Even moonlight in the Polar world is unlike moonlight anywhere else; it has a character all its own,--strange, weird, supernatural. Night after night the sky will be free from cloud or shadow, and the radiant stars shine out with a singular intensity, seeming to cut the air like keen swords. The moonbeams are thrown back with a pale lustre by ice-floe and glacier and snow-drift, and the only relief to the brightness is where the dark cliffs throw a shadow over the landscape. Gloriously beautiful look the snow-clad mountains, as the moonlight pours upon them its serene splendour, interrupted only by the occasional passage of a wreath of mist, which is soon transformed into sparkling silver. The whole scene produces an impression of awe on the mind of the thoughtful spectator, and he feels as if brought face to face with the visible presence of another world. The prolonged winter night is in itself well calculated to affect the imagination of the European. He reads of it in travels and books of astronomy; but to know what it _is_, and what it _means_, he must submit himself to its influence,--he must “winter” in the Polar Regions. Not to see sunrise and sunset, and the changes they bring with them, day after day, enlivening, inspiriting, strengthening, is felt at first as an intolerable burden. The stars shining at all hours with equal brilliancy, and the lasting darkness which reigns for twenty days of each winter month when the moon is below the horizon, become a weariness and a discomfort. The traveller longs for the reappearance of the moon; and yet before she has run her ten days’ course, he feels fatigued by the uniform illumination. But sometimes a relief is supplied by the phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis. We inhabitants of the United Kingdom know something of the rare beauty of the “northern lights,” when the heavens kindle with a mysterious play of colours which reminds us of the strange weird radiance that occasionally kindles in our dreams; yet these are poor and trivial when compared with the auroral display. Let us endeavour to realize it from the glowing description painted by one of the most eloquent and observant of Arctic explorers. He was groping his way among the ice-hummocks, in the deep obscurity of the mid-winter, when suddenly a bright ray darted up from behind the black cloud which lay low down on the horizon before him. It lasted but an instant, and, having filled the air with a strange illumination, it died away, leaving the darkness even greater darkness than before. Presently an arc of coloured light sprang across the sky, and the aurora became gradually more fixed. The space enclosed by the arc was very dark, and was filled with the cloud. The play of the rays which rose from its gradually brightening border was for some time very capricious, modifying the burst of flame from what seemed a conflagration of the heavens to the soft glow of early morn.