THE SILENCE AND BEAUTY OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2317, 28 July 1898, Page 55

THE SILENCE AND BEAUTY OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS.

In tnot>t accounts of Arctic voyages we almost invariably find the narrator dwelling on the absolute silence of the Polar regions. Tins characteristic seems to be the one which most impresses itself on the imagination of man ; and truly there must be something wonderful and awe-inspiring m such silence. Again and again we find Dr Nansen dwelling on it. The sense of the absolute loneliness Around at tiroes becomes almost intolerable. "Unseen •and untrodden uuder their spotless mantle of ice the rigid polar regions sleep the profound sleep of death from the earliest dawn of tuna," hts writes. This silence is intensified during the long Polar mghl which extends (oi months when the sun never appears above thft horizon. But. ever and anon it is rudely broken by tho ice-pressure — a natural phenomenon which atJ Polar explorers unite in describing as being as awe-in&piving as the iMrrthquaku itself. In " Farthest North" Dr "Nii.iise.ii has very graphically described it. " Sui.b an ice conflict," he says, "is undeniably a stupendous spectacle. Jt begins with a gp.ntle crack and moan alongside the ship, 'whjr.b gradually sounds louder in every key. "Now U is a high plaintive note, now it is a snail. The noise steadily grows till it is like all the pipes of an organ." And again he wutas: — "The ice is pressing and cracking around us with a noise like thunder. It is piling itself up into long walls and heaps high enough to reach a good way up the rigging. Ouo feels oneself to be in the presence of Titanic forces; and it is easy to midcusfimd how timid souls may be overawed and foul .is if nothing could stand before it; t\v when the packing begins in earnest it. "seems as if there comd be no spot on the earib's surface Itift unshaken. First you ljuar a sound blio tho thundering rumble of an lurtlxjuako far away ou the great waste': then you hear it in several places, always coming nearer and nearer. The silent iceworlt) rc-erhnos with thunder; Nature's giants n.re awakened to the. battle. The ice cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up ; all of a sudden you too find yourself in the midst of the struggle. There jiro howlmgs and thundering? around you: you Icel the ico trembling and hear it rumbling under your feet, there is no peace anytvlie.re. lv the. se.mi- darkness you can see it piling and tossing itself up into high ridgns nearer and nearer you. Floes, ten. twebo, fifteen feet thick, are broken and flung on the top of each other as if they were feather-weights. They are quite near you now. and you jump away to save your lifeBufc the ice splits in front of you, a black gulf opens, and water streams up. You turn in anothei direction ; but there tlirougb the dark you can just see. a ridge of moving iceblocks coining towards you. You try another direction, but there it is the same. All round there is thundering and roaring as of some enormous waterfall, with explosions like cannon salvoes. Still nearer you it comes The floe you are standing on gets smaller and smaller: water pours over it; there can be no escape except by scrambling over the ice-blocks to get to th« other side, of the pack But. now the disturbance begins to calm dowu and is lost by degrees in the distance." The ice wae heie. tbe iro wap there.

Thf ico was all around ; It crealwd and growled and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound. '

Bleak and desolate indeed are those regions but they aro not destitute of » beauty all then «>wn In summer it is wonderful in what high latitudes flowers bloom. When off Ccipp (Jbclyiiskin, the northernmost portion of ibe OKI World's Continent, Nansen Tirol c- — " Beautiful flowers smile to us here and there among the sand mounds — the one message from y brighter world iv this land of fogs " Tlittiv must be a beauty, too, in the absolute purity and spotlessneiw of everything around.

But it is at ni^ht that their beauty is greatest. " Nothing mom wonderfully beautiful," writes Nansen, "can exist than the Arctic cnght. It is dreamland painted in the imagination." most delicate tints ; it is colour ethereaJised One shade melts into the other so tli.it you cannot tell where one ends and the ot.liei begins, and yet they are all there. No forms, it is all faint dreamy colour music, a far-away long drawn out melody on muted strings. The sky is like an enormous cupola, blue at the zenith, shading down into green, and then into hlnc ami violet at the edges Over the icefield thorp are cold violet -blue shadows, wiih lighter pink tints, vheie a ridgo here aivl thorn catches the last reileotion of the vanished day Up in the blue of the cupola shine the stars, speaking peacfl, as they always do thos«i unchanging friends In the south stands a large irregular moon, encircled by a light yellow ring, and golden clouds floating on the blue background. Presently Aurora Oorotlis shakes ovar tin* vault of heaven its t>littoring veil of silver, changing now to yellow, now to' green, now tr> red. It spreads, it contracts again, in restless change, m>xt it b males into waving manyfolded b.inds of shining silver, over wlni'.h shoot l)illoiv> ot glittering rays; and then the glory vanishes. I'vesenily it- shimmers in tongues of fl.uno over the very zenith, and tlion ago,in it shoots a bright Jjghf. up from iho horizon tin til thfl whole melts away iv the moonlight. Tiere and there- are left n few waving streamers of light vague as a foreboding — they are the dust from Aurora's glittering cloak. Rut now it is growing again : new lightnings shoot up and th» endless game begin.' afresh," Inexpressibly glorious indeed must be ihi» Aurora Bovealis — Iho Northern Lights flashing in matchless power and beauty over the sky uj all the colours of the rainbow. Here is how Nansen describes it again : — " The prevailing one at first was yellow, but -'that- 'gradually flickered over into green, and then a sparkling rubv-rcd began to show at the bottom of the rays on the under side of the arch, soon spreading over tho whole arch. And new from the far-away western horizon a fierv^ serpent writhes itself up over the sky, shining brighter and brighter and brighter as it came. It splits up into three, aU brillU.v.th glittering. Then the colour? change. The serpent to the south turned almost ruby iv.d with spot* of yellow, the one in the middle yellow, and the. one to the north greenish white. Sheaths of rays swept along

] the side of the serpent, driven through the I ether-hko waves before a storm of wind. 'They sv. ay backwards and forwards, now i strong, now fainter again. The whole bky !is ablaze with it. But it v brightest iv the south. High up in that direction glow waving masses of fire." Again he writes of this Siime phenomenon: — "The glowing firemasses had divided into glistening, manycolt ured bands which were writhing and twisting across the sky both in the south and" north. The rays sparkled with the purest most crystaline colours, chiefly violet, red, and ermine, and the clearest jjreen. Most frequently the rays of the arch were red at the ends, aud changed higher up into sparkling green, which quite at th« top turned darker and wont over into blue or violeet before disappearing in the blue of the sky. It was an endless phantasmagoria of sparkhug colour, surpassing anything that one can dteam." — An extract from " Polar Exploration." in the New Century Review.