever seen them either. No one has ever yet got to the North Pole, but whenever they do, we are able to tell them much of what they will see there. We may leave it to Jules Verne to describe how the journey is to be made, and how the party are to be kept alive at the North Pole. I shall give a picture of the changes of the seasons, and of the appearance in the stars, as seen from thence. ”