386. . Description of the Aurora BoreaUs , 



tially clear, and partially covered with shifting clouds, On. 

 the north, and on the west and east of north, heavy and 

 stationary clouds blackened the whole horizon, to an elevation 

 of more than five degrees ; and the southern hemisphere was 



dark with dark clouds from the horizon to the zenith. 



» _ • .... 



I. By some, the Aurora was seen from the time when the 

 sun Avas set ; but the first appearance in the heavens, which 

 attracted the. ^.tteution of the present writer, whose situation at 

 tie moment shut out from him the horizon upon all sides but 

 the west, was that of a certain breadth of red or copper-coloured 

 light, or of light of a colour nearly resembling that reflected 

 by an ordinary conflagration of buildings, pointing upward 

 from the west. The colour, indeed, was dissimilar from that 

 which is usual upon the occurrence of a fire on a cloudy 

 night ; yet, in the absence of any other immediate explana- 

 tion, he should not have hesitated so to understand it, except 

 for the figure within vv^hich it was circumscribed, and which, 

 instead of being diffusive, and less and less conspicuous toward 

 its extremities, or rounded in its outline, like masses of ruddy 

 Smoke, had the peculiarities of an equal breadth, rectilinear 

 sides, a square top, and sharp outlines. Its height was con- 

 tinually increasing ; but not even that phenomenon, nor even 

 the curve to the eastward, across the heavens, and which it 

 presently began to add to its figure, were appearances abso- 

 Iptely to dissipate the illusion of the existence of a fire ; and 

 it was scarcely, therefore, till this breadth of colour, throwing 

 itself entirely over the heavens, and descending, at its pro- 

 jected extremity, toward the east, formed an arch, of which, 

 perhaps, the elevation was seventy degrees, (which was 

 not the work of many minutes, the motion, at the same 

 time, being visible, but of moderate rapidity,) that its real 

 character of a natural phenomenon distinctly impressed itself 

 npon the mind of the present writer, its observer. While 

 this, however, was proceeding, the road which he was pur- 

 suing had brought him more into view of the north-western 

 and northern horizon ; and, then, the light in the north, and to 

 the west of north, which, from behind the clouds that lined 

 the horizon, seemed like the light of ^a rising moon, or of the 



