followed by some such sudden
whimsical destruction. It was as though that light hidden behind the
mountains were mocking us.

Then from out the north again appeared one clear belt of light that
stretched rapidly and steadily all across the heavens until it formed an
arch that stood there stationary. And from that motionless arch, the
only motionless manifestation that whole night, there came a gradual
superb crescendo of light that lit the wide, white river basin from
mountain top to mountain top and threw the shadows of the dogs and the
sled sharper and blacker upon the snow,--and in the very moment of its
climax was gone again utterly while yet the exclamations of wonder were
on our lips. It was as though, piqued at our admiration, the aurora had
wiped itself out; and often and often there is precisely that impression
of wilfulness about it.

All night long the splendour kept up, and all night long, as the dogs
went at a good clip and one of us rode while the other was at the
sled's handle-bars, we gazed and marvelled at its infinite variety, at
its astonishing fertility of effect, at its whimsical vagaries, until
the true dawn of Easter swallowed up the beauty of the night as we came
in sight of Eagle. And we wondered with what more lavish advertisement
the dawn of the first Easter was heralded into the waste places of the
snow.

[Sidenote: SOUND AND SMELL]

There are men in Alaska, whose statements demand every respect, who
claim to have heard frequently and unmistakably a swishing sound
accompanying the movements of the aurora, and there are some who claim
to have detected an odour accompanying it. Without venturing any opinion
on the subject in general, the writer would simply say that, though he
thinks he possesses as good ears and as good a nose as most people, he
has never heard any sound or smelled any odour that he believed to come
from the Northern Lights. Indeed, he has often felt that with all the
light-producing energy and with all the rapid movement of the aurora it
was mysterious that there should be absolutely no sound. The aurora
often looks as if it _ought_ to swish, but to his ears it has never done
it; so much phosphorescent light might naturally be accompanied by some
chemical odour, but to his nostrils never has been.

Queer, uncertain noises in the silence of an arctic night there often
are--noises of crackling twigs, perhaps, noises of settling snow, noises
in the ice itself--but they are