MARVELS OF THE NORTH 363 



illuminated by it, and reflections of its light played all over the ice. The 

 whole sky was ablaze with it, but it was brightest in the south; high up in 

 that direction glowed waving masses of fire. Later still Hansen came again 

 to say that now it was quite extraordinary. No words can depict the glory 

 that met our eyes. The glowing fire-masses had divided into glistening, 

 many-colored bands, which were writhing and twisting across the sky both 

 in the south and north. The rays sparkled with the purest, most crystalline 

 rainbow colors, chiefly violet-red or carmine and the clearest green. Most 

 frequently the rays of the arch were red at the ends, and changed higher 

 up into sparkling green, which quite at the top turned darker and went over 

 into blue or violet before disappearing in the blue of the sky; or the rays 

 in one and the same arch might change from clear red to clear green, coming 

 and going as if driven by a storm. It was an endless phantasmagoria of 

 sparkling color, surpassing anything that one can dream. 



"Sometimes the spectacle reached such a climax that one's breath was 

 taken away; one felt that now something extraordinary must happen — at 

 the very least the sky must fall. But as one stands in breathless expectation, 

 down the whole thing trips, as if in a few quick, light scale-runs, into bare 

 nothingness. There is something most undramatic about such a denouement, 

 but it is all done with such confident assurance that one cannot take it amiss; 

 one feels one's self in the presence of a master who has the complete com- 

 mand of his instrument. With a single stroke of the bow he descends lightly 

 and elegantly from the height of passion into quiet, every-day strains, only 

 with a few more strokes to work himself up into passion again. It seems as 

 if he were trying to mock, to tease us. When we are on the point of going 

 below, driven by 6i degrees of frost (—34.7 C), such magnificent tgnes 

 again vibrate over the strings that we stay until noses and ears are frozen. 



For a finale, there is a wild display of fireworks in every tint of flame such 



a conflagration that one expects every minute to have it down on the ice, 

 because there is not room for it in the sky. But I can hold out no longer. 

 Thinly dressed, without a proper cap and without gloves, I have no feeling 

 left in body or limbs, and I crawl away below." 



DAZZLING WHITENESS IN APRIL. 



"Sunday, April 15th. So we are in the middle of April! What a ring 

 of joy in that word, a well-spring of happiness! Visions of spring rise up 

 in the soul at its very mention— a time when doors and windows are thrown 



