Christ Church like a vision of whiteness sprang out to the
west upon our vision, and immediately about us the mingling rivulets
poured their musical streams through and over the icy banks of half
consolidated snow.
As night came up, the stars seemed almost to pop out in their
appropriate places, like those stellar illusions that appear so
appropriately upon the theatrical stage, and the low lying moon sent its
flickering radiance over the yet unsubdued waters. It was the time of
the opposition of Mars which brings that planet nearest to us. As is
well known to astronomers, the perihelion of Mars is in the same
longitude in which the earth is on August 27; and when an opposition
occurs near that date, the planet is only 35 millions of miles from the
earth, and this is the closest approach which their bodies can ever
make.
Our magnetic receiver had been placed in position, the Morse register
was attached; the whole apparatus was in one of the upper rooms of the
observatory, in proximity with the telescope through whose glass for
days we had watched the approach of our sister planet. As the night
settled down upon us we had taken our seats for a few instants at a
table in a lower room engaged in one of those innumerable desultory
talks upon our project and their, even to us, somewhat problematic
character. Everything connected with that evening, apart from its having
been carefully recorded in my diary and notebooks, is very distinctly
remembered by me.
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