310 AURORA BORE A LIS. 



beautiful and wondrous as those already seen and 

 vanished." 



As the heavy curtain of a theatre is drawn up or 

 let down, so are some of the flying lines expanding 

 and contracting incessantly ; others, again, seem 

 mighty breakers, curling and turning under and 

 about. There was one large mass, a perfect blaze of 

 light, which seemed to be not twenty feet above me ; 

 others with less body appearing far, far away. On 

 this occasion I fancied that I heard the Aurora, and 

 so much was judgment misled by imagination, that 

 I thought I saw the masses vibrating after contact, 

 when, in fact, the noise I heard was indubitably 

 produced by the cracking of the ice on the lake, as I 

 afterwards became assured of. 



On some occasions all the colours of the rainbow 

 Avere displayed by turns, each visible but for an 

 instant, then succeeded by another hue ; vast 

 irregular ever-changing fringe-like lines, — at one 

 moment of an exquisite violet, the next of a grass- 

 green tint, — engaged and delighted the eye : those 

 above-named were the predominating colours, but all 

 others, in every variety of shade and brilliancy, 

 were evolved. A scene of sublime and awful 

 magnificence. 



We had little during our weary sojourn in this 



