ers of
every hue and shape, together with birds such as one sees preserved in
northern museums,--all these crowd upon our vision as we wander about
inland.

Ceylon is rich in prehistoric monuments, showing that there once existed
here a great and powerful empire, and leading us to wonder what could
have swept a population of millions from the face of the globe and have
left no clearer record of their past. The carved pillars, skilfully
wrought, now scattered through the forest, and often overgrown by
mammoth trees, attest both material greatness and far-reaching
antiquity. It would seem as though nature had tried to cover up the
wrinkles of age with blooming and thrifty vegetation.

We embark at Colombo for Adelaide, the capital of South Australia,
steering a course south by east through the Indian Ocean for a distance
of about thirty-five hundred miles. On this voyage we find the nights so
bright and charming that hours together are passed upon the open deck
studying the stars. Less than two thousand can be counted from a ship's
deck by the naked eye, but with an opera-glass or telescope the number
can be greatly increased. Among the most interesting constellations of
the region through which we are now passing, is the Southern Cross. For
those not familiar with its location, a good way to find the Cross is to
remember that there are two prominent stars in the group known as
Centaurus that point directly towards it. That farthest from the Cross
is regarded as one of the fixed stars nearest to the earth, but its
distance from us is twenty thousand times that of the sun. Stellar
distances can be realized only by familiar comparison. For instance:
were it possible for a person to journey to the sun in a single day,
basing the calculation upon a corresponding degree of speed, it would
require fifty-five years to reach this fixed star! Probably not one-half
of those who have sailed beneath its tranquil beauty are aware that near
the upper middle of the cross there is a brilliant cluster of stars
which, though not visible to the naked eye, are brought into view with
the telescope. In these far southern waters we also see what are called
the Magellanic Clouds, which lie between Canopus and the South Pole.
These light clouds, or what seem to be such, seen in a clear sky, are,
like the "Milky Way," visible nebulae, or star-clusters, at such vast
distance from the earth as to have by combination this effect upon our
vision.