Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/161

Rh lovely as they are, those, to northern sons, are not the stars nor the skies of fatherland. Alpha Lyræ, with his pure white light, has gone from the zenith, and only appears for one short hour above the top of the northern hills. Polaris and the Great Bear have ceased to watch from their posts; they are away down below the horizon. But, glancing the eye above and around, you are dazzled with the splendours of the firmament. The moon and the planets stand out from it; they do not seem to touch the blue vault in which the stars are set. The Southern Cross is just about to culminate. Climbing up in the east are the Centaurs, Spica, Bootes, and Antares, with his lovely little companion, which only the best telescopes have power to unveil. These are all bright particular stars, differing from one another in colour as they do in glory. At the same time, the western sky is glorious with its brilliants too. Orion is there, just about to march down into the sea; but Canopus and Sirius, with Castor and his twin-brother, and Procyon, Argus, and Regulus—these are high up in their course; they look down with great splendour, smiling peacefully as they precede the Southern Cross on its western way. And yonder, farther still, away to the south, float the Magellanic clouds, and the "Coal Sacks"—those mysterious, dark spots in the sky, which seem as though it had been rent, and these were holes in the "azure robe of night," looking out in the starless, empty, black abyss beyond. One who has never watched the southern sky in the stillness of the night, after the sea breeze with its turmoil is done, can have no idea of its grandeur, beauty, and loveliness.

314. Land and sea breezes along the shores of intertropical countries.—Within the tropics, however, the land and sea breezes are more gentle, and, though the night scenes there are not so suggestive as those just described, yet they are exceedingly delightful and altogether lovely. The oppressive heat of the sun and the climate of the sea-shore is mitigated and made both refreshing and healthful by the alternation of those winds which invariably come from the coolest place—the sea, which is the cooler by day, and the land, which is the cooler by night. About ten in the morning the heat of the sun has played upon the land with sufficient intensity to raise its temperature above that of the water. A portion of this heat, being imparted to the superincumbent air, causes it to rise, when the air, first from the beach, then from the sea, to the distance of several miles,