“But, again, another form. Bands of every possible form and intensity have been driving over the heavens. It is now eight o’clock at night, the hour of the greatest intensity of the northern lights. For a moment some bundles of rays only are to be seen in the sky. In the south a faint, scarcely visible band lies close to the horizon. All at once it rises rapidly, and spreads east and west. The waves of light begin to dart and shoot, some rays mount towards the zenith. For a short time it remains stationary, then suddenly springs to life. The waves of light drive violently from east to west, the edges assume a deep red and green colour, and dance up and down. The rays shoot up more rapidly, they become shorter; all rise together and approach nearer and nearer to the magnetic pole. It looks as if there were a race among the rays, and that each aspired to reach the pole first. And now the point is reached, and they shoot out on every side, to the north and the south, to the east and the west. Do the rays shoot from above downwards, or from below upwards? Who can distinguish? From the centre issues a sea of flames: is that sea red, white, or green? Who can say? It is all three colours at the same moment! The rays reach almost to the horizon: the whole sky is in flames. Nature displays before us such an exhibition of fireworks as transcends the powers of imagination to conceive. Involuntarily we listen; such a spectacle must, we think, be accompanied with sound. But unbroken stillness prevails; not the least sound strikes on the ear. Once more it becomes clear over the ice, and the whole phenomenon has disappeared with the same inconceivable rapidity with which it came, and gloomy night has again stretched her dark veil over everything. This was the Aurora of the coming storm—the Aurora in its fullest splendour. No pencil can draw it, no colours can paint it, and no words can describe it in all its magnificence.” A reproduction of the woodcut in Payer’s ‘Austrian Arctic Voyages,’ illustrating some of the features of the above description, will be found on Plate I. In the ‘Edinburgh Encyclopædia,’ article “Aurora,” we find:— [Sidenote: Descriptions of Auroræ in high Northern latitudes.] “In high Northern latitudes the Auroræ Boreales are singularly resplendent, and even terrific. “They frequently occupy the whole heavens, and, according to the testimony of some, eclipse the splendour of stars, planets, and moon, and even of the sun itself. [Sidenote: In Siberia.]