246 
THE AURORA. 
otherwise it resembled the mackerel fleeces and mare's 
tails of our summer skies at home, 
"It began toward the northwestern horizon as an 
irregular flaring cloud, sometimes sweeping out into 
wreaths of stratus ; sometimes a condensed opaline 
nebulosity, rising in a zone of clearly-defined white- 
ness, from 30 to 5° in breadth up to the zenith, and 
then arching to the opposite horizon. This zone re- 
sembled more a long line of white cirro-stratus than 
the auroral light of the systematic descriptions. There 
was no approach to coruscations, or even rectangular 
deviations from the axis of the zone. When it varied 
from a right line, its curvatures were waving and ir- 
regular, such as might be produced by wind, but hav- 
ing no relation to the observed air-currents at the 
earth's surface. It passed from the due northwest, be- 
tween the Pleiades and the Corona Borealis ; the star 
of greatest magnitude in the latter of these constella- 
tions remaining in the centre, although its waving 
curves sometimes reached the Pleiades. At the zenith, 
its mean distance from the Polar Star was 7° south, 
and it passed down, increasing in intensity, near Vega, 
in Lyra, to the southeast. 
" There was throughout the arc no marked seat of 
greatest intensity. Around the Corona of the north, 
its light was more difiiised. The zone appeared nar- 
rowed at the zenith, and bright and clear, without 
marked intermission, to the southeast. The frost- 
smoke was in smoky banks to the northwest ; but the 
aurora did not seem to be affected by it, and the com- 
pass remained constant. 
December 2. Drifting down the sound. Every 
thing getting ready for the chance of a hurried good- 
by to our vessels. Pork, and sugar, and bread put up 
