

290 



PLATE CLXI. -AURORAL CURTAINS. 



From sketches and observations made on July 5, 1902, between 1 hr. A.M. and 

 2 hr. A.M. ; looking to the N. from Winter-quarters Bay, M'Murdo Sound. 



The colour in this case was a pale straw-yellow, and the movement which 

 accompanied the display was very striking. Unhappily it is an impossible thing 

 even to suggest in picture, for as the curtain appears to fold in one direc- 

 tion, it is waved out of sight in another, while the varying intensity of the vertical 

 beams of light which compose it, now brilliant, now vanishing altogether, now 

 stealthily appearing or disappearing imperceptibly, gives the onlooker a strange 

 feeling of expectation and bewilderment, to which is added the conviction that the 

 whole is very beautiful, but quite impossible to represent on paper. 



