"Not far from the sea-monster are the Fishes, and the story about them
is as follows:
"One day when Venus and her little son Cupid were walking beside the
banks of a river they were frightened at seeing a terrible giant named
Typhon. Flames flashed from his eyes, and as he glared at Venus and
Cupid they were overcome with fear and called on Jupiter to help them.
He changed them into fishes, and afterward placed them among the stars.
"Between Cetus and Orion you can see some stars winding in and out, and
they are part of the River Eridanus. A daring youth named Phaeton tried
to drive the chariot of the sun through the sky one day. Jupiter struck
him with a thunderbolt, and hurled him from heaven into the river below.
[Illustration: RIVER ERIDANUS.]
"'At once from life and from the chariot driven,
Th' ambitious boy fell thunderstruck from heaven.
* * * * *
The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair,
Shot from the chariot like a falling star
That in a summer's evening from the top
Of heaven drops down, or seems at least to drop.'
"His sisters mourned his unhappy end, and were changed by Jupiter into
poplars, which are still to be seen on the banks of the River Eridanus.
"'All the night long their mournful watch they keep,
And all the day stand round the tomb and weep.'"
"Poor Phaeton," said Harry, as Mary finished the story. "And is that
Phaeton with those three bright stars near the river?"
[Illustration: CLOUD OF STAR-MIST IN ORION.]
"No; that is Orion," replied his sister, "and the three bright stars mark
his belt. Under it you can see a small cloud of mist, if you look at it
through your opera glass. It is clinging around one of the faint stars
in the sword. This is star-mist, from which other stars are being made,
and it looks small only because it is so far away from us; but there is
enough star-dust there to make thousands of bright stars. Astronomers
called these clouds nebulæ."
"Who was Orion?" asked Harry. "Won't you tell me more about him?"
"He was a mighty hunter, and in the old maps you can see him represented
as warding off the attack of the Bull, which is glaring at him with its
bright red eye named Aldebaran. A story was told by the Grecians about
this bull:
"Once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl named Europa, and she
was a princess of Phœnicia. One day she was playing with some friends and
gathering flowers in a meadow near the seashore. Suddenly a snow-white
bull appeared, and the little children were very much afraid. But the
princess was not afraid. She made a pretty garland of flowers and placed
it around the bull's neck. When it knelt down in front of her as though
to thank her, she jumped on its back, and it ran away with her down
to the sea. Plunging under the waves, it swam with her to Crete. The
Grecians thought they saw the bull outlined among the stars in the sky,
but only its head and shoulders are there."
[Illustration: THE BULL, AND THE PLEIADES.]
"But there are not any animals really in the sky, are there?" said Harry.
"No," said Mary, laughing at the question; "but if you look at the stars
you can imagine you see outlines of bulls and serpents and all kinds of
strange animals. Only you have to imagine very much, and this is exactly
what the Grecians did.
"In the shoulder of the bull is the pretty little cluster of stars known
as the Pleiades."