320 FARTHEST NORTH 



"Yesterday's observation placed us in 79° o' north 

 latitude, 139° 14^ east longitude. At last, then, we have 

 got as far north again as we were in the end of Septem- 

 ber, and now the northerly drift seems to be steady : 10 

 minutes in 4 days. 



"Monday, December iith. This morning I took a 

 long excursion to westward. It is hard work struggling 

 over the packed ice in the dark, something like scram- 

 bling about a moraine of big boulders at night. Once I 

 took a step in the air, fell forward, and bruised my right 

 knee. It is mild to-day, only 9^° below zero (—23° C). 

 This evening there was a strange appearance of aurora 

 borealis — white, shininji clouds, which I thouQ^ht at first 

 must be lit up by the moon, but there is no moon yet. 

 They were light cumuli, or cirro-cumuli, shifting into a 

 brightly shining mackerel sky. I stood and watched 

 them as long as my thin clothing permitted, but there 

 was no perceptible pulsation, no play of flame ; they 

 sailed quietly on. The light seemed to be strongest in 

 the southeast, where there were also dark clouds to be 

 seen. Hansen said that it moved over later into the 

 northern sky ; clouds came and went, and for a time 

 there were many white shining ones — 'white as lambs,' 

 he called them — but no aurora played behind them. 



" In this day's meteorological journal I find noted for 

 4 P.M. : ' Faint aurora borealis in the north. Some dis- 

 tinct branchings or antlers (they are of ribbon crimped 

 like blond) in some diffused patches on the horizon in 



