568 FARTHEST NORTH 



especially low down towards S.W. and E.S.E. All of 

 them, however, tended upward towards the corona, 

 which shone like a halo. I stood watching it a long 

 while. Every now and then I could discern a dark patch 

 in its middle, at the point where all the rays converged. 

 It lay a little south of the Pole-star, and approached 

 Cassiopeia in the position it then occupied. But the 

 halo kept smouldering and shifting just as if a gale in 

 the upper strata of the atmosphere were playing the 

 bellows to it. Presently fresh streamers shot out of the 

 darkness outside the inner halo, followed by other bright 

 shafts of light in a still wider circle, and meanwhile the 

 dark space in the middle was clearly visible ; at other 

 times it was entirely covered with masses of light. Then 

 it appeared as if the storm abated, and the whole turned 

 pale, and glowed with a faint whitish hue for a little 

 while, only to shoot wildly up once more and to begin 

 the same dance over again. Then the entire mass of 

 lioht around the corona betjan to rock to and fro in larore 



o o o 



waves over the zenith and the dark central point, where- 

 upon the gale seemed to increase and whirl the stream- 

 ers into an inextricable tangle, till they merged into a 

 luminous vapor, that enveloped the corona and drowned 

 it in a deluge of light, so that neither it, nor the stream- 

 ers, nor the dark centre could be seen — nothing, in fact, 

 but a chaos of shining mist. Again it became paler, 

 and I went below. At midnight there was hardly any- 

 thing of the aurora to be seen. 



