18 ARCTIC PHENOMENA. 



flowers and grasses to bloom for a few days, until again 

 blasted by the swiftly-recurring winter. 



In these regions certain mysterious phenomena exhibit 

 their most powerful effects. Here is the point of attrac- 

 tion of the compass needle ; and here the dipping nee- 

 dle, which lies horizontal at the equator, points straight 

 downwards. Slowly, in its cycle of nearly two thou- 

 sand years, this centre or pole of magnetic attraction 

 revolves in obedience to laws as yet unknown. Two 

 degrees further toward the north is situated the pole 

 of cold a mystery like the former to science, but 

 equally inciting to curiosity. If induction may be 

 trusted, the pole of the earth is less cold than the lati- 

 tudes fifteen degrees below it. 



Round the shores and seas of the arctic regions ice 

 ever accumulates : a circle of two thousand miles 7 diam- 

 eter is occupied by frozen fields and floes of vast extent, 

 or piled high with hugest forms, awful yet fantastic as 

 a dreamer's fancy. Mountain masses 



" Whose blocks of sapphire seem to mortal eye 

 Hewn from cerulean quarries in the sky, 

 With glacier battlements that crowd the spheres, 

 The slow creation of six thousand years, 

 Amidst immensity they tower sublime, 

 Winter's eternal palace, built by Time." 



Here the months are divided into long periods of day- 

 light and darkness : for many weeks the sun sinks not 

 below the horizon ; for three dreary months he appears 

 not above it 



" And morning comes, but comes not clad in light ; 

 Uprisen day is but a paler night." 



But, in the absence of the great luminary, the vivid 

 coruscations of the aurora borealis illuminate the wintry 

 landscape, streaming across the skies in broad sheets of 



