AURORA. 215 



at Upernavik, and he says also that the phenomena 

 are there much more brilliant and of greater fre- 

 quency than here. 



The display of the morning was much finer than 

 that of the evening. Indeed, I have rarely witnessed 

 a more sublime or imposing spectacle. By the way, 

 how strange it seems to be speaking of events hap- 

 pening in the morning and in the evening, when, to 

 save your life, you could not tell without the clock 

 by what name to call the divisions of time ! We 

 say eleven o'clock in the morning and eleven o'clock 

 in the evening from habit ; but if, by any mischance, 

 we should lose our reckoning for twelve hours, we 

 would then go on calling the evening morning and 

 the morning evening, without being able to detect 

 the error by any difference in the amount of light 

 at these two periods of the day. But this is a di- 

 gression. 



To come back to the Aurora of this morning. When 

 it first appeared I was walking out among the ice- 

 bergs at the mouth of the harbor ; and, although the 

 time was so near noon, yet I was groping through 

 a darkness that was exceedingly embarrassing to my 

 movements among the rough ice. Suddenly a bright 

 ray darted up from behind the black cloud which lay 

 low down on the horizon before me. It lasted but an 

 instant, and, having filled the air with a strange illumi- 

 nation, it died away, leaving the darkness even more 

 profound than before. Presently the arch which I 

 have before mentioned sprang across the sky, and the 

 Aurora became gradually more fixed. The space in- 

 closed by the arch was very dark, and was filled with 

 the cloud. The play of the rays which rose from its 

 steadily brightening border was for some time very 



