VII 



THE GOING OF THE SUN 



"IT TT TE were at the foot of Humboldt Glacier 

 m/\/ wnen * ne sun bade us a final adieu for 

 V T the long winter night, not to appear 

 again for many months to come. As though to 

 leave with us a pleasant memory of his visit, his going 

 was in an effulgence of glory, and, reluctant to go, 

 he lingered for a little while below the horizon, light- 

 ing the sky with a mass of marvelous coloring red, 

 purple and orange, reaching upward from the white 

 earth beneath into the deep blue of the high heavens. 

 For a time a prolonged twilight remained, but that, 

 too, was presently lost behind the dark curtain that 

 shut from our world all warmth and light. 



No words can adequately describe the awful pall 

 of the Arctic night. It is unreal and terrible. Even 

 the moonlight is unnatural, casting upon the snow 

 and ice, the wind-swept rocks and the people them- 

 selves, a shade of ghastly, indefinable, greenish-yel- 

 low. Shifting shadows flit among moving ice masses 

 like wraiths of departed spirits. A deathlike silence 

 prevails, to be broken only by the startling and un- 

 expected cracking of a glacier with sound of mighty 



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