toward the east were transformed by the light of the after-glow into mountains of flame. As the light faded, the cold shadow 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 were but a trick of the mirage, yet their ever-changing shapes and remarkable mimicry of human habitations were so striking that they never lost their novelty; and they were never the same on two successive evenings. One of the most common deceptions of the mirage is the transformation of icebergs into the semblance of fountains gushing 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 twilight 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 {88} arch in the southern heavens, to soon disappear into the sea toward the southwest. Brief as were her visits, they were always welcome and always brought the feeling that distant homes were nearer when the same light was visible to us and to loved ones far away. The soft moonlight dimmed the twilight, the after-glow faded from the highest peaks, and the short northern night came on.