The Winter Night. 281 



over the packed ice in the dark, something like scramb- 

 ling about a moraine of big boulders at night. Once I 

 took a step in the air, fell forward, and bruised my right 

 knee. It is mild to-day, only 9^- F. below zero ( 23 C.). 

 This evening there was a strange appearance of aurora 

 borealis white, shining clouds, which I thought at first 

 must be lit up by the moon, but there is no moon yet. 

 They were light cumuli, or cirro-cumuli, shifting into a 

 brightly shining mackerel sky. I stood and watched 

 them as long as my thin clothing permitted, but there 

 was no perceptible pulsation, no play of flame ; they 

 sailed quietly on. The light seemed to be strongest in 

 the south-east, where there were also dark clouds to 

 be seen. Hansen said that it moved over later into 

 the northern sky ; clouds came and went, and for a time 

 there were many white shining ones ' white as lambs/ 

 he called them but no aurora played behind them." 



" In this day's meteorological journal I find noted for 

 4 p.m. : ' Faint aurora borealis in the north. Some 

 distinct branchings or antlers (they are of ribbon crimped 

 like blonde) in some diffused patches on the horizon in 

 the N.N.E.' In his aurora borealis journal Hansen 

 describes that of this evening as follows : 'About 8 p.m. 

 an aurora borealis arch of light was observed, stretching 

 from E.S.E. to N.W., through the zenith ; diffused quiet 

 intensity 3-4, most intense in N.W. The arch spread 

 at the zenith by a wave to the south. At 10 o'clock 

 there was a fainter aurora borealis in the southern sky ; 



