41 2 Description of the Aurora Borealis 



Magnetic Pole, would discover its same birth-place, or focus, 

 in the North-west, or nearer to the North-west of America, than 

 to the North-east of Asia ! It may furnish a reply, also, to 

 Gmelin himself, who, though he tells us that, even upon the 

 banks of the Lena and Yenesei, the Aurora is still seen to rise 

 to the North or North-east of those situations, yet imagines 

 those very banks to be its ** real birth-place ;" for is it not 

 plain, in the meantime, and this from the very statement of 

 the author, that, travel as far northward, or north-eastward, as 

 we will, the birth-place of the Aurora still retires from our 

 feet ; that, even upon the shores of the Icy Sea, the joyous 

 phantom is still to our Northward, or North-east, and that we 

 may reasonably conclude, that even a voyage upon that sea 

 w ould not carry us to the cradle in pursuit ; that, in short, at 

 the North Pole, we should still behold it rise in the North, or 

 the North-east, or the North-west ; that we might sail down 

 the Western Hemisphere, and yet only discover, that the Aurora 

 was now in the North behind our backs, as it had been before 

 in the North before our faces ; and that, in short, so long as 

 we do but admit its existence in the North, the particular soil 

 or sea is best described in the most general terms : — 



'' In Nova Zembla, or the Lord knows where !" 

 The search, too, for the paternal hearth of the Aurora Borealis 

 in any particular division of the Northern Hemisphere, and 

 especially the attempt to find it at the Magnetic or Elec- 

 tric Pole, is, perhaps, so much the more hopeless, after 

 ascertaining, as above, that each hemisphere has its Aurora ; 

 and after concluding, as we may have been led to conclude 

 with reason, that each Aurora, other things equal, resembles 

 the other ! What is remarkable, also, is that, in the Southern 

 Hemisphere, as well as, according to Gmelin, in the Northern, 

 it is to the Eastward, or to the East of North, that the Aurora 

 has its apparent focus. " A beautiful phenomenon," says 

 Mr. Forster, (Feb. 17, 1773, lat. 58° S.) '^ had been observed 

 during the preceding night, which appeared again this and 

 several following nights. It consisted of long columns of white 

 light, shooting up from the horizon to the eastward, almost to 

 the zenith, and gradually spreading over the whole southern 

 part of the sky. These columns are gradually bent sideways 



