AURORA AUSTRALIS.
white, but such an adjective could never be applied to the whites of the Antarctic snows by moonlight.
It would be a platitude to compare the whole to a vista of fairyland, and perhaps an anticlimax to say that it was like some lovely transformation scene, viewed by the wrapt gaze of childhood.
One thing is certain, that the whole effect seemed almost supernatural, and it did not require an impressionable mind to be uplifted by it to a height almost more than mortal.
So we swung along; it seemed as if fatigue were one of those earthly ills left far behind us in prosaic temporate climes.
The creaking snow, blown down and packed hard by the southerly blizzard from the slopes above us, made the most perfect going. The ever-changing views of the broken ice-cliffs and mountain slopes drew us on. We felt as if we could have gone on for a week.
Yet it was strange, and almost uncanny to think that in all the miles and miles of land over which our eyes ranged there was not one living, breathing creature, – no, not one!
The Adélie penguins, those cheery summer visitors, had gone far north with the sun, ten degrees
