l but
inaccessible rocks in the bleak Southern Ocean, as St. Paul's and
Campbell Islands, swept by hurricanes, and fitted only for the
habitation of seabirds, where the daring votaries of science, in the
wise prevision of a long leaguer by the elements, were supplied with
stores for many months, or even a whole year. Siberia and the Sandwich
Islands were thickly beset with observers; parties of three
nationalities encamped within the mists of Kerguelen Island,
expressively termed the "Land of Desolation," in the sanguine, though
not wholly frustrated hope of a glimpse of the sun at the right moment.
M. Janssen narrowly escaped destruction from a typhoon in the China seas
on his way to Nagasaki; Lord Lindsay (now Earl of Crawford and
Balcarres) equipped, at his private expense, an expedition to Mauritius,
which was in itself an epitome of modern resource and ingenuity.

During several years, the practical methods best suited to insure
success for the impending enterprise formed a subject of European
debate. Official commissions were appointed to receive and decide upon
evidence; and experiments were in progress for the purpose of defining
the actual circumstances of contacts, the precise determination of which
constituted the only tried, though by no means an assuredly safe road to
the end in view. In England, America, France, and Germany, artificial
transits were mounted, and the members of the various expeditions were
carefully trained to unanimity in estimating the phases of junction and
separation between a moving dark circular body and a broad illuminated
disc. In the previous century, a formidable and prevalent phenomenon,
which acquired notoriety as the "Black Drop" or "Black Ligament," had
swamped all pretensions to rigid accuracy. It may be described as
substituting adhesion for contact, the limbs of the sun and planet,
instead of meeting and parting with the desirable clean definiteness,
_clinging_ together as if made of some glutinous material, and
prolonging their connection by means of a dark band or dark threads
stretched between them. Some astronomers ascribed this baffling
appearance entirely to instrumental imperfections; others to atmospheric
agitation; others again to the optical encroachment of light upon
darkness known as "irradiation." It is probable that all these causes
conspired, in various measure, to produce it; and it is certain that its
_conspicuous_ appearance may, by suitable precautions, b