TERRORS AND MYSTERIES OF THE POLAR REGION 231 



as if the air were filled with charnel meteors, pulsating with wild 

 inconstancy over some vast illimitable city of the dead." 



As a contrast to the glow and splendor of the foregoing picture, 

 we may place one of the Arctic night, when its deep-blue skies are 

 no longer illuminated by electric coruscations. 



All authorities agree in speaking of the severe ordeal to which 

 the Arctic night exposes the European explorers. Physically, the 

 experience is endurable; though there can be no doubt that its 

 influence is to some extent unwholesome, and that the withdrawal 

 of light acts upon the human frame as it does upon vegetation. 

 But to civilized man's moral and intellectual faculties it is a bitter 

 trial. To that new world which it unfolds to the senses they do not 

 harmoniously adapt themselves. A discord and a difference exist 

 between man and nature. He feels, for the first time, how salutary 

 and delightful are those changes of morn, and noon, and night 

 which refresh more temperate regions ; what strength, and joy, and 

 renovating energy there are in the alternation of sunrise and sunset, 

 day and night. How he longs to see again the warm glow of 

 morning reddening the eastern skies, lighting up the tops of the 

 hills, and gradually wakening into life the quiet valley, the flowery 

 plain, and the crystal stream ! How he longs for the golden noon, 

 with its genial sunshine, and the soft murmuring sounds which 

 bear testimony to nature's happiness ! How he longs for the purple 

 glories of the sunset, when the great orb of day sinks serenely and 

 majestically below the horizon, and the earth kindles in the reflec- 

 tion of its departing pomp! How he yearns for those healthful 

 influences of dawn which brace him up for his daily labor ; how he 

 misses the tranquillizing power of twilight, which soothes and 

 encourages to rest! From day to day he finds himself possessed 

 by a single desire; on his lips and in his heart is Goethe's well- 

 known prayer: "Light! light! more light!" He wearies of the 

 continual gloom; it becomes to him a burden and a terror; he feels 

 as if it had laid hold upon him with an icy grasp, and would no 

 more let him go. 



