There is only one other that shall be described, although there are many
mentioned with more or less particularity in the diaries of these
travels. And this last one is of the character of the first and not at
all of the second and third, for it was on the grand scale, filling all
the heavens, a phenomenon, one is convinced, of an order distinct and
different from the local, near-at-hand kind. There was exceptionally
good opportunity for observing this display, since it occurred during an
all-night journey, the night of the 6th of April, 1912, with brilliant
starlight but no moon while we were hastening to reach Eagle for Easter.
We had made a new traverse from the Tanana to the Yukon, through two
hundred miles of uninhabited country, and had missed the head of the
creek that would have taken us to the latter river in thirty miles,
dropping into one that meandered for upward of a hundred before it
discharged into the great river. It was one o'clock on Good Friday
morning when we reached a road-house on the Yukon eighty miles from
Eagle. The only chance to keep the appointment was to travel all the two
remaining nights. So we cached almost all our load at the road-house,
for we should retrace our steps when Eagle was visited, and thus were
able to travel fast.
Both nights were marked by fine auroral displays, so extensive and of
such apparent height as to give the impression that they must be visible
over large areas of the earth. Both continued all night long and were
of the same general description, but the second night's display was
emphasised in its main features and elaborated in its detail, and was
the more striking and notable and worthy of description.
It began by an exquisite and delicate weaving of fine, fluorescent
filaments of light in and out among the stars, until at times a perfect
network was formed, like lace amidst diamonds, first in one quarter of
the heavens, then in another, then stretching and weaving its web right
across the sky. The Yukon runs roughly north and south in these reaches,
and the general trend of the whole display was parallel with the river's
course. For an hour or more the ceaseless extension and looping of these
infinitely elastic threads of light went on, with constant variation in
their brilliance but no change in their form and never an instant's
cessation of motion.
[Illustration: Photo by Paul Schultz.
THE SUN DOGS.]
[Illustration: "TAN," OF MIXED BREED.]
[Illustration: "MUK," A PURE MALAMUTE.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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