Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/202

Rh I believe that most persons on first seeing the Southern Cross feel a degree of disappointment, arising probably from the name having led them to expect to see a constellation completely cruciform, instead of four stars, not quite of the same magnitude, representing only the extreme points of the cross; another reason also may be the low position in the horizon in which, as a ship nears the equator, the cross first rises into view. The constellation vindicates its name when vertical, and grows the more upon the mind, like other beautiful things, the oftener it is gazed upon. Without its "pointers," however, as the two splendid stars are called that accompany it, the Cross would lose much of its attraction; one of these stars can be perceived, even by the naked eye, to change colour, reminding one in so doing of a revolving light at sea.

The "star shower" which was so eagerly watched in England on the night of the thirteenth of November, 1866, was invisible in our latitude, but the pleasure that we took in a summer night's stroll was constantly enhanced by the sight of bright meteors crossing the sky. Our thunder-storms were not many, and those by which the colony is visited chiefly hang upon the sea-coast, in proof of which I need only say that whereas at Fremantle the lightning conductors were in the proportion of one to each house, there were much fewer at Perth, whilst in our neighbourhood, at sixty miles distance from the sea, there was but one dwelling so provided. During five years I only remember the occurrence of two storms that could be called serious, in one of which a chimney on our house was slightly struck. None of us were injured,