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On the morning of March 7, 1892, Professor Lewis Swift discovered the brightest comet that had been seen by northern observers since 1882. About the time of perihelion, which occurred on April 6, it was conspicuous, as it crossed the celestial equator from Aquarius towards Pegasus, with a nucleus equal to a third magnitude star, and a tail twenty degrees long.
Darkest England, like Darkest Africa, reeks with malaria. The foul and fetid breath of our slums is almost as poisonous as that of the African swamp. Fever is almost as chronic there as on the Equator. Every year thousands of children are killed off by what is called defects of our sanitary system.
The projectile was then not at the altitude of the equator; but across the tenth parallel, and from that latitude, carefully taken on the map to the pole, Barbicane and his two companions were able to observe the moon under the most favorable conditions. Indeed, by means of glasses, the above-named distance was reduced to little more than fourteen miles.
We entered the "doldrums" last night variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the ship a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees wide, and the thread called the equator lies along the middle of it. Sept. 4.
Now, in the case of a planet rotating rapidly on its axis, it is clear that if the observer is situated in, or nearly in, the plane of the planet's equator, one edge of its disk will be approaching his eye while the opposite edge is retreating, and the lines in the spectrum of a beam of light from the advancing edge will be shifted toward the blue, while those in the spectrum of the light coming from the retreating edge will be shifted toward the red.
Here is the passage, under the heading of `Pearls. In Longitude 155 degrees 32 minutes 17 seconds East, and exactly under the Equator, there exists a small atoll, unnamed, and, I believe, unknown, unless it be to the natives of Matador and Greenwich Islands, which are in its neighbourhood.
These southerly breezes, which are met with in the Variables, blow at times with considerable force, and greatly perplex the young navigator, who, trusting perhaps to some of the erroneous published accounts, not unnaturally reckons upon meeting the regular Trade-wind, blowing, as he supposes, from the east near the equator, not from the south; still less is he prepared or pleased to find it blowing from the south-westward.
Our knowledge has only deepened the mystery, and all that we shall learn will but deepen it further. We can explain the solstice. We are aware with absolute certitude that the solstice and the equinox and the varying phenomena of the seasons are due to the fact that the plane of the equator is tilted at a slight angle to the plane of the ecliptic.
During the south-east monsoon the wind is found to blow there, between that point and south. Whilst the sun continues near the equator the winds are variable, nor is their direction fixed till he has advanced several degrees towards the tropic: and this is the cause of the monsoons usually setting in, as I have observed, about May and November, instead of the equinoctial months.
Nor do I wish to omit mention of Juan Ponce, commissioned to conquer the Caribs, anthropophagi who feed on human flesh; or of Juan Ayora de Badajoz, or Francisco Bezerra, and of Valleco, already mentioned by me. Solis was not successful in his mission. He set out to double the cape or promontory of San Augustin and to follow the coast of the supposed continent as far as the equator.
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