CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



MARVELS OF THE NORTH, AS TOLD BY NANSEN. 



In an earlier chapter some account was given of Fridtjof Nansen's great 

 drifting expedition in 1893. Since Dr. Nansen is one of the most poetic of 

 writers no better description of the wonderful sights and scenes in the Arctic 

 can be given than that furnished in his words. 



Writing at the time when his ship, the Fram, was fast in the ice and 

 being carried slowly on by the ice-drift, Dr. Nansen says in his book, "Farthest 

 North" : 



"Tuesday, September 26th. Beautiful weather. The sun stands much 

 lower now ; it was 9 degrees above the horizon at midday. Winter is rapidly 

 approaching; there are I4>4 (fourteen and one-half) degrees of frost this 

 evening, but we do not feel it cold. Today's observations unfortunately show 

 no particular drift northward; according to them we are still in 78° 50' north 

 latitude. I wandered about over the floe towards evening. Nothing more 

 wonderfully beautiful can exist than the Arctic night. It is dreamland, painted 

 in the imagination's most delicate tints ; it is color etherealized. One shade 

 melts into the other, so that you cannot tell where one ends and the other 

 begins, and yet they are all there. No forms— it is all faint, dreamy color 

 music, a far-away, long-drawn-out melody on muted strings. Is not all life's 

 beauty high, and delicate, and pure like this night ? Give it brighter colors, 

 and it is no longer so beautiful. The sky is like an enormous cupola, blue at 

 the zenith, shading down into green, and then into lilac and violet at the 

 edges. 



VIOLET, BLUE AND PINK. 



"Over the ice-fields there are cold violet-blue shadows, with lighter pink 

 tints where a ridge here and there catches the last reflection of the vanished 

 day. Up in the blue of the cupola shine the stars, speaking- peace, as they 

 always do, those unchanging friends. In the south stands a large red-yellow 

 moon, encircled by a yellow ring and light golden clouds floating on the blue 

 back-ground. Presently the aurora borealis shakes over the vault of heaven 



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