“10 A.M. A twilight gloom: can just see the Azimuth, with its tripod stand, thirty yards off on the ice. Snow whirling in drifts.
“11 A.M. Can read newspaper print by going to open daylight, i. e., twilight—the twilight of a foggy sunrise at home.
“12 M. Noonday. A streak of brown red looms up above the mist to the south. Save a little more light from the ‘foggy sunrise’ of 11 A.M., no great perceptible difference; yet I can now read the finest print easily.
“1 P.M. Very decidedly more hazy than at 11, the corresponding hour before meridian. Can read with difficulty the newspaper—London Illustrated News.
“2 P.M. A hazy darkness, but so compounded with the fast-rising light of the dear moon, that it is far lighter than the corresponding hour before meridian.
“Day is over. Moonlight begins!
“This is a fair specimen of our usual day. The occasional clear day, such as we had the 18th, is far lighter, and full of variety and interest.
“November 21, Thursday. The day is clear; but the moonlight, an absolute clair de lune, so confounds itself with the day as to make a merely solar register impossible.
“8 A.M. The whole atmosphere bathed in pellucid clearness. The moon, like a luminous sphere, not a circle, as with us, is away up the straits in the northern sky. Not a speck betokens sunrise.