I feel it is presumption on my part to attempt to describe a display of this Aurora, because I shall hardly succeed in making myself understood.
Just imagine, if you can, a wide and wondrous arch, stretching from east to west, and nearly halfway up the sky, more rounded than a rainbow, its ends apparently within a few feet of the snow-field.
At first the arch resembled a vast chain, every link of which was a ring of brightest gold, each link overlapping its neighbour to about one-half its extent, but all turbulent, all a-quiver! But lo! as one gazed on it, strangely fascinated, the rings, though still linked together, turned half-edge-on towards the right. Then from each ring, as a spherical base, was suddenly thrown out a triangle of glittering, darting, quivering, golden light.
But speedily is the apex of each triangle extended zenithwards, and broadened out, till it resembles a brush. The rings get smaller and smaller beneath, until they are but bright points of light like heads of comets; in very truth, there is now a broad archway of comets, heads downward towards the snow.
But listen. While the heads of these comets retain the brightness of stars of gold, the extended brushes, or tails, are now bunches of rainbow-coloured, flickering, dancing, darting light.
It is a bewildering sight, and it is hard to believe it real.
Gradually the tails get shorter, become once more the apexes of spherical triangles, and dance, and disappear, the chain of golden rings becoming once more visible as before.
All beneath this archway is a dark-blue sky, in which stars shine, and the rest of the firmament is quite unaffected, though the mountains and snow-clad valley borrow the colour and add to the bewildering grandeur of the most marvellous transformation scene the world can ever witness.
I fear I have failed to give my youthful readers an adequate conception of the Aurora. I feared I should fail before I commenced. But Britons—and I am one—should never funk, and I have done my best.
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