Nor does this exhaust the marvel of this bleak and fascinating region. In the long winter nights the aurora borealis glares and blazes in the sky, "roaring and flashing about a ship enough to frighten a fellow," as an old quartermaster, who was with Sir F. L. McClintock in his search for Sir John Franklin, used to tell the midshipmen. In the prolonged sunset and sunrise the sky is ablaze with colour, and, when the sun has gone, the rarefied atmosphere produces many curious astronomical figures. As explorers penetrated farther into the great ice-bound region they encountered fresh peculiarities. The moon, which shone continuously during the three weeks of its course, frequently appeared surrounded by belts and bands of light, in which mock moons were visible. Long after the sun had disappeared a mock sun would shine in the sky, and in the twilight, when shadows were no longer cast, men and dogs were liable to walk over cliffs and fall down crevices in the ice through being unable to distinguish them. Penetrating farther into the ice world, they learned that throughout the winter the ice heaved and crashed upon itself, making an incessant uproar as it groaned and creaked. The experience of Nansen and the _Fram_ emphasised this, but in the earlier days of Polar research silence was presumed to reign in the vicinity of the Arctic basin. In those early days the expeditions usually kept close to the northern coasts of either Europe, Asia, or America. Sir Hugh Willoughby, who sailed from England in 1553, confined himself to seeking the north-east passage from Behring Sea to Greenland along the north coast of Canada. In 1576 Frobisher explored part of the region, the work being continued by Davis, who in 1585-8 discovered and explored the strait which still bears his name, to the west of Greenland. In 1610 Hudson, an intrepid trader and explorer, sailed into Hudson's Bay, and five years later Baffin sailed into and through Baffin's Bay. The result of these two discoveries was to open up a very valuable fur trade, and for the next two hundred years, fur traders and whalers were practically the only men who went into the frozen North. In 1818 the British Navy again entered the field for the purpose of mapping out the northern coasts of America. Captains Ross and Parry were sent out in two vessels, with the result that knowledge of the locality was extended by the discovery of Lancaster Sound, Prince Regent Inlet, Barrow Strait, and Melville Island. The location of these islands and straits aroused still keener curiosity as to whether there was or was not a passage for ships leading from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans along the north coast of America. The search for the North-West Passage was the dream of every Arctic explorer at this period. It fell to the lot of one man to prove the existence of the passage, at a price, however, of his own life, and the lives of all his companions, as well as the loss of his two ships.