36 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA, 
[chap 
nature of which is as yet little known, and which are indicated 
by the formation of spots on the sun; the distinguished Dutch 
physicist, voN Baumhauer, has even placed the occurrence of 
the aurora in connection with cosmic substances which fall in 
the form of dust from the interstellar spaces to the surface of 
the earth. This splendid natural phenomenon besides plays, 
though unjustifiably, a great role in imaginative sketches of 
winter life in the high north, and it is in the popular idea so 
connected with the ice and snow of the Polar lands, that most 
of the readers of sketches of Arctic travel would certainly con¬ 
sider it an indefensible omission if the author did not give an 
account of the aurora as seen from his winter station. The 
scientific man indeed knows that this neglect has, in most cases, 
been occasioned by the great infrequency, of the strongly lumi¬ 
nous aurora just in the Franklin archipelago on the north coast 
of America, where most of the Arctic winterings of this century 
have taken place ; but scarcely any journey of exploration has at 
all events been undertaken to the uninhabited regions of the 
high north, which has not in its working plan included the 
collection of new contributions towards clearing up the true 
nature of the aurora and its position in the heavens. But the 
scientific results have seldom corresponded to the expectations 
which had been entertained. Of purely Arctic expeditions, so 
far as I know, only two, the Austrian-Hungarian to Franz Josef 
Land (1872-74) and the Swedish to Mussel Bay (1872-73), have 
returned with full and instructive lists of auroras.^ Boss, Parry, 
Kane, McClintock, Hayes, Nares, and others, have on the 
I do not include La Recherche's wintering in 1838-39 at Bosekop, in the 
northernmost part of Norway, as it took place in a region which is all the 
year round inhabited by hundreds of Europeans. During this expedition 
very splendid auroras were seen, and the studies of them by Lottin, 
Bravais, Lilliehook, and Siljestrom, are among the most important 
contributions to a knowledge of the aurora we possess, while we have 
to thank the draughtsmen of the expedition for exceedingly faithful and 
masterly representations of the phenomenon. 
