Scenes of Tunlight Hours. 87 



its surface, and the thousands of icebergs crowding the azure 

 plain seemed a numberless fleet of fairy boats with crystal hulls 

 and fantastic sails of blue and white. When the long summer 

 days drew to a close and gave place to the soft northern twilight, 

 which in summer lasts until the glow of the returning sun is 

 seen in the east, the sea and mountains assumed a soft, myste- 

 rious beauty never realized by dwellers in more southern climes. 

 The hours of twilight were so enchanting, the varying shades 

 and changing tints on the mighty snow-fields robing the moun- 

 tains w^ere so exquisite in their gradations that, even when weary 

 with many hours of toil, the explorer could not resist the charm, 

 and paced the sandy shore until the night was far spent. Some- 

 times in the twilight hours, long after the sun disappeared, the 

 summits of the majestic peaks toward the east were transformed 

 by the light of the after-glow into mountains of flame. As the 

 light faded, the cold shadoAV of the world crept higher and higher 

 up the crystal slopes until only the topmost spires and pinnacles 

 were gilded by the sunset glow. At such times, when our eyes 

 were weary with watching the gorgeous transformation of the 

 snow-covered mountains and were turned to the far-reaching 

 seaward view, we would be startled by the sight of a vast city, 

 with battlements, towers, minarets, and domes of fantastic 

 architecture, rising where we knew that only the berg-covered 

 waters extended. The appearance of these phantom cities was a 

 common occurrence during the twilight hours. Although we 

 knew at once that the ghostly spires Avere but a trick of the 

 mirage, yet their ever-changing shapes and remarkable mimicry 

 of human habitations wer^ so striking that they never lost their 

 novelty ; and they were never the same on two successive even- 

 ings. One of the most common deceptions of the mirage is the 

 transformation of icebergs into the semblance of fountains gush- 

 ing from the sea and expanding into graceful, sheaf-like shapes. 

 The strangest freaks due to the refraction of light on hot deserts, 

 which are usually supposed to be the home of the mirage, do 

 not excite the traveler's wonder so much as the phantom cities 

 seen in the uncertain tAvilight amid the ice-packs of the north. 



When the slowly deepening twilight transformed mountains 

 and seas into a dreamland picture, the harvest moon, strangely 

 out of place in far northern skies, spread a sheet of silver behind 

 the dark headlands toward the southeast, and then slowly 

 appeared, not rising boldly toward the zenith, but tracing a low 



