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Helena, Wales to Hudson's Bay, Mason to the Cape of Good Hope, Captain Cooke to Otaheite, &c. The observations of the southern hemisphere compared with those of Europe, and especially with the observations made by an Austrian astronomer Father Hell at Wardhus in Lapland, gave for the distance of the sun the result which has since figured in all treatises on astronomy and navigation.
The Finnas or Laplanders were distinguished by the geographer of Ravenna into Scerde-fenos, and Rede-fenos, the Scride-finnas, and Ter-finnas of Alfred. So late as 1556, Richard Johnson, Hakluyt, ed. 1809. I. 316. mentions the Scrick-finnes as a wild people near Wardhus. The North-men or Normans, are the Norwegians or inhabitants of Nor-land, Nord-land, or North-mana-land.
One of the interesting scraps of history connected with the transit of 1769 concerns the observations of Father Maximilian Hell, S. J., the leading astronomer of Vienna. He observed the transit at Wardhus, a point near the northern extremity of Norway, where the sun did not set at the season of the transit.
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