r on to the ice to take the meteorological observations.

I believe I may safely say that on the whole the time passed pleasantly
and imperceptibly, and that we throve in virtue of the regular habits
imposed upon us.

My notes from day to day will give the best idea of our life, in all
its monotony. They are not great events that are here recorded, but
in their very bareness they give a true picture. Such, and no other,
was our life. I shall give some quotations direct from my diary:

"Tuesday, September 26th. Beautiful weather. The sun stands much
lower now; it was 9 deg. above the horizon at midday. Winter is rapidly
approaching; there are 14 1/2 deg. of frost this evening, but we do not
feel it cold. To-day's observations unfortunately show no particular
drift northward; according to them we are still in 78 deg. 50' north
latitude. I wandered about over the floe towards evening. Nothing
more wonderfully beautiful can exist than the Arctic night. It is
dreamland, painted in the imagination's most delicate tints; it
is color etherealized. One shade melts into the other, so that you
cannot tell where one ends and the other begins, and yet they are
all there. No forms--it is all faint, dreamy color music, a far-away,
long-drawn-out melody on muted strings. Is not all life's beauty high,
and delicate, and pure like this night? Give it brighter colors, and
it is no longer so beautiful. The sky is like an enormous cupola, blue
at the zenith, shading down into green, and then into lilac and violet
at the edges. Over the ice-fields there are cold violet-blue shadows,
with lighter pink tints where a ridge here and there catches the last
reflection of the vanished day. Up in the blue of the cupola shine the
stars, speaking peace, as they always do, those unchanging friends. In
the south stands a large red-yellow moon, encircled by a yellow ring
and light golden clouds floating on the blue background. Presently the
aurora borealis shakes over the vault of heaven its veil of glittering
silver--changing now to yellow, now to green, now to red. It spreads,
it contracts again, in restless change; next it breaks into waving,
many-folded bands of shining silver, over which shoot billows of
glittering rays, and then the glory vanishes. Presently it shimmers
in tongues of flame over the very zenith, and then again it shoots a
bright ray right up from the horizon, until the whole melts away in
the moonlight, and it is as though one hea