1862. J Ql [Lesley. 



between the observer on the ship's deck and the low cliffs of the 

 neighboring shore. This occurred to Dr. Walker in Bellot's Straits. 



It was my good fortune to observe an aurora which, to my eyes, 

 was embodied in and swept the earth with successive banks of Cape 

 Breton fog. 



It was in the evening of the 23d of July, 1862, on Little Glace 

 Bay, which is one of several indentations in the eastern coast of the 

 island, and about 17 (seventeen) miles, by road, from Sydney. The 

 house in which Captain W. P. Parrot and myself were living was on the 

 northwest side of the narrow bay, not far from its mouth. To the 

 north and east spreads the Gulf of St. Lawrence. To the east by 

 south stretches out the long headlands of Schooner Cove, with the 

 Flint Islands opposite their end. During the five weeks which I 

 spent in the neighborhood, my observations confirmed the account of 

 the inhabitants that an almost perpetual fog-bank rests upon the 

 southern coast and the headlands of Mire Bay, Cow Bay, and 

 Schooner Pond, enveloping the Scatari and Flint Islands, and sweep- 

 ing obliquely across the gulf to the western shores of Newfoundland ; 

 while the indentation of the Glace Bay coast leaves it in the wake of 

 the fog, so to speak, and therefore in sun and moonshine quite as 

 constant. 



Auroras are frequent, summer and winter, along this coast. Cap- 

 tain Parrot had seen them during March and April almost nightly; 

 but they were of the common type, arched and waving, and radiant 

 against the north, and not of any peculiar grandeur or brilliancy. 



From the 1st to the 23d of July we noticed no aurora of any kind, 

 although some of feeble light might have occurred. The weather 

 was nearly always clear. I remember no local fog at Glace Bay ; 

 whereas I repeatedly admired the mountain-like barrier, resembling 

 a sunlit Alpine country, stretched across the southeastern horizon, 

 at a probable distance of from ten to twenty miles, and losing itself 

 in a low perspective towards the distant shores of Newfoundland. 



On the evening of the 23d an exclamation of my companion, who 

 was sitting after tea so as to face the window, looking out towards 

 the northeast, announced the phenomenon. Going round the house, 

 we saw what I at once recognized from the plates of the French 

 Expedition to Norway as a curtain aurora. It was totally unlike any 

 aurora we had ever seen, and was evidently connected with a dense 

 broadside of fog, which the south wind had just brought up from the 

 south coast across the Little Glace Bay, and was driving from us 

 northward. In this fog-bank hung, as it were, a brilliant curtain of 



VOL. IX. 1 



