THE AECTIC SEAS. ,21 



O'erspreads Orion glaring on the flood, 

 And rabid Siriiis foams through fire and blood ; 

 Again the circuit of the pule they range, 

 Motion and figure every moment change, 

 Through all the colours of the rainbow run, 

 Or blaze like wrecks of a dissolving sun ; 

 Wide ether burns with glory, conflict, flight, 

 And the glad ocean dances in the light."* 



This interesting meteor, occurring with more or less 

 of splendour in rapid succession, added, moreover, 

 to the universal reflection of what light may proceed 

 from the heavens by the pure whiteness of the ice and 

 snow, tends greatly to lessen the darkness of the long 

 and dreary night, though these causes cannot diminish 

 the cold. The latter was so intense during the late 

 expeditions of discovery, that the temperature was 55*^ 

 below zero, or eighty-seven degrees below the freezing- 

 point. 



The remarkable appearances called mock suns, or 

 parhelia, are extremely frequent within the Arctic 

 Circle. Their usual appearance may be thus de- 

 scribed. AVhen the sun is not far from the horizon, 

 one or more luminous circles, or halos, surround it 

 at a considerable distance ; two beams of light go 

 across the innermost circle, passing through the 

 centre of the sun, the one horizontally, the other 

 perpendicularly, so as to form a cross : where these 

 beams touch the circle, the light is, as it were, con- 

 centrated in a bright spot, sometimes scarcely in- 

 ferior in brilliance to the sun itself; at the corre- 

 sponding points in the outermost circle, segments of 

 other circles, wholly external, come into contact with 



* " Greenland," d 54. 



