we kept more
below deck; when the weather was finer we lived more in
the open air, often paying visits to the observatory in
the ice-house, and among the Chukches living in the
neighbourhood, or wandering about to come upon, if
possible, some game."

The snow which fell during winter consisted more generally of small
simple snow-crystals or ice-needles, than of the beautiful
snow-flakes whose grand kaleidoscopic forms the inhabitants of the
north so often have an opportunity of admiring. Already with a
gentle wind and with a pretty clear atmosphere the lower strata of
the atmosphere were full of these regular ice-needles, which
refracted the rays of the sun, so as to produce parhelia and halos.
Unfortunately however these were never so completely developed as
the halos which I saw in 1873 during the sledge-journey round
North-east Land on Spitzbergen; but I believed that even now I could
confirm the correctness of the observation I then made, that the
representation which is generally given of this beautiful
phenomenon, in which the halo is delineated as a collection of
regular circles, is not correct, but that it forms a very involved
system of lines, extended over the whole vault of heaven, for the
most part coloured on the sun-side and uncoloured on the opposite
side, of the sort shown in the accompanying drawings taken from the
account of the Spitzbergen Expedition of 1872-73.

[Illustration: REFRACTION-HALO. Seen on Spitzbergen in May 1873,
simultaneously with the Reflection-halo delineated on the
following page. ]

Another very beautiful phenomenon, produced by the refraction of the
solar rays by the ice-needles, which during winter were constantly
mixed with the atmospheric strata lying nearest the surface of the
earth, was that the mountain heights to the south of the _Vega_ in a
certain light appeared as if feathered with fire-clouds. In clear
sunshine and a high wind we frequently saw, as it were, a glowing
pillar of vapour arise obliquely from the summits of the mountains,
giving them the appearance of volcanos, which throw out enormous
columns of smoke, flame-coloured by the reflection from the glowing
lava streams in the depths of the crater.

A blue water-sky was still visible out to sea, indicating that open
water was to be found there. I therefore sent Johnsen the hunter
over the ice on the 18th December to see how it was. In
three-quarters of an hour's walking from the vessel