58 ALL ABOARD FOR SUNRISE LANDS.

itude to accomplish the feat. In any Arctic country, it must be strange
to a person from the Southern land to see the sun day after day wheel
round the heavens. In Greenland, the sun is always above the horizon
in June and July, and then there are days where his absence is only
long enough to give him a little dip below the horizon and up he comes
again. While it is summer in Greenland, and that season exceeds four
months only in few places, vegetation makes great advances.”

When night came, they were out upon the bosom. of the Pacific.
The big steamer steadily made its way over the lonely, darkening waters.
The stars brought forward their tapers one by one and lighted up the
windows of the sky. The wind came in chilly breaths. The dull,
heavy swash of the waters about the vessel could be heard. Our three
pilgrims were fairly afloat, gomg west as Uncle Nat said, to find the
east; moving toward the sunset to search out the sunrise lands.

The boys saw the moon rise above the water.

“Uncle Nat,” asked Rick, “why are there so many moons, a family
of moons with different faces, and not one thing looking the same all
the time?”

“Come into my state-room.”

In the state-room, Uncle Nat took a book out of his trunk and
showed the boys a picture of the sun, the earth, and also the moon at
different points in its journey about the earth.

“There in that outside circle is the moon as it appears to the sun,
now showing a bright surface. But in the inner circle is the moon
at different points as it appears to the earth. Take when the moon is
between the earth and the sun, and we have the moon’s dark side
turned toward us, or we get no moon at all. But a little farther
along, we catch a bit of the moon’s bright side like a crescent, and fayr-
ther along —” )
~ “Oh, I see!” choad Rick. “It is easy enough now, after you