390 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



" By three o'clock it begins to grow dark, and one after the 

 other of our guests depart, to return, the most of them, in the 

 morning. Now it is quiet and still. About six the crew have 

 finished their labours and dispose of the rest of the day as they 

 please. Most of them are occupied with reading during the 

 evening hours. When supper has been served at half-past seven 

 in the gunroom, he who has the watch in the ice-house from 

 nine to two next morning prepares for the performance of his 

 disagreeable duty ; the rest of the gunroom personnel are 

 assembled there, and pass the evening in conversation, play, 

 light reading, &c. At ten every one retires, and the lamps are 

 extinguished. In many cabins, however, lights burn till after 

 midnight. 



" Such was in general our life on the Vega. One day was very 

 like another. When the storm howled, the snow drifted, and the 

 cold became too severe, we kept more below deck ; when the 

 weather was finer we lived more in the open air, often paying- 

 visits to the observatory in the icehouse, and among the Chukches 

 living in the neighbourhood, or wandering about to come upon, 

 if possible, some game." 



The snow which fell during winter consisted more generally 

 of small simple snow-crystals or ice-needles, than of the 

 beautiful snow-flakes whose grand kaleidoscopic forms the 

 inhabitants of the north so often have an opportvmity of 

 admiring. Already with a gentle wind and with a pretty clear 

 atmosphere the lower strata of the atmosphere were full of these 

 regular ice-needles, which refracted the rays of the sun, so as to 

 produce parhelia and halos. Unfortunately however these were 

 never so completely develojDed as the halos which I saw in 1873 

 during the sledge-journey round North-east Land on Spitzbergen ; 

 but I believed that even now I could confirm the correctness of 

 the observation I then made, that the representation which is 

 generally given of this beautiful phenomenon, in which the halu 

 is delineated as a collection of regular circles, is not correct, 

 but that it forms a very involved system of lines, extended 

 over the whole vault of heaven, for the most part coloured on 

 the sun-side and uncoloured on the opposite side, of the sort 

 shown in the accomj^anying drawings taken from the account of 

 the Spitzbergen Expedition of 1872-73. 



Another very beautiful phenomenon, produced by the refrac- 

 tion of the solar rays by the ice-needles, which during winter 

 were constantly mixed with the atmospheric strata lying 

 nearest the surface of the earth, was that the mountain 

 heights to the south of the Vega in a certain light appeared 

 as if feathered with fire-clouds. In clear sunshine and a high 

 wind we frequently saw, as it were, a glowing pillar of vapour 



