CHAP. XL.] AURORA BOREALIS. 369 



we came up with it, the passengers had already 

 begun to look out warmer clothing, and shawls and 

 great coats were in requisition. Occasionally we 

 were steering amongst small pieces of ice, and the 

 wheel at the helm was turned first one way and then 

 another, reminding me of the dangers of the Missis 

 sippi, when we were avoiding the bumping against 

 logs. In the fore part of the vessel the watch was 

 trebled, some aloft and others below, and we went on 

 at the rate of nine miles an hour, and once in the 

 night came within less than a ship s length of a large 

 berg. A naval officer on board declared to me next 

 morning that the peril had been imminent; that he had 

 weathered a typhoon in the Chinese seas, and would 

 rather brave another than sail so fast in the night 

 through a pack of icebergs. He now thought it 

 most probable that the President steam-ship had been 

 lost by striking a berg. He reminded me that we 

 had seen a pinnacle of ice, distant 100 yards or more 

 from the main body of a berg, of which it was evi 

 dently a part, the intervening submerged ice being 

 concealed under water. How easily, therefore, might 

 we have struck against similar hidden masses, where 

 no such projecting pinnacle remained to warn us of 

 our danger. 



At half-past nine o clock on the evening of the 8th 

 June, it being bright moonlight, some hours after 

 we had lost sight of the ice, when we were in a 

 latitude corresponding to the South of France, we 

 saw in the north a most brilliant exhibition of the 

 Aurora Borealis ; the sky seemed to open and close, 

 emitting, for a short period, silvery streams of light like 



R 5 



