XI.] THE AURORA AT THE VEGA'S WINTER QUARTERS. 425 



The aurora is, as is well-known, a phenomenon at the same 

 time cosmic and terrestrial, which on the one hand is confined 

 within the atmosphere of our globe and stands in close con- 

 nection with terrestrial magnetism, and on the other side is 

 dependent on certain changes in the envelope of the sun, the 

 nature of which is as yet little known, and which are indicated 

 by the formation of spots on the sun ; the distinguished Dutch 

 physicist, VON Baumhauer, has even placed the occurrence of 

 the aurora in connection with cosmic substances which fall in 

 the form of dust from the interstellar spaces to the surface of 

 the earth. This splendid natural phenomenon besides plays, 

 though unjustifiably, a great role in imaginative sketches of 

 winter life in the high north, and it is in the popular idea so 

 connected with the ice and snow of the Polar lands, that most 

 of the readers of sketches of Arctic travel would certainly con- 

 sider it an indefensible omission if the author did not give an 

 account of the aurora as seen from his winter station. The 

 scientific man indeed knows that this neglect has, in most cases, 

 been occasioned by the great infrequency of the strongly lumi- 

 nous aurora just in the Franklin archipelago on the north coast 

 of America, where most of the Arctic winterings of this century 

 have taken place ; but scarcely any journey of exploration has at 

 all events been undertaken to the uninhabited regions of the 

 high north, which has not in its working plan included the 

 collection of new contributions towards clearing up the true 

 nature of the aurora and its position in the heavens. But the 

 scientific results have seldom corresponded to the expectations 

 which had been entertained. Of purely Arctic expeditions, so 

 far as I know, only two, the Austrian-Hungarian to Franz Josef 

 Land (1872-74) and the Swedish to Mussel Bay (1872-73), have 

 returned with full and instructive lists of auroras.^ Eoss, Parry, 

 Kane, McClintock, Hayes, Nares, and others, have on the 

 other hand only had opportunities of registering single auroras ; 

 the phenomenon in the case of their winterings has not formed 

 any distinctive trait of the Polar winter night. It was the less 

 to be expected that the Vega expedition would form an excep- 

 tion in this respect, as its voyage happened during one of the 



water, in which we went wading to the knees. The Lapps in general 

 await these warm westerly winds before they go to the fells in 

 spring. Until these winds begin there is no pasture there for their rein- 

 deer herds." 



1 I do not include La Recherche's wintering in 1838-39 at Bosekop, in the 

 northernmost part of Norway, as it took place in a region which is all the 

 year round inhabited by hundreds of Europeans. During this expedition 

 very splendid auroras were seen, and the studies of them by LoTTJN, 

 Bravais, LilliehOok, and Sujestrom, are among the most important 

 contributions to a knowledge of the aurora we possess, while we have 

 to thank the draughtsmen of the expedition for exceedingly faithful and 

 masterly representations of the phenomenon. 



