Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/499

Rh safely, and thereafter called the Pole Star 'the star which never moves.' When the hunters died they were carried up into the heavens, and we can see them in the stars of the Little Dipper following the Pole Star faithfully every clear night."

One of the Western Indian tribes regarded Ursa Minor as a Bear, the head of the beast being represented by the three stars forming a triangle, and its back by seven other stars.

The Eskimos thought that this constellation represented four men carrying a sick baby.

Ursa Minor's chief claim to recognition lies in the universal observation of its lucida, the standard second magnitude star Alpha, known as "the Pole Star" or "Polaris," and to the Greeks as "Phœnice."

This famous star, which has been called "the lovely northern light," is the "most practically useful star in the heavens." It is the best known and most celebrated of all the stars.

The mariners of the ancient and modern worlds have placed an equal faith in the guiding beams of this steadfast star. Phœnician barks and Roman triremes, the ships of the Spanish Armada, and those that bore the early adventurers and explorers over the unknown seas, as well as the canoes and rude dugouts of the savages of many lands, have all turned their prows alike in answer to its beckoning light.

Dryden thus describes the infancy of navigation:

The antiquity of the knowledge of this star is attested by the fact that on the Assyrian tablets we find the Pole Star mentioned. The fact that it appears fixed was perhaps the first discovery made in the stellar universe.