416 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



yond it, and towering above it, are the vast granitic masses of 

 Cape Prince of Wales, the extreme point of North America. 

 These desolate latitudes are beyond the pale of the habitable 

 world. The piercing cold rends the very stones, cleaves the trees, 

 and bursts the ground, which groans in producing the germs of 

 its icy herbage. A few black pines, the growth of centuries, 

 pointing their distorted tops in different directions of the solitude, 

 like crosses in a churchyard, have been torn up and hurled 

 around in confusion by the storm. The raging hurricane, not 

 content with uprooting trees, drives mountains of ice before it, and 

 dashes them, with the crash of thunder, the one against the other. 



"And now a night without twilight has succeeded to the day,. 

 — dark, dark night ! The heavy cupola of the sky is of so deep 

 a blue that it appears black, and the Polar stars are lost in the 

 depths of an obscurity which seems palpable to the touch. 

 Silence reigns alone. But suddenly a feeble glimmer appears 

 in the horizon. At first it is softly brilliant, blue as the light 

 which precedes the rising of the moon ; then the effulgence in- 

 creases, expands, and assumes a roseate hue. Strange and con- 

 fused sounds are heard, — sounds like the flight of huge night 

 birds as they flap their wings heavily over the plain. These are 

 the forerunners of one of those imposing phenomena which 

 strike with awe all animated nature. An aurora borealis, that 

 magnificent spectacle of the Polar regions, is at hand. In 

 the horizon there appears a semicircle of dazzling brightness. 

 From the centre of this glowing hemisphere radiate blazing 

 columns and jets of light, rising to measureless heights and 

 illumining heaven, earth, and sea. They glide along the snows 

 of the desert, empurpling the blue tops of the ice-mountain* 

 and tinging with a deepened red the tall black rocks of the two 

 continents. Having thus reached the fulness of its splendor^ 

 the aurora grows gradually pale, and diffuses its effulgence in a 

 luminous mist. At this moment, from the fantastic illusions of 

 the mirage, frequent in those latitudes, the American coast. 



