The Chif-Scout Talks

Taranaki Daily News, 17 October 1931, Page 21 (Supplement)

The Chif-Scout Talks

ABOUT THE SUN. (By Lt.-Gen. Lord Badcn-Powcll of Gilwell.) It is the time when you are in camp or on holiday to learn something about those wonderful guides in the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars. Every Scout should practise finding the direction by the sun by day and by the moon at night, until he is able to do it without any trouble. When he acquires this knowledge he can go into the most difficult country without fear of being lost. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. At midday it is, for those in the southern part of the world, due north. If at noon, therefore, you stand facing the sun your back towards the south, the east is on your right hand and the west to your left. You will readily learn to adapt these positions according to the corner of the world where you find yourself. Every Scout, like every sailor boy, has to know the points of the compass by heart. You ought also to be able to judge the time by the position of the sun in the sky —that is to say, if it

rises about six in the morning it is high over your head, at 12 olplock. When, it is about half way up the sky the time would be nine o’clock; when half way down to the westward it would be three in the afternoon. South African tribes generally describe the distance from one place to

another by saying where the sun will be when you get to your journey’s end. If you say. “How far is it from here to I so-and-so?” they will point to the part! of the sky in which the sun will be by ] the time you get there. You then have to estimate for yourself what o’clock that would be. Knowing how long it would take you, you can judge flow many miles it is distant. The sun itself is a pretty good Jong way from the earth, for it. is ninety million miles. distant. In other words-, supposing you could go there by train running at 30 miles an hour, it would take you 347 years to get there! The world in which we live is a round ball, which, moves in a big circle round the sun'; it also keeps turning round and round itself and takes 24 hours to turn round. Thus, when our bit of earth turns away out of sight of the sun, it becomes shaded and dark, and that is night. Then, when our side comes round again towards the sun, day dawns and we get all the light and warmth that the sun can give us. We talk of the sun rising and setting; but it is really our earth that turns round and we coine in sight of the sun in the morning and gradually roll out of sight of it in the evening. A GOOD GUIDE. We are turning eastward all the time so that when we come in sight of the sun in the morning he appears to bo rising in the east and he appears to set in the west. At mid-day he is, to those in the south part of the world, due north. So the suis is a good guide to us . as to which is the north, south, east or west, according to the time of day, and to the part of the world where you happen to be. One way to find the north and south is to hold your watch so that the hour hand points towards the sun. If ybu divide the difference between the hour hand and the figure twelve on the watch aS it then stands, the line of division will point to the north, The Phoenicians, who sailed round Africa in ancient times noticed that w'hen’they started, the sun rose on their left-hand side: they were going south. Then they reported that they got to a. strange country where the sun got up in the wrong quarter, namely on their rmht hand. The truth was that they had gone round the Cape of Good Hope and were steering north again up the east side of Africa. . The moon and stars are also good guides to Scouts, but I must tell you about them another time.